As someone who is both a baseball
fan and has lived in New York his entire adult life there's an argument that
you'll always here whenever a great player is discussed: "Sure he might
have had great statistics but how did he do in the postseason?"
Aside from the obvious entitlement
factor it actually posed a question that I can answer: how have the
winningest pitchers in baseball history done in the World Series or given how
baseball has changed over the last half century, the expanded postseason? And
this is a question we can answer.
So in this article I'm going to
look at how every pitcher who won 300 games or more did in the postseason
during their long careers. To be fair I've divided the group into four eras
even though they don't always fit:
Deadball Era: In This Case 1900-1920
Pre Expansion Era In this case, 1920-1961
Divisional Era:
1969-1995
Modern Era: 1995-present
Six of the pitchers who have won
300 games or more pitched the entirety of their career before 1900 and don't
qualify. Two more Phil Niekro and Gaylord Perry never managed to reach the
World Series and while they did have some postseason appearances for the
purposes of this article I'm not included them. Nolan Ryan is a borderline case
but because he did pitch in one, he's listed her for completion sake.
So let's get started.
Deadball Era Pitchers
Cy Young
Boston Red Sox 1903 World Series
2-1 1.59 ERA
In one of those cases of symmetry
that baseball is so great at the winningest pitcher in baseball history pitched
in the very first World Series as a member of the Boston Pilgrims (they didn't
change their name to the Red Sox until a few years later.) Young had jumped to
the American League when it was founded and in 1903 led the League with 28
wins, seven shutouts, 341 innings pitched and 34 complete games. He was about
to turn 36 so he was clearly slowing down a bit.
The inaugural World Series was a
best of nine games affair and Young started three games and relieved in a
fourth. He won two of his starts to go 2-1 with a 1.59 ERA. However his battery
mate Bill Dineen was the hero of the series going 3-1 and pitching a shutout in
the eighth game to give Boston the first ever World Series.
The following year the Red Sox
repeated as American League Pennant winner with Young winning 26 games and
throwing 10 shutouts. However John McGraw the pugnacious manager of the New
York Giants made it clear his team would not play the American League winners.
There was no World Series in 1904. Fortunately McGraw changed his mind the next
year setting the stage for...
Christy Mathewson
1905, 1911-1913 New York Giants
World Series Record: 5-5
Any student of baseball history
knows that in the 1905 World Series Mathewson pitched three complete game
shutouts and gave up just 14 hits in three complete games, a record that will
no doubt stand forever. What is less known is that for the rest of Matty's
career in the World Series, it was downhill from there.
In the opening game of the 1911
World Series against the Philadelphia A's (we'll hear about them in the next
entry) and they must have considered a moral victory to finally score a run
against them after he shut them out three times. In Game 3 however Frank Baker hit a home run
off Mathewson in the ninth to tie the game leading to the A's beating him in
the eleventh. After a week of rain delayed the series McGraw sent Mathewson to
the mound again and they humiliated him 6-2 as the A's ending up winning the
World Series for the second year in a row.
The next year they played the Red
Sox and Mathewson was humiliated. He pitched three complete games but ended up
with an 0-2 record including the climatic final game which gave the Red Sox the
World Championship. And when the Giants faced off against the A's in the 1913
World Series Mathewson managed to win the only Giants victory in a five game
loss but he also lost the climatic game.
Mathewson did not pitch poorly by
any means: his lifetime ERA of 1.15 is still in the top ten of World Series
records and his ten complete games and four shutouts have never been approached
by any modern pitcher. It doesn't change the fact that having won his first
four World Series starts he went 1-5 the rest of the way. And that brings us to…
Eddie Plank
1905, 1910-1911, 1913-1914
Philadelphia A's
World Series Record 2-5
Gettysburg Eddie Plank is likely
the only player in this group – maybe of the entire roster - that will draw blank expression. That's
remarkable considering that by any measure he was as great as the other five
names on this list. A little explanation is due.
Eddie Plank won 326 games in his
seventeen year career which is thirteenth on the list all times. His lifetime
ERA is 2.34 and he threw 69 shutouts, fifth all time and the four men ahead of
him are in this group. Yet I'm not sure even at the time he was appreciated in
the American League or on the A's. For one thing he never managed to win 30
games once in a season even though he managed to win 20 or more eight times.
For another he was never as flashy as some of his fellow pitchers on Mack's
staff such as Rube Waddell, who was a great strikeout artist or Chief Bender
who pitched far better in big games that Plank did.
This record I should mention is
not his fault. His lifetime ERA in the World Series is 1.32 also in the top ten
and he also threw six games. The problem was in all four of the World Series he
pitched he always seemed to get into tough matches. He lost the opening game of
the 1905 World Series to Mathewson and lost Game 4 1-0 to Joe McGinnity. Connie
Mack chose not to pitch him in the 1910 World Series against the Chicago Cubs
and considering they won in five games you can't blame him. In the 1911 World Series
he went 1-1 beating Rube Marquard
in Game 2 but losing Game 5 in relief. In 1913 he lost to Mathewson in another
shutout. And in 1914 when the Miracle Braves swept Mack's A in four games he
lost Game 2 1-0.
After that he jumped to the
Federal League and two years later his career was over. But by that time Philadelphia's
eyes were on another great pitcher…
Grover Cleveland Alexander
1915 Phillies, 1926,1928 St Louis
Cardinals 3-2 one save.
Again any baseball fan knows of
the save on that record when a drunk Alexander came in after pitching a
complete game win to fan Tony Lazzeri with the bases loaded in the seventh,
preserving the game and the World Series for St. Louis. He'd actually won the
second and sixth game as well and that wasn't his first World Series
appearance.
In 1915 he'd helped the Phillies
win their first ever National League Pennant with the first of three
consecutive 30 win seasons. He managed to win the opening game of the 1915
World Series against the Red Sox 3-1, in what would be the first – and last
World Series game they would win until 1980. (We'll get to that.)
In 1928 Alexander still had some
stuff winning 20 games to help the Cardinals win their second National league
pennant in three years. But this time the Yankees ran over the Cardinals and
Alex could do nothing to stop it. In Game 2 Lou Gehrig hit a three-run homer in
the first and Alex was gone in the third. They brought him in to pitch relief
in Game 4 to try and hold off the Yankees from the sweep. Ironically Lazzeri
was waiting for him but this time greeted him with a hit. The humiliation
continued and the Yankees won 7-3.
Walter Johnson
Washington Senators 1924-1925 3-3
Johnson lost both his starts in
the 1924 World Series but famously came in relief in the deciding game as the
Senators held on to win the World Series in the 12th. They returned
to the World Series the following year and Johnson did better this time,
winning both his starts including a shutout in Game 4.
Unfortunately manager Bucky Harris
stuck with even as things went horribly wrong in Game 7 in which the Pirates
battered him for fifteen hits and nine runs in the final game. Adding insult to
injury the Pirates would become the first team in baseball history to come back
from being down three games to one to win a World Series. As we shall see
another one of the pitchers on this list would endure a similar humiliation.
Next time I'll deal with the
pitchers from the lively ball era until the era of expansion.
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