Measured by WAR (Wins Above Replacement), which player has had the best individual season for each team in Major League history? Listed alphabetically, here are the single-season WAR leaders for each baseball team (since 1900), and the year during which they produced the team record:
1) A’s – Eddie Collins – 10.5, 1910
2) Angels – Mike Trout – 10.9, 2012
3) Astros – Craig Biggio – 9.4, 1997
4) Blue Jays – Roger Clemens – 11.9, 1997
5) Braves – Greg Maddux – 9.7, 1995
6) Brewers – Robin Yount – 10.5, 1982
7) Cardinals – Rogers Hornsby – 12.1, 1924
8) Cubs – Rogers Hornsby – 10.4, 1929
9) Diamondbacks – Randy Johnson – 10.9, 2002
10) Dodgers – Sandy Koufax – 10.7, 1963
11) Expos / Nats – Pedro Martinez – 9.0, 1997
12) Giants – Barry Bonds – 11.9, 2001
13) Indians – Gaylord Perry – 11.0, 1972
14) Mariners – Alex Rodriguez – 10.3, 2000
15) Marlins – Kevin Brown – 8.0, 1996
16) Mets – Dwight Gooden – 12.1, 1985
17) Orioles – Cal Ripkin, Jr. – 11.5, 1991
18) Padres – Kevin Brown – 8.6, 1998
19) Phillies – Steve Carlton – 12.1, 1972
20) Pirates – Honus Wagner – 11.5, 1908
21) Rangers / Senators – Josh Hamilton – 8.9, 2010
22) Rays – Ben Zobrist – 8.8, 2011
23) Reds – Joe Morgan – 11.0, 1975
24) Red Sox – Cy Young – 12.6, 1901
25) Rockies – Larry Walker – 9.8, 1997
26) Royals – Zach Greinke – 10.4, 2009
27) Tigers – Hal Newhouser – 12.0, 1945
28) Twins / Senators – Walter Johnson – 16.0, 1913
29) White Sox – Wilbur Wood – 11.7, 1971
30) Yankees – Babe Ruth – 14.0, 1923
As you may have noticed, a pair of players each appear twice on this list. Rogers Hornsby holds the single-season WAR mark for both the Cardinals and the Cubs. Kevin Brown, and under-appreciated pitcher if there ever was one, compiled the greatest single-season WAR for both the Marlins and the Padres. A pair of men named Johnson, Randy and Walter, also appear on this list.
What do you make of the fact that four of the six highest WAR’s on this list occurred before 1925? Could it be that the level of talent between the very best players and the average players was much greater then than it has been since?
The 1930’s and the 1950’s are, perhaps oddly, the only two decades since 1900 not represented at least once on this list.
Four players, Larry Walker, Craig Biggio, Roger Clemens and Pedro Martinez, each set their respective team records in a single season, 1997. Three other players, Cal Ripkin, Kevin Brown (twice), and Greg Maddux, also set their team’s record during that same decade, the 1990’s.
Fourteen different pitchers are represented on this list, including five lefties: Koufax, Carlton, Newhouser, W. Wood and R. Johnson.
Given how much offense has historically been expected from first basemen, it is surprising that not one single first baseman is represented on this list. Nor are any third basemen or catchers to be found here. But eight players who were primarily middle-infielders during their careers are on this list.
Chronologically, the list spans from Cy Young’s 1901 season with the Red Sox to Mike Trout’s 2012 with the Angels. Five of these players are still active: Trout, Josh Hamilton, Ben Zobrist, Zach Greinke, and (technically) A-Rod. Trout and Hamilton are currently teammates on the Angels.
All but seven of these players are still alive. Only Babe Ruth, Walter Johnson, Cy Young, Rogers Hornsby, Honus Wagner, Eddie Collins and Hal Newhouser have passed away.
