Longest active streaks of qualifying for the ERA title

[Frobby]

In discussing how hard it is to find reliable starters, I got to wondering what are the longest current streaks of qualifying for the ERA title.  Qualifiers have almost gone the way of the dinosaur — there were only 45 across MLB this year.   Of those, only 19 did it at least two years in a row:

7 - Aaron Nola

6 - Gerritt Cole, German Marquez

5 - Jose Berrios

4 - Yu Darvish, Adam Wainwright

3 - Kyle Gibson

2 - Sandy Alcantra, Corbin Burnes, Robbie Ray, Max Fried, Dylan Cease, Joe Musgrove, Cole Irvin, Jordan Lyles, Tyler Anderson, Julio Urias, Kevin Gausman, Charlie Morton

You’ll notice there aren’t a lot of free agents on this list. 

Of the 45 qualifiers, 12 have done it only once, while 14 have done it multiple times but not in 2021.   Those include Justin Verlander (14 times), Carlos Quintana (8), Corey Kluber (6), Martin Perez (5) and Miles Mikolas, Marco Gonzalez and Kyle Freeland with 3 each.  Those who’ve done it twice including 2022 but not in 2021 include Framber Valdez*, Kelly, Shane Bieber, Chris Bassitt*, Nick Pivetta, Carlos Rodon, and Jameson Taillon.   An asterisk signifies that the other time the pitcher qualified was in 2020, when only 60 innings were required.

Needless to say, there are pitchers who didn’t qualify in 2022 but who’ve done so multiple times in the past.   Most prominently, Max Scherzer had a 13-year qualifying streak snapped in 2022 by pitching only 145.2 innings.  

 

Edited November 16, 2022 by Frobby