Catfish Hunter

Baseball Player Won-Loss Records
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Catfish Hunter

Hall-of-Famers as Seen Through Player Won-Lost Records: Catfish Hunter

Catfish Hunter was elected to the Hall of Fame in his third year of eligibility, 1987, with 76.3% of the vote.

Five highlights of Catfish Hunter's career:

Catfish Hunter was named to eight All-Star games, including starting the 1973 game for the American League. He received MVP votes five times and Cy Young votes four times.

Hunter threw a perfect game on May 8, 1968. It was the first regular-season perfect game by an American League pitcher since 1922. Hunter struck out 11 Minnesota Twins and batted 3-for-4 with a double and 3 RBI in the game.

Hunter amassed twenty or more traditional pitcher wins five consecutive seasons from 1971 through 1975. He bookended that stretch with 18 wins in 1970 and 17 wins in 1976. From 1970 through 1976 Hunter pitched 2,032.2 innings (290.1 per season) with 126 complete games (18 per season).

Hunter won the American League Cy Young award in 1974, his last season in Oakland, when he led the American League in traditional pitcher wins (25), earned run average (2.49), and WHIP (walks plus hits per nine innings, 0.986). He finished second in Cy Young voting the next year, his first in New York, when he amassed a traditional won-lost record of 23-14 with a 2.58 ERA while leading the league in wins, innings pitched (328), complete games (30), and WHIP (1.009).

Hunter pitched in the postseason in seven seasons. His teams went 6-1 in the American League Championship Series and 5-1 in the World Series. Hunter was the winning pitcher in the World Series clincher in both his first (1972, Game 7) and last (1978, Game 6) World Series.

The first two tables below present Catfish Hunter'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
1965	KC1	19	32	7.3	9.6	-0.7	-1.8
1966	KC1	20	30	11.4	13.6	0.1	-1.4
1967	KC1	21	37	17.2	16.8	3.5	1.5
1968	OAK	22	39	14.3	14.4	2.3	0.7
1969	OAK	23	42	15.7	16.6	2.1	0.1
1970	OAK	24	43	15.9	15.9	2.7	0.9
1971	OAK	25	38	20.6	15.5	8.3	6.2
1972	OAK	26	39	19.3	13.8	8.5	6.5
1973	OAK	27	37	14.0	11.9	3.9	2.2
1974	OAK	28	41	17.8	13.2	6.7	4.8
1975	NYA	29	39	19.1	14.2	7.2	5.1
1976	NYA	30	36	15.2	15.4	1.9	-0.0
1977	NYA	31	22	7.9	9.1	-0.0	-1.2
1978	NYA	32	21	8.2	7.1	2.1	1.1
1979	NYA	33	19	4.8	6.9	-1.2	-2.0
			------	------	------	------	------
CAREER (reg. season)			515	208.9	194.0	47.5	22.8
			------	------	------	------	------
PostSeason (career)			22	8.0	7.7	1.5	0.6
			------	------	------	------	------
COMBINED			537	216.8	201.7	49.0	23.4

Season	Team	Age	Games	eWins	eLosses	eWORL	eWOPA

Expected Player Won-Lost Records
						Value Decomposition
1965	KC1	19	32	7.4	9.4	-0.4	-1.5
1966	KC1	20	30	12.0	13.0	1.5	-0.1
1967	KC1	21	37	18.4	15.6	5.9	3.9
1968	OAK	22	39	13.7	15.0	1.1	-0.5
1969	OAK	23	42	15.4	17.0	1.4	-0.6
1970	OAK	24	43	15.6	16.2	2.3	0.4
1971	OAK	25	38	19.2	16.9	5.5	3.4
1972	OAK	26	39	18.3	14.9	6.6	4.6
1973	OAK	27	37	12.4	13.5	0.6	-1.0
1974	OAK	28	41	17.4	13.6	5.9	4.0
1975	NYA	29	39	19.1	14.1	7.2	5.1
1976	NYA	30	36	15.7	14.9	2.9	1.0
1977	NYA	31	22	7.5	9.5	-0.7	-1.8
1978	NYA	32	21	7.8	7.5	1.4	0.4
1979	NYA	33	19	5.2	6.5	-0.5	-1.2
			------	------	------	------	------
CAREER (reg. season)			515	205.2	197.7	40.7	16.0
			------	------	------	------	------
PostSeason (career)			22	7.4	8.3	0.3	-0.7
			------	------	------	------	------
COMBINED			537	212.6	206.0	41.0	15.3

