There was only one group of people happy with Gavin Floyd's pitching performance against the Pittsburgh Pirates yesterday: those who own him in fantasy baseball leagues. That's because he was only charged with giving up one run in his start yesterday against the Pittsburgh Pirates, despite really giving up seven runs. Six of those seven runs were unearned and thus don't harm his ERA, a sentence that sounds like angels playing harps to anyone who has Floyd on their fantasy roster.

A former top pitching prospect of the Philadelphia Phillies, Floyd scuffled until finding some magical cure for what ailed him before the 2008 regular season started. He posted a 3.16 ERA in April and a 3.27 ERA in May, and he had a couple no-hit bids thrown in the mix.

In June, it would appear, Floyd has kept up his successful ways with a 3.12 ERA in his four starts thus far, but further investigation is required. Through his first ten starts in April and May, Floyd had allowed a total of four unearned runs, 15% of his total runs allowed. Last night against the Pirates, Floyd allowed seven runs, a whopping six of which were unearned. Overall, Floyd has allowed 12 earned runs this season, 27% of his total runs allowed.

More than one in every four runs that Floyd allows is not being credited to his pitching. That will make judging his performance thus far a bit hard, no?

Let's take a look and see whether or not Floyd was totally innocent, as his earned runs total seems to indicate. The damage occurred in the second inning of the series finale of their inter-league series with the Pirates. From Yahoo! Sports:

- A. LaRoche walked
- J. Michaels popped out to shallow left
- D. Mientkiewicz singled to right, A. LaRoche to second
- J. Bautista lined out to third
- J. Wilson singled to center, A. LaRoche to third, D. Mientkiewicz to second
- R. Chavez reached on fielder's choice, A. LaRoche scored, D. Mientkiewicz to third, J. Wilson to second on third baseman P. Ozuna's throwing error
- N. McLouth doubled to deep right, R. Chavez, D. Mientkiewicz and J. Wilson scored
- F. Sanchez homered to deep left, N. McLouth scored
- J. Bay doubled to deep left
- A. LaRoche struck out swinging

So, Floyd had the bases loaded with two outs before Ozuna's error occurred. Clearly, he was in a bit of a pickle without the help of shoddy defense. Ozuna's error, obviously, allowed the inning to continue instead of allowing Floyd to walk back to the dugout, get a cup of Gatorade, and discuss metacognition with fellow teammate and intellectual Jim Thome.

But does, or rather should, the buck stop there? Once the teammate botches a play, the pitcher is off the hook, providing there are two outs when the error occurs?

Clearly, Nate McLouth's double wasn't Ozuna's fault. Neither was the Freddy Sanchez homer. Or the Jason Bay double.

And, hey, if we're blaming Ozuna for all those runs, shouldn't we also credit him for that Adam LaRoche strike out? I kid.

I'm positive the subject of unearned runs has been discussed many times before by people much smarter than I, though I haven't seen the subject covered too much. Is the solution really so simple as to eliminate unearned runs entirely? Or is that too far, making ERA now unfair to the pitchers who have subpar defenses behind them (and, subsequently, disfavoring non-strikeout -- and to a lesser extent groundball -- pitchers)? What would be a happy medium?

Unearned runs are hashed out in Major League Baseball's official rules, and judging by the glacier-like movements at which change is made within the sport, don't expect UER's to be modified or eliminated any time soon.