The Baseball Hall of Fame has identified the period 1947-72 as the “Golden Era” of baseball. Interestingly, however, only four of the single-season WAR records on this list occurred during that era, and three of them (Carlton and Perry in ’72 and Wood in ’71) barely qualify. Only Koufax’s 1963 season fits squarely in that arbitrary time-frame.
It will be interesting to see if any of these records fall this season, or over the next several years, as today’s talented young ballplayers leave their mark on the game.
My wife tells me that behind every great man is an even greater woman. Actually, she just tells me to take out the trash, but it works out to the same thing, at least in my imagination. Then again, since I’m not even remotely a great man, does that still make her a merely somewhat great woman? Perhaps behind (or alongside, or even in front of) a mediocre guy like myself there is a truly special woman who puts up with a lot his dumb, pointless nonsense. Yup, that must be it.
At any rate, that got me to wondering (while taking out said trash) if behind every great pitcher there is a great catcher. I don’t necessarily mean great as measured by batting average, OPS+ or WAR, but simply by being that pitcher’s primary catcher over an extended period of time. Just as it’s impossible to quantify how much my wife has done for me over the past 15 years or so, maybe a catcher has a similarly positive, yet hard to quantify, effect on a pitcher.
So I thought I’d take a look at some of the forgotten or semi-forgotten catchers in baseball history who have caught baseball’s greatest pitchers. I know that as I research this topic, I will learn a lot more about these players than I’ve known before. And, if I’m lucky, I’ll be able to get this post done before my wife tells me to take out the trash again.
Edward Ainsmith (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Walter Johnson made 666 starts in his career. Nineteen different catchers caught at least one of Walter Johnson’s starts. Only one of them, however, caught more than 200 of Johnson’s efforts. His name was Eddie Ainsmith.
Actually, he was born Edward Anshmedt, his family changing his name after they passed through Ellis Island in the waning years of the 19th century. You see, little Eddie was born in Russia, and his family’s surname was Anglicized upon naturalization. It happened a lot back then. At any rate, young Ainsmith’s family eventually ended up in New Hampshire, which is where Eddie grew up.
He graduated from Colby Academy (now Colby-Sawyer College) in New London, NH in approximately 1907 or ’08. He must have been one heck of a young baseball prospect in his time because by age 20 in 1910, he made his Major League debut with the Washington Senators.
Through his first five seasons, Ainsmith was often brought in as a late-inning defensive replacement, or as a pinch-runner or pinch-hitter. For a catcher, Ainsmith was a pretty good base-runner, notching 17 steals in 1913, and 16 steals in 1917. In fact, on June 26, 1913, Ainsmith stole second-base, third-base and home in the first game of a double-header vs. the A’s. The A’s still won the game, however, 11-2.
It wasn’t until 1917 when Ainsmith was already 27-years old that he became the Senators’ primary catcher. By then, Walter Johnson was already at the mid-point of his career, and had already enjoyed several fantastic seasons.
Ainsmith’s final season in a Washington Senator’s uniform was in 1918. Nevertheless, in his relatively short stint as the Senator’s primary catcher, he caught Johnson 210 times, more than any other catcher in team history.
Never much of a hitter, Ainsmith batted just .207 during his nine years in Washington. He ended up in Detroit for the 1919-1921 seasons, then was traded again, this time to St. Louis in the second-half of the ’21 season. He hit well in 1921 and ’22 (as did almost everyone else with the new, “live” ball), batting .281 and .293, respectively.
Yet by 1923 and ’24, his career was all but over. He played just a handful of games in each of those two seasons, playing small roles for first Brooklyn, then for the Giants. Ainsmith played his final MLB game July 21, 1924 at age 34.
He retired with a .232 career batting average, 22 home runs, and 86 stolen bases in 1,078 games played. His career dWAR was 3.6, and his overall career WAR was just 5.7, so he was obviously primarily a defensive specialist. In fact, he led the A.L. in Range Factor / Game three times, in 1912, 1917-1918.
