Old Righties Giving Yanks Innings To Start A Season In The Steinbrenner Era
Posted by Steve L. on April 29th, 2011 · Comments (4)
Since 1973, here are the right-handed starters, age 36 or older, to give the Yankees games of 6+ IP within the team’s first 23 games of a season:
| Rk | Player | #Matching | W | L | IP | SO | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Roger Clemens | 22 | Ind. Games | 12 | 2 | 3.07 | 149.2 | 138 | 1.20 |
| 2 | Mike Mussina | 10 | Ind. Games | 6 | 2 | 2.77 | 65.0 | 47 | 1.11 |
| 3 | Phil Niekro | 9 | Ind. Games | 7 | 1 | 2.31 | 66.1 | 52 | 1.22 |
| 4 | Kevin Brown | 9 | Ind. Games | 4 | 3 | 3.97 | 59.0 | 36 | 1.29 |
| 5 | David Cone | 6 | Ind. Games | 4 | 0 | 0.86 | 41.2 | 29 | 0.82 |
| 6 | Joe Niekro | 5 | Ind. Games | 4 | 0 | 1.65 | 32.2 | 17 | 1.07 |
| 7 | Orlando Hernandez | 4 | Ind. Games | 3 | 1 | 1.24 | 29.0 | 30 | 0.93 |
| 8 | Luis Tiant | 2 | Ind. Games | 1 | 1 | 4.85 | 13.0 | 7 | 1.46 |
| 9 | Bartolo Colon | 2 | Ind. Games | 2 | 0 | 1.84 | 14.2 | 13 | 1.02 |
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Freddy Garcia tries to join the club tonight.





Interesting. I thought there’d be more, for some reason. 9 in 38 years seems to be an awful low figure.
Raf wrote:
Because there is a filter on the search covering only a team’s first 23 games. I imagine if you open the search up to an entire season, you’d pick up a few more (guys like Gator in 1987, Gaylord Perry in 1980, Phil Niekro in 1984 and 1985…).
MJ Recanati wrote:
Not Gator. Righties only.
Evan3457 wrote:
Whoops, good point.
Overall point stands, however, that looking at only the first 23 games seems quite silly since I take Steve’s implied point to be that you can’t trust old pitchers. I’m sure there are more than just Perry or Niekro that did it for the Yanks and, of course, older gents that did it for other teams as well.