Mike Mussina

Baseball Player Won-Loss Records
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Mike Mussina

Hall-of-Famers as Seen Through Player Won-Lost Records: Mike Mussina

Mike Mussina was elected to the Hall of Fame in his 6th year of eligibility, 2019, with 76.7% of the vote.

Five highlights of Mike Mussina's career:

Mike Mussina was named to five All-Star teams in his career, received Cy Young votes eight times, and won six Gold Gloves.

Mike Mussina had 11 or more traditional pitcher wins for seventeen consecutive seasons from 1992 through 2008. He was the first pitcher in American League history with at least 10 wins in seventeen consecutive seasons.

Mussina was the starting and winning pitcher on September 6, 1995, when Cal Ripken played in his 2,131st consecutive game, breaking Lou Gehrig's record.

Mussina took a no-hitter into the eighth inning four times in his career, the most by any pitcher in major-league history who never threw a no-hitter. He retired the first 25 Cleveland Indians on May 30, 1997, before Sandy Alomar, Jr. singled with one out in the ninth inning. He retired the first 26 Boston Red Sox on September 2, 2001, before Carl Everett singled with two out in the ninth inning.

Mussina earned 20 traditional pitcher wins in a season only once, winning his 20th game of 2008 in the final start of his career. At 39, Mussina was the oldest pitcher to win 20 games for the first time. He was also the first pitcher since Sandy Koufax to win 20 or more games in his final major-league season.

The first two tables below present Mike Mussina's career as measured by Player won-lost records, in and out of context.

Season	Team	Age	Games	pWins	pLosses	pWORL	pWOPA

Basic Player Won-Lost Records
						Value Decomposition
1991	BAL	22	12	4.5	4.8	0.4	-0.3
1992	BAL	23	32	13.9	9.2	6.5	4.9
1993	BAL	24	25	10.2	8.1	3.4	2.1
1994	BAL	25	24	12.1	7.5	6.1	4.7
1995	BAL	26	32	15.9	10.4	7.6	5.8
1996	BAL	27	36	15.2	12.4	4.9	3.0
1997	BAL	28	33	13.2	9.8	5.1	3.5
1998	BAL	29	29	12.7	10.2	4.3	2.7
1999	BAL	30	31	13.5	8.3	6.8	5.4
2000	BAL	31	34	14.3	12.2	4.2	2.4
2001	NYA	32	34	15.5	10.8	6.8	5.0
2002	NYA	33	33	13.1	10.8	4.2	2.5
2003	NYA	34	31	14.1	10.5	5.6	3.8
2004	NYA	35	27	11.0	9.2	3.4	2.0
2005	NYA	36	30	11.0	10.7	2.0	0.5
2006	NYA	37	32	10.7	8.5	3.7	2.4
2007	NYA	38	28	8.6	9.3	0.6	-0.6
2008	NYA	39	34	13.6	11.1	4.5	2.8
			------	------	------	------	------
CAREER (reg. season)			537	223.1	174.0	80.1	52.7
			------	------	------	------	------
PostSeason (career)			23	7.5	7.0	1.7	0.7
			------	------	------	------	------
COMBINED			560	230.6	181.0	81.8	53.4

Season	Team	Age	Games	eWins	eLosses	eWORL	eWOPA

Expected Player Won-Lost Records
						Value Decomposition
1991	BAL	22	12	5.2	4.2	1.7	1.1
1992	BAL	23	32	13.2	9.9	5.0	3.4
1993	BAL	24	25	9.9	8.4	2.7	1.5
1994	BAL	25	24	11.3	8.2	4.6	3.2
1995	BAL	26	32	15.6	10.7	6.9	5.1
1996	BAL	27	36	14.9	12.8	4.2	2.3
1997	BAL	28	33	13.0	10.1	4.7	3.1
1998	BAL	29	29	12.9	9.9	4.8	3.2
1999	BAL	30	31	12.9	8.9	5.7	4.2
2000	BAL	31	34	14.9	11.6	5.4	3.6
2001	NYA	32	34	15.5	10.7	7.0	5.1
2002	NYA	33	33	12.8	11.2	3.5	1.8
2003	NYA	34	31	14.7	9.9	6.7	5.0
2004	NYA	35	27	10.6	9.6	2.5	1.1
2005	NYA	36	30	11.1	10.5	2.3	0.8
2006	NYA	37	32	11.0	8.3	4.2	2.9
2007	NYA	38	28	9.3	8.7	2.0	0.7
2008	NYA	39	34	13.5	11.2	4.3	2.6
			------	------	------	------	------
CAREER (reg. season)			537	222.1	175.0	78.2	50.8
			------	------	------	------	------
PostSeason (career)			23	8.2	6.3	3.1	2.1
			------	------	------	------	------
COMBINED			560	230.3	181.3	81.3	52.9