One other thing I found interesting about Ainsmith was that on July 19, 1918, as WWI was slowly grinding to a halt, Ainsmith applied for a draft deferment. Secretary of War Newton Baker, however, had other ideas. He ruled that baseball was not an “essential occupation” (take that, baseball) and that all players of draft age were subject to the “work-in-essential-industries-or-fight” rule.
A week later, though, Baker sort of changed his mind (under pressure from the baseball oligarchs, apparently) and allowed an exemption for ballplayers until September 1st of that year. Both leagues voted to cut the season short, and the season ended on Labor Day, September 2nd, 1918 (exactly 95 years ago today.)
The Great War Armistice occurred on 11 November 1918, so Eddie Ainsmith never went off to war anyway. But we are left to wonder why Ainsmith would attempt to seek a deferment from the draft at all, a rather unusual step in those days.
Was he just too scared to fight? Was he a pacifist? Was he concerned that going off to war might ruin his baseball career? Or could it have been that because he was born in Russia, and that perhaps Anshmedt is actually a German name (there was a large German population in Russia at one time), could it have been that his family connections to Europe made it too difficult for him to contemplate taking up arms on a European battefield, perhaps against even his own former countryman? We can only guess at his motivations.
Eddie Ainsmith did go on to live to the age of 91, passing away in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in 1981.
Did Ainsmith make Walter Johnson a better pitcher? That seems highly unlikely. But it is worth noting that of the 562 games he caught in Washington, he was behind the plate 210 times to catch The Big Train. That means that in 37% of Ainsmith’s games as a catcher, Johnson was on the mound. In effect, it appears that Ainsmith was virtually Johnson’s personal catcher for several years.
Ainsmith did not enjoy a Hall of Fame career as Walter Johnson did, but having had the opportunity to emigrate to the United States, enjoy a 15-year career as a catcher, and being able to boast that he caught the great Walter Johnson a couple hundred times is a career, and a life, worth having lived.
Many people regard Walter Johnson as the greatest pitcher of all time.
But who was the greatest hitting pitcher? (To address the obvious, I disqualified Babe Ruth immediately because he was strictly a pitcher for just four seasons, accumulating 5.6 oWAR.)
Originally, this post was going to examine Walter Johnson’s career strikeout numbers, and go from there.
But as I examined his record, I happened to stumble upon his career hitting stats. To say that I was amazed at what I found would be a tremendous understatement.
Walter Perry Johnson (1887 – 1946), American baseball player (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Keeping in mind that the arrival of the Designated Hitter rule was still several decades away when Johnson retired after the 1927 baseball season, he certainly made the most of his plate appearance.
Typically, if a pitcher hits anywhere near .200, he’s considered dangerous with the bat. If he’s capable of poking a homer or two out of the park every few years, so much the better.
Walter Johnson did much better than that. Over the course of his 21-year career, he amassed an astonishingly high (for a pitcher) 2,324 at bats during which he produced 547 safe hits.
But the Big Train was not just a singles hitter. He also slammed 94 doubles, an astonishing 41 triples, and an impressive 24 career home runs. He even drove in 255 runs in his career. His 795 total bases are, by far, the greatest number of total bases I found for any pitcher.
Oh, and his batting average? A not-too-shabby (for his time / place / position) .235. In fact, aside from his pitching WAR, Johnson accumulated 13.1 WAR with his bat. Only one other pitcher that I looked at reached 10.0 WAR as a hitter.
But here’s my favorite surprising stat about Walter Johnson: In four seasons (1910, 1915, 1916 and 1919) he actually hit more home runs than he allowed.
In four other seasons, (1908, 1909, 1912, and 1914), he hit exactly the same number of home runs himself as he allowed other batters to hit off of him.
Walter Johnson on a 1909-1911 American Tobacco Company baseball card (White Borders (T206)) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
As for Johnson’ 159 career extra base hits, I could find no other pitcher who reached as many as 110.
