Francisco Liriano Approaching Career Feat

Pittsburgh Pirates Starting Pitcher Francisco Liriano made his 200th career start Sunday in Arizona. It was a decent outing on the mound for Liriano and resulted in his first win of the 2015 season. This win was career win number 77 for the 31 year old lefty.

With the win, Liriano is approaching a somewhat rare career accomplishment. His win over the Arizona Diamondbacks gave him wins against 29 of the 30 teams in Major League Baseball. The only team that he has yet to score a win against is the Miami Marlins. In fact, Liriano has never faced the Marlins. The Pirates will face the Marlins a total of 7 times this season. The first opportunity will be a three game series at the end of May in Pittsburgh. The second would be a four game set near the end of August in Miami. The odds are pretty good that he will get a chance to become the 14th Pitcher to score wins over all 30 Major League Baseball teams.

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Only 13 pitchers have tallied wins against all 30 teams in Major League Baseball during their career.  Al Leiter was the first to do it back in 2002. Currently, only 3 active pitchers have accomplished this. The most recent was back in 2013 when Dan Haren accomplished the feat. The other active pitchers are Barry Zito and current Pirate A.J. Burnett. The rest of the list includes: Al Leiter, Kevin Brown, Terry Mulholland, Curt Schilling, Jamie Moyer, Woody Williams, Randy Johnson, Javier Vazquez, Vicente Padilla and Derek Lowe. (List Courtesy of MLB.com)

Here is a quick look at Francisco Liriano’s first wins against each team.

As a Minnesota Twin:

Detroit – 9-30-2005
Kansas City – 4-25-2006
Milwaukee – 5-19-2006
Seattle – 5-26-2006
LA Angels – 5-31-2006
Baltimore – 6-11-2006
Pittsburgh – 6-16-2006
Houston – 6-22-2006
LA Dodgers – 6-27-2006
Texas – 7-8-2005
Tampa – 7-18-2005
Cleveland – 7-23-2005
Oakland – 8-20-2008
St Louis – 6-28-2009
Boston – 4-15-2010
Atlanta – 6-11-2010
Chicago White Sox – 7-16-2010
New York Yankees – 8-20-2011

During his brief stint with the Chicago White Sox:

Toronto – 8-16-2012
Minnesota 9-15-2012

And finally as a Pittsburgh Pirate: 

New York Mets – 5-11-2013
Chicago Cubs – 5-22-2013
San Francisco – 6-12-2013
Washington 7-24-2013
Colorado – 8-3-2013
San Diego – 8-19-2013
Philadelphia – 9-11-2013
Arizona – 4-26-2015

In closing, while this may be a somewhat obscure statistic to some fans, this shows that Francisco Liriano is on the verge of joining an elite group of pitchers. Of course, he, as well as others, have benefited by spending time in both the National and American Leagues. Remember to keep an eye out for the pitching match ups when the Pirates play the Marlins in May.

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