Brett Myers pitched seven shutout innings tonight as the Phils topped the Nats, 3-0 with three runs in the ninth. Unfortunately, Myers again got a no-decision, his third in five starts, against a 1-1 record. He did, however, lower his ERA to 1.35, he recorded seven strikeouts in those seven innings, and he allowed only four hits.

This comes after a devastating season in which Myers went 11-11 with a 5.52 ERA, 21 percent worse than the park-adjusted league average. Myers' career ERA was 4.84 (14% worse than average) entering the season though he had a 29-25 career mark.

Now, I am doubtful that Myers can go the entire season with a sub-2.00 ERA, but it is encouraging that he has lowered his ERA by over 6 earned runs from his April 2004 totals (7.36). His ERA so far in 2005 is 4.17 earned runs lower than it was in 2004. He also has raised his strikeouts per nine innings by 3.25 to over nine.

Can a pitcher lower his ERA by over four runs in just a season? Has anyone ever done that, especially at age 24, Myers' age? And what does it mean for his career?

Well, no one has ever come close to lowering his ERA by four runs or even three and one-half. Here are the pitchers who lowered their eras the most in one season Min. 150 innings in each year):

It seems like there are a large number of nineteenth century guys and some from the war years showing up in there. What if we limit it to the expansion era:

Some of those guys are veterans making a comeback (Blyeleven, Loaiza, Denny) and others were younger pitchers coming into their own perhaps like Myers (Rusie, Maddux, Newhouser, all Hall of Famers). What if we limit the results to pitchers who were under 25 in their second year?

But Silver King had a 3.78, high in his day, but is it truly comparable to Myers' 5.52 in 2004? OK, now I think I've got it. What if we look at pitchers under 25, who lowered their ERA by at least a run in a season, and had an ERA of at least 5.00 in the first year? This would be substantially less than the 4 runs that Myers has lowered his ERA by this year, but I'm hedging my bets. I bet Myers' ERA will come nowhere near the current 1.35. Let's say he records a more modest improvement of about one run to end up around the 4.00-4.50 range, not far from his career mark. Who else has done something similar? Here goes:

So what ends up happening to those pitchers? What do their careers end up looking like? Let's see (data through 2004):

It seems that the guys who just are experiencing a one-year mirage of improvement, wash out of baseball pretty quickly (usually under 1000 innings). But the guys whose improvement was actual growth and maturing, went on to pretty good records.

So which one is Myers? I guess that remains to be seen along with whether his early-season success is a fluke or not. However, he'll probably pitch around 200 innings this year barring injury leaving him at around 650 for his career. That leaves him little over a season to become a washout if the 1000-inning ceiling holds true.