Mariano Rivera Threw a Wild Pitch

On Sunday Mariano Rivera threw a wild pitch, which made me feel a bit shocked. Since then I've felt nagged by the question of just how rare it was.

So, following is a table that lists the top 10 pitchers least likely to give up a wild pitch out of the 176 pitchers who have pitched at least 1000 innings since Mariano began his career since 1995. ("WP/9" means "Wild pitches per 9 innings"). Mariano ranks 7th amongst his peers contemporaries:

Pitcher	IP	SO	K/9	WP	WP/9
Quantrill, Paul	1015.3	607	5.38	4	0.035
Daal, Omar	1149.7	778	6.09	8	0.063
Reed, Rick	1296.3	835	5.80	11	0.076
Buehrle, Mark	2476.7	1396	5.07	21	0.076
Glavine, Tom	2891.0	1703	5.30	25	0.078
Francis, Jeff	1065.7	694	5.86	11	0.093
Castillo, Frank	1114.0	790	6.38	12	0.097
Rivera, Mariano	1211.3	1111	8.25	13	0.097
Moyer, Jamie	3019.3	1793	5.34	33	0.098
Maddux, Greg	3097.3	2081	6.05	34	0.099

What's unique about Mariano is that he is the only one of this group who is a power pitcher; the rest fall into the classification of "control artist". Mariano's K/9 of 8.25 is much more than anyone else's on this list.




Note: This only includes innings pitched since 1995; so for example the wild pitch Paul Quantrill threw in 1995 is not included.

For the sake of comparison, here are the 5 worst of Mariano's contemporaries in the area of wild pitches:

Pitcher	IP	SO	K/9	WP	WP/9
Clement, Matt	1412.7	1217	7.75	101	0.643
Burnett, A.J.	1960.3	1791	8.22	124	0.569
Contreras, Jose	1154.3	869	6.78	72	0.561
Nomo, Hideo	1976.3	1918	8.73	109	0.496
Lincecum, Tim	1028.0	1127	9.87	56	0.490

One last thing worth mentioning is that like many statistics, wild pitch rates have fluctuated across baseball history. The following chart illustrates total WP/9 for each season since 1901:

Mariano's career has occurred within the period with the highest wild pitch rates. However, his .097 WP/9 is above the league average in any MLB season.