Baseball no doubt is a game of skill, but there is also an element of luck to it.
A batter can get the barrel of the bat on the ball, hit it 400 feet with an exit velocity of 105 MPH and have an outfielder make a spectacular catch at the wall to rob him of a home run. Then, in his next at-bat, he could dink it off the end of the bat, have it roll 50 feet harmlessly between the pitcher and third baseman and leg out an infield single.
But it's not just batters that are subject to luck. Pitchers are, too, and for all players, luck is a two-way street.
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Unluckiest Starting Pitchers Of The 2025 MLB Season
With the regular season now behind us, RotoWire.com wanted to know which pitchers ended up being the unluckiest over the past six months. We used BaseballSavant.com to find the pitchers who did not have luck on their side. To do that, we ranked each by the following stats and averaged their rankings:
· Actual Batting Average minus Expected Batting Average
· Actual Slugging % minus Expected Slugging %
· Actual Weighted On-Base % minus Expected Weighted On-Base %
· Actual ERA minus Expected ERA
| Rank | Player | Team | Average Ranking Among Pitchers |
| 1 | Brandon Young | Baltimore Orioles | 3.8 |
| 2 | Cole Ragans | Kansas City Royals | 6.0 |
| 3 | Zach Eflin | Baltimore Orioles | 6.8 |
| 4 | J.T. Ginn | Athletics | 9.5 |
| 5 | Yu Darvish | San Diego Padres | 13.0 |
| 6 | Trevor Williams | Washington Nationals | 16.0 |
| 7 | Charlie Morton | Detroit Tigers | 19.3 |
| 8 | Colton Gordon | Houston Astros | 23.3 |
| 9 | Aaron Nola | Philadelphia Phillies | 25.0 |
| 10 | Dylan Cease | San Diego Padres | 26.5 |
| 11 | JP Sears | San Diego Padres | 27.0 |
| T12 | Sean Manaea | New York Mets | 27.8 |
| T12 | Shane Baz | Tampa Bay Rays | 27.8 |
| 14 | German Marquez | Colorado Rockies | 28.8 |
| 15 | Osvaldo Bido | Athletics | 32.0 |
No Luck For Brandon Young
Baltimore rookie pitcher Brandon Young earns the 2025 hard luck award. The righthander went 1-7 with a 6.24 ERA and a WHIP of 1.543, and while his stuff wasn't that great, he definitely didn't catch many breaks in his 12 starts. Batters hit .291 against him in 57-2/3 innings, while BaseballSavant gave him an expected batting average against of .253. Over the course of a season – assuming 600 at-bats – the difference in those batting averages works out to be nearly 23 hits (174.6 vs. 151.8). Young also gave up more extra-base hits than expected as batters slugged .522 against him rather than his expected slugging percentage against of .457.
In the end, that bad luck meant Young finished the season with a 6.24 ERA instead of his expected ERA of 4.42. A 4.42 ERA isn't necessarily great, but the average ERA season was 4.15, so Young pitched a lot closer to the average than his stats would indicate.
As if Young didn't have enough bad luck, he took a perfect game into the eighth inning in a start against Houston on Aug. 15, only to lose it on an infield single. He faced the Astros again six days later and got tagged for seven runs in 5-1/3 innings. In that Aug. 21 contest, Young strained his left hamstring, an injury that would end his season.
Injuries Not Only Bad Luck For Ragans
Kansas City's Cole Ragans was coming off a spectacular 2024 campaign. While his record was 11-9, he finished with a 3.14 ERA and 223 strikeouts over 186-1/3 innings. That would lead to the lefty finishing fourth in the American League Cy Young balloting last season.
This season, though, Ragans could not catch a break. A groin strain led to a short stint on the injured list in May, but in his first start after that he strained the rotator cuff in his pitching shoulder, causing him to miss three months.
Ragans 2025 totals were 3-3 with a 4.67 ERA, but BaseballSavant shows he pitched much better than that record. Batters hit .228 against him and slugged .384. That was 35 points higher than his expected average against of .193 and 54 points higher than his expected slugging percentage of .330.
In short, batters were getting, on average, an extra half-base per at-bat. That led to an actual ERA of 4.67, more than two runs higher than his expected ERA of 2.63.