As an aside, in the four years Babe Ruth was used strictly as a pitcher (1914-17, inclusive), he hit nine home runs, while surrendering just six.
All of this raises the question, “Was Walter Johnson the Greatest Hitting Pitcher Who Ever Lived?”
Strictly from a cumulative standpoint, the answer has to be yes. As far as I can tell, he is the all-time leader in more than a couple of hitting stats for pitchers.
The 24 career home runs intrigued me. I was well aware that there have been other slugging pitchers in baseball history, but I wasn’t sure if any of them had hit more homers than Johnson. As it turns out, two other pitchers — Bob Gibson and Carlos Zambrano — have also each hit 24 home runs.
The still active 31-year old Zambrano, who hit a home run this year, certainly has a chance to pull ahead of Johnson and Gibson. Zambrano’s career batting average of .238 is about the same as Johnson’s was, also.
I didn’t think any other pitcher could have hit more, but then I came upon Don Drysdale. Although he hit just .186 for his career, Drysdale slammed 29 home runs in his 14 seasons. In fact in two seasons, 1958 and 1965, he hit seven home runs in each year!
Yet, as you’ll see below, even Drysdale doesn’t hold the record for most career homers by a pitcher.
English: US President Calvin Coolidge and Washington Senators pitcher Walter Johnson shake hands. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Still, the career non-pitching WAR for Drysdale, Gibson and Zambrano (5.7, 7.8, 6.3, respectively), each fall short of Johnson’s 13.1.
Among other pitchers I looked at: (and please keep in mind, this list is not meant to be comprehensive. It serves only to provide context for Johnson’s own hitting numbers.)
Tom Seaver slugged 12 homers, but only 45 extra base hits overall, and finished with a .154 batting average and a 4.2 WAR.
Phil Niekro had 260 career base hits, but a -1.0 WAR.
Greg Maddux batted .171, hit five homers among his 42 extra base hits, and a 2.2 WAR.
Dwight Gooden batted a respectable .196, slammed eight homers and had a 5.0 WAR.
Lefty Grove slammed 15 home runs, had 47 extra base hits, but hit just .148.
Sandy Koufax was a terrible hitter: .097, 2 homers, -4.1 WAR.
Bill Lee enjoyed his final American League at bat in 1972, though he had a few opportunities later on with the Expos. Lee had just three hits for the ’72 Red Sox, a single, a triple and a homer. He batted .208 in his career with one additional homer.
For the humorous story of Bill Lee’s final A.L. at bat, go to 3:32 of the clip below. I’ll wait for ya.
Robin Roberts hit an impressive 55 doubles among his 255 career hits. His career WAR (non-pitching, remember) was 2.8. Batting average: .167.
Dizzy Dean had a pretty decent .225 batting average, eight home runs, and a 2.1 WAR.
Don Sutton as a hitter was, as my nine-year old son would say, extremely lame. In 1,559 plate appearances, Sutton hit 0 home runs. C’mon, Don, really? Not one homer? In fact, in his entire career, he had just 16 extra base hits. Basically, he was the poster boy for the D.H.
Christy Mathewson held his own in the batter’s box: .215 batting average, 69 extra base hits, 7 homers, 457 total bases, 6.3 WAR.
Fergie Jenkins hit 13 homers, including 6 in one year as a Cub, but hit just .165 in his career.
Mike Hampton posted a solid .246 batting average and hit 16 career homers to go with his 8.2 WAR, but a closer look reveals that he hit ten of those homers while pitching in Colorado where he also batted over .300. Therefore, we have to take his final hitting stats with a grain of salt.
Wes Ferrell: Was he a pitcher who got to hit, or a hitter who got to pitch? Ferrell holds the record for most career home runs by a pitcher (38), and most in a season (9). His overall batting average was .280. Ferrell produced a career oWAR of 12.1, though it’s not clear how much of that came as a pinch-hitter vs. as a pitcher receiving his regular at bats during a game. Still, if he could hit well enough to regularly be used as a pinch-hitter, he has to be considered one of the best hitting pitchers of all time.
