The Dodgers were off on July 16, 1962, but the Giants played the Mets again before moving on to Milwaukee. The two pitchers who faced off--Jack Sanford and Roger Craig--wound up with "mirror-image" records in '62: Sanford won 24, Craig lost 24. Neither man was either the best or worst starting pitcher in the NL that year: Sanford had a great team behind him, and got excellent run support, while Craig was the mainstay of a team that lost 120 games.
On this day, they both pitched well: it was 1-1 in the seventh. Then Craig was victimized by an unearned run--a throwing error by shortstop Elio Chacon brought home the go-ahead run for the Giants. Craig was batted for in the bottom of the seventh; the Giants got another run without benefit of an RBI in the ninth (a Bob Miller wild pitch) and they staved off a Mets rally in the bottom of the inning to hold on for a win. (Newly minted Giant Bob Garibaldi got the final out, earning the first of just two lifetime saves in his career). Final score: Giants 3, Mets 2.
We sorted the list by ERA in such games, and you'll note that there are a number of pitchers missing from the list (due to not having enough decisions--meaning they got better run support than these unfortunates). No Don Drysdale or Juan Marichal here, for example. Or Jack Sanford, for that matter.
These 22 pitchers combined for a 34-197 record in such games, a .141 WPCT. Their overall ERA in these games was 3.73.
So we can pick out Roger Craig in the list (his data row is shown in orange). His ERA in these games is just about at the average for the harder-luck guys. His W-L record (1-12) is down a win from where it needs to be in order to match the league average. So he was slightly unlucky in these games.
The guys who were really unlucky here were the Giants' Billy O'Dell (1-9, 2.97 ERA) and the Colts' Turk Farrell (0-15, 3.57 ERA). Farrell pitched for an expansion team that couldn't hit much which happened to play in a pitcher's park. O'Dell got the short end of the stick from a team that usually scored a lot of runs.
Of course, you can see that the man who shined in such games was Sandy Koufax, with a .500 WPCT and an ERA of 1.93. Ernie Broglio, who will always be remembered as the stiff the Cubs acquired for Lou Brock, wasn't too shabby in this area either.
The Mets had 57 such games in '62 and went 5-52 in them. That wasn't the highest number of such games in the NL that year, however. That unfortunate stat was owned by the Colts, with 65 such games (8-57 on the year). At least it's not lonely at the bottom, right?
SEASON RECORDS: LAD 62-32, SFG 60-34
