Highest Percentage of DLWs Out of Starter Wins

This leaderboard includes only pitchers with at least 7 career Dumb Luck Wins.

As usual, all links are to Baseball-Reference. This table is based on one from B-Ref’s Play Index, though I have modified it heavily and added data to suit my needs. “Starter W” is the number of wins as a starter only and since 1950. That’s why most players have a lower total than their overall career Wins.

UPDATE 10/9/11: With the 2011 season in the books, I’ve updated the list below to account for the new results. We had three players drop below the 9% threshold to fall off the list. Jake Westbrook recorded 12 starter wins and no DLWs, so he fell from 10.14% (15th) down to 8.64% (27th), just off the list. The last guy on the list pre-2011 was Doug Davis, at 9.09%, but Davis’ one win this season was enough to push him just below 9% (8.99%, to be precise), so he just misses the cut as well, coming in at 25th. Finally, Cliff Lee had no DLWs and 17 wins to drop to 8.40% and 30th.

Three new players appear on the list, however. Aaron Harang’s 2 DLWs out of 14 wins inched him onto the list in the final spot; he’s now at 9.47% (9 out of 95). Two pitchers who became eligible for the list by recording their 7th DLWs this season jumped into the top 5. Daisuke Matsuzaka had just 3 wins as a starter in 2011, but one of them was a DLW. He now has 7 DLWs out of just 49 career starter wins, good for 14.29% and 2nd place. Chris Capuano tied for the MLB lead in 2011 with 3 DLWs (out of 11 wins); he now has 7 out of 56 career wins. That puts him at 12.50%, and 4th place.

Only two other players on the list saw changes in their DLW%s after 2011. Jon Garland had 1 win, dropping his DLW% slightly. Tim Wakefield, though, recorded 2 DLWs in just 7 starter wins, moving him up a couple notches from 10.38% to 11.05%.

Here’s the updated leaderboard:

Is Jon Garland the new Jack Morris? Should we be preparing convoluted arguments for Garland’s HOF case now, just in case?