Ken Brett. Ken Brett didn’t receive a lot of plate appearances during the course of his career, but George Brett’s big brother knew how to wield the lumber. Ken Brett posted an extremely impressive .262 batting average in his career, including ten home runs. His career slugging percentage of .406 was also significantly higher than Johnson’s .342. Though Ken Brett’s offensive WAR was just 4.1, he was a very solid slugger.
Don Newcombe. The former Dodger ace was also an excellent hitter. Though Newcombe had a relatively short career, as a hitter this pitcher could just about have batted in the top half of the Dodger’s lineup. Newcombe’s .271 career batting average, his .705 OPS and his 85 OPS+ are among the best numbers I could find among pitchers. He also hit 15 home runs in his career, accumulated 322 total bases, and produced an 8.8 WAR as a hitter.
Therefore, though we are comparing pitchers across eras, the best hitting pitchers that we have seen here today (and I fully expect you’ll add more yourself), I would rate in the following order: Wes Ferrell, Ken Brett, Don Newcombe, Carlos Zambrano and Walter Johnson.
So Walter Johnson was not only the greatest pitcher who ever lived, he was also among the greatest hitting pitchers who ever lived as well.
All in all, the boy from Humboldt, Kansas did pretty well for himself, don’t you think?
This is Part 2 of the series, “Baseball’s Surprising Stats.” The object of this series is to revisit players most of us already know something about, then to uncover one fact or statistic about that player that isn’t widely known.
The particular fact I wanted to discover about Cy Young was, how many Cy Young awards would Cy Young have won?
Cy Young. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Cy Young pitched for 22 years, from 1890 to 1911. Many, perhaps most, baseball fans know that his 511 career wins are the most in baseball history.
Though he is not usually considered the greatest pitcher in history, it is the Cy Young award (and not the Walter Johnson award) which is awarded annually to the best pitcher in each league.
So how often was Cy Young the best pitcher in his league during those 22 years?
Young won at least 20 games in a season 15 times, and he topped 30 wins five times (twice after 1900.)
He led his league in wins five times, in ERA and win-loss percentage twice, in complete games three times, and in shutouts seven times. Additionally, he paced his league in both strikeouts and ERA+ twice.
Cy Young won 511 games during his career, 94 more than second-place Walter Johnson. “Career Leaders & Records for Wins”. Baseball-Reference.com . Sports Reference LLC . . Retrieved March 26, 2010 . (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
As measured by WAR, Young topped all pitchers in his league a remarkable seven times (the same as Roger Clemens; one less than Walter Johnson.)
Certainly, then, a case could be made that Cy Young should have won the award as the best pitcher in his league seven times.
But should have won is not the same as would have won. No one was measuring a player’s WAR in those days. Wins would have been the primary stat. Some combination of ERA, strikeouts, complete games, win-loss percentage and shutouts would have been the secondary stats considered.
Of course, if a pitcher led the league in virtually all or most of those stats, then, as today, he would likely have won his league’s best pitcher award.
There are four seasons that I am confident Cy Young would have been officially recognized as the best pitcher in his league.
In 1892, pitching for Cleveland, Cy Young posted a 36-12 record, a 1.93 ERA, 9 shutouts, and he tossed a career high 48 complete games and 453 innings. He led the league in wins, win-loss percentage, shutouts, and ERA.
1901: 33 wins, 1.62 ERA, five shutouts, 158 strikeouts. Each of those stats led the league. (Young pitched for Boston from 1901-08.)
1902: 32 wins, 43 starts, 41 complete games, and 384 innings pitched, all of which led the league.
1903: 28 wins, .757 win-loss percentage, 34 complete games, 7 shutouts, and 341 innings pitched. Again, each of those stats led the league.
