Fastball

Kansas City Royals' Jordan Lyles On List All By Himself in Unfortunate Baseball History

The Kansas City Royals hurler is the only pitcher with at least 200 major league starts to have produced a negative WAR.

Brady Farkas

Kansas City Royals' Jordan Lyles On List All By Himself in Unfortunate Baseball History
Kansas City Royals' Jordan Lyles On List All By Himself in Unfortunate Baseball History /
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Here at Fastball and FanNation, we like history. We really like obscure history.

Unfortunately, this is obscure history that is also unfortunate. It involves Kansas City Royals starting pitcher Jordan Lyles and comes from Danny Vietti of CBS Sports.

763 different pitchers have started 200+ games in their careers. 

Only 1 of those 763 pitchers has produced a negative WAR output: 

Jordan Lyles (-1.9 WAR)

Now let's understand this. Lyles is a big leaguer, so he's imminently better than everyone who will read this, and he's better than the writer who's writing this.

This year, though, he's posted an 0-8 record for the Royals with a 7.15 ERA. He's thrown 56.2 innings and has just 43 strikeouts.

For his career, he's 66-98 across 13 seasons. He has a lifetime ERA of 5.02. He has started 224 career games, making 25 starts or more in five different campaigns. Despite the negative WAR, he has posted a winning record in two different seasons and won 12 games twice (2019 and 2022).

He's pitched for the Houston Astros, Colorado Rockies, San Diego Padres, Milwaukee Brewers, Pittsburgh Pirates, Texas Rangers, Baltimore Orioles and the Royals.

The Royals are currently 15-36 and own the second-worst record in baseball. We're not talking about them because we've spent all our energy talking about the historically bad Oakland Athletics.

The Royals will take on the Washington Nationals on Friday at 8:10 p.m. ET in Kansas City.

Lyles will get the start for the Royals while Patrick Corbin pitches for the Nats.

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Brady Farkas
BRADY FARKAS

Brady Farkas is a baseball writer for Fastball on Sports Illustrated/FanNation and the host of 'The Payoff Pitch' podcast which can be found on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Videos on baseball also posted to YouTube. Brady has spent nearly a decade in sports talk radio and is a graduate of Oswego State University. You can follow him on Twitter @WDEVRadioBrady. 

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