By Jason Wojciechowski on May 10, 2014 at 9:48 PM
Sean Doolittle's "0" in his walks column officially caught my notice enough tonight to wonder how he's doing as far as a streak of walkless games. Fortunately, Baseball-Reference's Play Index has a streak finder that will answer precisely that question:
| Rk | Strk Start | End | Games | IP | BB | Tm | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dennis Eckersley | 1989-08-17 | 1990-06-10 | 41 | 50.0 | 0 | OAK |
| 2 | Sergio Romo | 2012-08-04 | 2013-04-22 | 38 | 32.1 | 0 | SFG |
| 3 | John Smoltz | 2003-07-24 | 2004-06-08 | 38 | 38.1 | 0 | ATL |
| 4 | Koji Uehara | 2010-07-19 | 2011-04-15 | 36 | 37.2 | 0 | BAL |
| 5 | Mark Eichhorn | 1990-09-21 | 1991-06-25 | 34 | 45.0 | 0 | CAL |
| 6 | Wilton Lopez | 2010-07-26 | 2011-04-09 | 33 | 32.2 | 0 | HOU |
| 7 | Tom Morgan | 1957-09-24 | 1958-08-12 | 33 | 52.1 | 0 | KCA-DET |
| 8 | Lew Burdette | 1966-08-16 | 1967-07-16 | 32 | 36.1 | 0 | CAL |
| 9 | Dale Thayer | 2009-05-27 | 2012-05-20 | 31 | 31.2 | 0 | TBR-NYM-SDP |
| 10 | Mariano Rivera | 2005-06-26 | 2005-08-31 | 31 | 35.2 | 0 | NYY |
| 11 | Luis Ayala | 2005-04-17 | 2005-06-14 | 30 | 31.2 | 0 | WSN |
| 12 | Doug Jones | 1997-06-01 | 1997-08-17 | 30 | 32.0 | 0 | MIL |
| 13 | Edward Mujica | 2013-04-06 | 2013-06-19 | 29 | 29.2 | 0 | STL |
| 14 | Luke Gregerson | 2010-04-15 | 2010-06-18 | 29 | 32.1 | 0 | SDP |
| 15 | Jonathan Papelbon | 2008-07-06 | 2008-09-25 | 29 | 31.1 | 0 | BOS |
| 16 | Dennis Eckersley | 1997-05-06 | 1997-08-02 | 29 | 29.0 | 0 | STL |
| 17 | Koji Uehara | 2013-08-04 | 2014-04-17 | 28 | 30.0 | 0 | BOS |
| 18 | Koji Uehara | 2011-08-10 | 2012-05-08 | 28 | 24.2 | 0 | TEX |
| 19 | Sean Doolittle | 2013-09-01 | 2014-05-07 | 27 | 29.0 | 0 | OAK |
| 20 | Tony Watson | 2013-07-22 | 2014-03-31 | 27 | 26.0 | 0 | PIT |
| 21 | Joe Nathan | 2004-09-02 | 2005-05-07 | 27 | 25.1 | 0 | MIN |
| 22 | Jerry Spradlin | 1998-04-24 | 1998-07-01 | 27 | 31.0 | 0 | PHI |
| 23 | Jeff Reardon | 1993-05-15 | 1993-07-23 | 27 | 27.0 | 0 | CIN |
| 24 | Dennis Eckersley | 1990-09-19 | 1991-06-03 | 27 | 31.0 | 0 | OAK |
This is streaks of walkless games as a reliever, dating back to 1914 (though of course relievers were far less common then). Note the date on Doolittle at no. 19 -- Baseball-Reference's stats will update overnight and he'll move up to 28 straight games, tying Koji Uehara (two different times) for the 17th-longest such streak ever. That's pretty good!
On the other hand, he's still 13 games away from Dennis Eckersley's record. On the other other hand, he's 2/3 of the way there already, so what's the last third? Failing to reach Eck now would be like quitting at mile 19 in a marathon.