Young also may have been voted league’s best pitcher in 1895 when, pitching for Cleveland, he led the league in wins (35), lost just ten games, and tossed a league-high four shutouts.
My original question was, “How many Cy Young awards would Cy Young have won?” The best answer is that he would probably have won four or five awards, about the same number as Steve Carlton, Greg Maddux, and Randy Johnson.
That’s not bad company to keep, especially if you have an award named after you.
The following post is Part IV in this series. Graham Womack of Baseball Past and Present wrote this one. My next contribution to this series will be featured on this blog one week from today.
The baseball world was captivated this summer by the debut of Stephen Strasburg, who shined two months for the Washington Nationals before an arm injury ended his season. A century ago, another young pitcher arrived in the nation’s capital, and while his rookie campaign wasn’t much to speak of, he went on to do more with far less of a team. His name was Walter Johnson.
The saying about Washington used to be, “First in war, first in peace, last in the American League.” The Washington Senators became a contender in the 1910s and eventually, a World Series team, but when Johnson arrived in 1907 as a 19-year-old rookie from the Idaho League, the saying was absolutely true. While Johnson won 20 games two of his first five seasons, the Senators had a losing record every one of those years.
A lot is made of Steve Carlton’s Cy Young season in 1972 when he went 27-10 with a 1.97 ERA and 310 strikeouts for the 59-97 Phillies. Johnson may have been Carlton’s 1910 equivalent. On a 66-85 Senators team, Johnson went 25-17 with a 1.36 ERA and 313 strikeouts. He had a comparable Wins Above Replacement rating to Carlton in 1972, 9.1 to 12.2 and strikeouts per nine innings, 7.6 to 9.1. Johnson bested Carlton in ERA+ (183 to 182), WHIP (0.914 to 0.993), and innings pitched (370 to 346.)
Johnson may have won 30 games on a better team in 1910, and in 1912, this happened. Playing on the first winning club of his career, the 91-61 second-place Senators, Johnson went 33-12 with a 1.39 ERA and 303 strikeouts and rivaled Smoky Joe Wood as baseball’s best pitcher. Johnson won 16 games in a row early in the season, and after Wood won 15 straight, he came up against the Senators and faced Johnson. Wood, who went 34-5 that year and helped Boston win the World Series, recounted what happened to Lawrence Ritter in the The Glory of Their Times.
“Well, I won, 1-0, but don’t let that fool you,” Wood said. “In my opinion the greatest pitcher who ever lived was Walter Johnson. If he’d ever had a good ball club behind him what records he would have set!”
The Senators contended for another few years then retreated back to mediocrity for another long stretch. In all, they finished below .500 11 of Johnson’s 21 seasons. No matter. Johnson continued to win the majority of his decisions on a near-annual basis well into the latter half of his career, on his way to 417 victories lifetime. That’s second-best in baseball history, which helped make Johnson one of the first five players selected to the Hall of Fame in 1936.
In 1924, everything came together for Washington and the 36-year-old Johnson. With their first 90-win team in 11 years, the Senators finished two games ahead of the Yankees to win the American League and met the Giants in the World Series. Johnson lost his first two starts, but saved the best for last. Pitching in relief, Johnson entered Game 7 in the top of the ninth inning and pitched four shutout innings with five strikeouts until a ball hit a pebble and bounced over the head of Giants’ third baseman, Fred Lindstrom and allowed the winning run to score for the Senators.
After the game ended, Frank O’Neill wrote an article in the Syracuse Post-Standard that’s collected in an old anthology of sports writing on my bookshelf. O’Neill wrote:
A king returned to his throne today in this land of the free heart’s hope and home. An emperor came back from Elba to find his worshipping following rallying in his serried ranks to his standard.