I think that, even today, a lot of people don't really appreciate how good Mike Mussina was. The next two tables try to show what Player won-lost records think of Mussina.

The first table shows the top 25 pitchers for whom I have calculated Player won-lost records (1916 - 2019, ranked by pWins over replacement level (pWORL). The numbers here reflect a player's total pWins across all positions; players are included in this table if the majority of their wins were accumulated as a pitcher.

	Player	pWins	pLosses	pWORL	pWOPA

		Top 25 Pitchers, ranked by career pWORL)
1	Roger Clemens	316.9	228.6	94.6	131.3
2	Greg Maddux	327.2	271.7	77.9	115.0
3	Warren Spahn	351.0	294.8	74.3	113.8
4	Lefty Grove	264.3	190.7	84.3	113.0
5	Randy 'Big Unit' Johnson	279.8	221.0	69.8	102.9
6	Tom Seaver	306.9	258.2	65.1	98.6
7	Jim Palmer	241.5	186.1	61.9	88.7
8	Bob Gibson	262.4	218.4	58.6	87.4
9	Steve Carlton	335.6	305.9	49.2	86.9
10	Pedro J. Martinez	192.4	137.7	62.6	84.7
11	Juan Marichal	230.7	188.0	56.7	81.7
12	Nolan Ryan	354.6	329.6	38.1	81.0
13	Mike Mussina	223.1	174.0	52.7	80.1
14	Mariano Rivera	125.9	61.1	61.4	79.0
15	Pete Alexander	214.1	168.1	55.0	78.9
16	Tom Glavine	277.8	249.8	45.8	78.6
17	John Smoltz	238.8	201.7	49.6	78.3
18	Whitey Ford	209.4	164.7	54.9	78.0
19	Fergie Jenkins	285.0	252.3	44.4	77.4
20	Bob Feller	254.8	219.0	47.4	77.3
21	Walter Johnson	198.8	154.1	53.7	76.1
22	Gaylord Perry	315.6	290.2	38.2	76.1
23	Don Sutton	318.6	297.3	38.4	75.6
24	Early Wynn	307.1	285.2	38.5	74.5
25	Robin Roberts	294.3	271.1	39.9	74.4

That's 100 years of pitchers.

The second table shows the top 10 players in pWORL during Mike Mussina's career (1991 - 2008).


		pWins over Replacement Level Top 10 Players, 1991 - 2008
	Player	pWins	pLosses	pWOPA	pWORL
1	Barry Bonds	364.1	228.0	121.7	150.8
2	Greg Maddux	266.9	214.5	71.1	101.1
3	Randy 'Big Unit' Johnson	248.3	189.5	68.9	97.8
4	Alex Rodriguez	289.0	228.2	68.0	93.2
5	Roger Clemens	219.5	163.4	61.1	87.1
6	Chipper Jones	279.1	209.9	61.5	85.4
7	Manny Ramirez	297.5	228.0	58.3	84.9
8	Pedro J. Martinez	188.7	135.0	61.4	83.1
9	Mike Mussina	223.1	174.0	52.7	80.1
10	Derek Jeter	274.3	232.5	54.2	78.8

Yes, the time period here is kind of cherry-picked. But it's an 18-year time period!

Mike Mussina was really good for a really long time and is a well-deserving Hall-of-Famer.

Article last updated: February 3, 2020

All articles are written so that they pull data directly from the most recent version of the Player won-lost database. Hence, any numbers cited within these articles should automatically incorporate the most recent update to Player won-lost records. In some cases, however, the accompanying text may have been written based on previous versions of Player won-lost records. I apologize if this results in non-sensical text in any cases.

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