Catfish Hunter was a workhorse starting pitcher through his prime. In the 10 seasons from 1967 - 1976, Hunter pitched at least 234 innings every season, peaking at a league-leading 328 innings (and a league-leading 30 complete games) in 1975.

Hunter earned 184 traditional wins over these ten seasons, including five consecutive 20-win seasons from 1971 - 1975. In addition to traditional pitcher wins, Hunter also amassed a lot of pWins during these seasons.

The next table shows the top 10 pitchers in pWins over these ten seasons.

		Top Starting Pitchers, 1967 - 1976 (ranked by pWins)
		pWins	pLosses	pWOPA	pWORL
1	Fergie Jenkins	193.6	162.0	40.6	61.9
2	Gaylord Perry	185.0	165.5	27.0	48.6
3	Tom Seaver	181.5	142.2	50.0	68.8
4	Steve Carlton	172.8	155.3	27.1	46.4
5	Catfish Hunter	169.2	147.8	28.0	47.2
6	Mickey Lolich	169.0	168.8	7.6	28.2
7	Don Sutton	164.4	148.1	26.2	44.7
8	Phil Niekro	162.6	153.8	18.7	37.7
9	Mike Cuellar	149.9	135.0	21.7	39.1
10	Bob Gibson	144.1	117.5	35.0	50.3

Hunter not only pitched a lot over this time period; he pitched very well. So well, in fact, that he was one of the top 20 players in baseball over this time period, regardless of position, ranked by pWins over replacement level over this time period.

		Top Players, 1967 - 1976 (ranked by pWORL)
		pWins	pLosses	pWOPA	pWORL
1	Joe L. Morgan	202.7	150.7	55.1	72.5
2	Tom Seaver	181.5	142.2	50.0	68.8
3	Fergie Jenkins	193.6	162.0	40.6	61.9
4	Jim Palmer	140.9	101.0	44.5	59.3
5	Reggie Jackson	204.2	154.4	39.9	57.7
6	Carl Yastrzemski	211.4	162.7	35.8	54.3
7	Johnny Bench	162.9	125.5	39.2	53.5
8	Hank Aaron	184.2	137.7	35.7	52.2
9	Bob Gibson	144.1	117.5	35.0	50.3
10	Tony Perez	195.9	151.9	32.5	49.6
11	Willie Stargell	188.9	143.2	32.5	49.0
12	Gaylord Perry	185.0	165.5	27.0	48.6
13	Jimmy Wynn	207.7	167.1	29.9	48.5
14	Pete Rose Sr.	226.4	185.6	28.0	48.3
15	Billy Williams	201.6	159.6	29.0	47.5
16	Catfish Hunter	169.2	147.8	28.0	47.2
17	Sal Bando	187.4	153.1	30.2	47.0
18	Steve Carlton	172.8	155.3	27.1	46.4
19	Don Sutton	164.4	148.1	26.2	44.7
20	Bert Campaneris	193.0	182.9	23.0	41.6
21	Dick Allen	161.8	123.6	27.4	41.5
22	Willie McCovey	146.6	105.9	28.3	40.9
23	Bobby Bonds	190.7	156.5	23.5	40.6
24	Frank Robinson	149.0	114.5	26.5	40.5
25	Roy White	204.2	170.8	21.7	40.4

Article last updated: October 15, 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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