The king was Walter Johnson, and his diadem of victory was placed upon his brow amid scenes without parallel in the history of baseball. For Walter Johnson, idol of American fandom, stepped into the breach and guided the staggering Senators out of the vale of defeat and perched them upon the pinnacle of the baseball world.
Here is the official press release from the BBA regarding the N.L. and A.L. winners of the Walter Johnson Award for best pitcher in each league:
HALLADAY, HERNANDEZ OVERWHEMING WINNERS OF WALTER JOHNSON AWARD
2010 was often referred to as “the year of the pitcher.” However, not all pitchers are created equal.
The Baseball Bloggers Alliance
announced today that Philadelphia’s Roy Halladay was the unanimous
selection for the National League Walter Johnson Award, receiving all
nineteen first place votes. In the American League, Seattle’s Felix Hernandez was almost as dominant, garnering all but four of the first
place selections from the BBA membership.
Halladay, who came over to Philadelphia in an off-season deal with Toronto,
wasted no time getting comfortable in his new league, posting an 2.44
ERA, striking out 219 batters, winning 21 games, and throwing a perfect
game to boot. While only the regular season was considered for voting,
he also became only the second player to throw a post-season no-hitter
when he faced the Reds in the National League Divisional Series.
Halladay received 133 points, well ahead of the runner up, St. Louis’s
Adam Wainwright, who received 66.
Hernandez’s
win was statistically more impressive, due to more ballots being cast
in the American League and a wider range of pitchers receiving votes.
His 2010 season, where he put up a sparkling 2.27 ERA, a 1.06 WHIP, and
struck out 232 in just under 250 innings pitched, led voters to bestow
upon him 137 points, with second place being New York’s CC Sabathia, who
received three first place votes and 62 points over all.
The complete voting results are as follows (first place votes in parenthesis):
American League
Felix Hernandez, Seattle (18) 137
CC Sabathia, New York (3) 62
David Price, Tampa Bay (1) 57
Cliff Lee, Seattle/Texas 41
Jered Weaver, Los Angeles 22
Jon Lester, Boston 18
Clay Buchholz, Boston 14
Francisco Liriano, Minnesota 13
Trevor Cahill, Oakland 5
Justin Verlander, Detroit 5
National League
Roy Halladay, Philadelphia (19) 133
Adam Wainwright, St. Louis 66
Ubaldo Jimenez, Colorado 52
Josh Johnson, Florida 43
Tim Hudson, Atlanta 16
Tim Lincecum, San Francisco 7
Clayton Kershaw, Los Angeles 2
Mat Latos, San Diego 2
Heath Bell, San Diego 1
Yovani Gallardo, Milwaukee 1
The
Baseball Bloggers Alliance was formed in the fall of 2009 to encourage
cooperation and collaboration between baseball bloggers of all major
league teams as well as those that follow baseball more generally. As of
this writing, the organization consists of 233 blogs spanning all 30 major league squads as well as general baseball writing.
The
BBA is organized under a similar structure as the Baseball Writers of
America, where blogs that follow the same team are combined into
“chapters” and only two votes from the chapter on an award are counted.
The blog chapters that are focused on general baseball were allowed two
votes as well, which they could use both on the same league or split
between the two leagues.
Chapters
generally followed one of two methods when casting their ballot.
Either representatives of the chapter were given the ballots for voting
or a “group ballot” was posted, accounting for both of their votes.
Ballots
are posted on the respective blogs and for this award, were tabulated
on a 7-4-3-2-1 point scale for first through fifth place. In the
interest of transparency, links are given below for the ballots. Chapter
affiliation is in parenthesis. Those chapters that decided on the
group method are noted with an asterisk.
Prior Winners: 2009: Zach Greinke, Kansas City; Tim Lincecum, San Francisco
The official website of the BBA is located at www.baseballbloggersalliance.com.
The BBA can be found on Twitter by the handle @baseballblogs and by
the hashmark #bbba. Members of the BBA may be heard at Blog Talk Radio
every Tuesday night with their call-in show, BBA Baseball Talk, which may also be downloaded as a podcast from iTunes. For more information, contact Daniel Shoptaw at founder@baseballbloggersalliance.com.
Baseball’s Best of the Worst: Walter Johnson
Image via Wikipedia
The following post is Part IV in this series. Graham Womack of Baseball Past and Present wrote this one. My next contribution to this series will be featured on this blog one week from today.
The baseball world was captivated this summer by the debut of Stephen Strasburg, who shined two months for the Washington Nationals before an arm injury ended his season. A century ago, another young pitcher arrived in the nation’s capital, and while his rookie campaign wasn’t much to speak of, he went on to do more with far less of a team. His name was Walter Johnson.
The saying about Washington used to be, “First in war, first in peace, last in the American League.” The Washington Senators became a contender in the 1910s and eventually, a World Series team, but when Johnson arrived in 1907 as a 19-year-old rookie from the Idaho League, the saying was absolutely true. While Johnson won 20 games two of his first five seasons, the Senators had a losing record every one of those years.
A lot is made of Steve Carlton’s Cy Young season in 1972 when he went 27-10 with a 1.97 ERA and 310 strikeouts for the 59-97 Phillies. Johnson may have been Carlton’s 1910 equivalent. On a 66-85 Senators team, Johnson went 25-17 with a 1.36 ERA and 313 strikeouts. He had a comparable Wins Above Replacement rating to Carlton in 1972, 9.1 to 12.2 and strikeouts per nine innings, 7.6 to 9.1. Johnson bested Carlton in ERA+ (183 to 182), WHIP (0.914 to 0.993), and innings pitched (370 to 346.)
Johnson may have won 30 games on a better team in 1910, and in 1912, this happened. Playing on the first winning club of his career, the 91-61 second-place Senators, Johnson went 33-12 with a 1.39 ERA and 303 strikeouts and rivaled Smoky Joe Wood as baseball’s best pitcher. Johnson won 16 games in a row early in the season, and after Wood won 15 straight, he came up against the Senators and faced Johnson. Wood, who went 34-5 that year and helped Boston win the World Series, recounted what happened to Lawrence Ritter in the The Glory of Their Times.
“Well, I won, 1-0, but don’t let that fool you,” Wood said. “In my opinion the greatest pitcher who ever lived was Walter Johnson. If he’d ever had a good ball club behind him what records he would have set!”
The Senators contended for another few years then retreated back to mediocrity for another long stretch. In all, they finished below .500 11 of Johnson’s 21 seasons. No matter. Johnson continued to win the majority of his decisions on a near-annual basis well into the latter half of his career, on his way to 417 victories lifetime. That’s second-best in baseball history, which helped make Johnson one of the first five players selected to the Hall of Fame in 1936.
In 1924, everything came together for Washington and the 36-year-old Johnson. With their first 90-win team in 11 years, the Senators finished two games ahead of the Yankees to win the American League and met the Giants in the World Series. Johnson lost his first two starts, but saved the best for last. Pitching in relief, Johnson entered Game 7 in the top of the ninth inning and pitched four shutout innings with five strikeouts until a ball hit a pebble and bounced over the head of Giants’ third baseman, Fred Lindstrom and allowed the winning run to score for the Senators.
After the game ended, Frank O’Neill wrote an article in the Syracuse Post-Standard that’s collected in an old anthology of sports writing on my bookshelf. O’Neill wrote:
A king returned to his throne today in this land of the free heart’s hope and home. An emperor came back from Elba to find his worshipping following rallying in his serried ranks to his standard.
The king was Walter Johnson, and his diadem of victory was placed upon his brow amid scenes without parallel in the history of baseball. For Walter Johnson, idol of American fandom, stepped into the breach and guided the staggering Senators out of the vale of defeat and perched them upon the pinnacle of the baseball world.
It was his finest hour.
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