The pitchers in this quiz share the distinction of being the only post-war hurlers (those who played their entire careers since 1946) with a particular career accomplishment. What is it?
| Rk | Player |
|---|---|
| 1 | Frank Baumann |
| 2 | Gene Brabender |
| 3 | Nino Espinosa |
| 4 | Art Fowler |
| 5 | Dave Freisleben |
| 6 | Mark Gardner |
| 7 | Mike LaCoss |
| 8 | Ramon Martinez |
| 9 | Frank Pastore |
For bonus points, Art Fowler is also in a group with Jack Quinn, Dutch Leonard, Dizzy Trout, Nolan Ryan and Goose Gossage as the only live-ball era pitchers with a certain game accomplishment. What is that feat?
Looks like I’ve got a stumper. The key to this quiz was in noticing that all of these pitchers had a similar number of career complete games. They, in fact, are the only pitchers to go undefeated in 15 or more complete games over an entire career. Clayton Kershaw with 11 wins and Kyle Lohse with 10 top the list for active pitchers who have never lost a CG. The bonus quiz answer is after the jump.
Ramon Martinez, with 37 complete game wins, tops our list. Mark Gardner pitched 9 no-hit innings for the Expos and lost the game, but still made this list because he was relieved in the 10th inning against the Dodgers (two days later, the Expos got another 9 no-hit innings … and a win on Dennis Martinez‘s perfect game).
Art Fowler makes the bonus quiz list with several other pitchers who lasted into their forties. They are the only 40-something pitchers to pitch to a teenage catcher, in these games.
| Game | Pitcher | Pitcher Age | Catcher | Catcher Age |
| 1927-07-11 | Jack Quinn | 44.010 | Jimmie Foxx | 19.262 |
| 1951-09-29 | Dutch Leonard | 42.188 | Harry Chiti | 18.317 |
| 1957-09-11 | Dizzy Trout | 42.074 | Frank Zupo | 18.013 |
| 1963-04-29 | Art Fowler | 40.300 | Ed Kirkpatrick | 18.203 |
| 1991-06-21 | Nolan Ryan | 44.141 | Ivan Rodriguez | 19.206 |
| 1991-07-12 | Goose Gossage | 40.007 | Ivan Rodriguez | 19.227 |
Wonder what might have happened had the young catcher made a mound visit to say he’d seen something awry in his pitcher’s mechanics. My guess is he gets some heat next time he calls for a breaking ball.
As a kid growing up in the early 80’s, I searched endlessly through my baseball cards for a player that shared my birthday. Frank Pastore was the only one I could find. Alas, that does not appear to be the answer here though.
You can add this guy to your birthday list.
http://thumbs2.ebaystatic.com/d/l225/m/m9GGViABcsw2WmobBLkAj0Q.jpg
He’s Steve Eddy. Pitched one season for the Angels. Had a little control problem with 20 walks and 2 HBP in 32 IP. But his BB/9 wasn’t even the worst on his team, being just a tad better than closer Mark Clear.
The card above shows Steve as an 18 year-old, pitching for the 1976 Quad Cities Angels. Seems he never got a major league card.
Doug, sorry for the first post being completely completely unrelated to the quiz but looking up some of these stats made me think of an odd one: Who’s the career leader in receiving a HBP while batting as a pitcher?
Wow. It’s a runaway win for Sad Sam Jones, plunked 25 times, almost twice as many as any other pitcher in the game-searchable era. A couple of these guys even got plunked more than once in the same game.
Generated 1/9/2014.
Before the game-searchable era, there are higher totals but only one who might be higher than Jones is Tony Mullane with 29 recorded HBP (all but his first 3 seasons have a recorded total), but over 25% of his games were playing in the field.
On Sad Sam’s main page, 22 HBP are listed,
but when you go to Splits, there are three more, one in each
1920
1923
1928
What is that?
Is it somehow that his pinch-hitting appearances do not show up in standard batting?
Glitcharoni.
I noticed that too. Something to report to Sean Forman.
All of Jones’ 25 HBP were as a pitcher. As a pinch-hitter, he had a double and a walk in 3 chances.
In contrast, Phil Niekro’s brother got on base the hard way once in 1165 career PA.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/MON/MON198307220.shtml
Doug: My PI run shows Eddie Plank with 24 HBP and Christy Mathewson with 17.
Correct.
The table I was showing was from Game Finder. I used that after seeing the discrepancy that Voomo noted @5.
I suppose Plank might have a higher total than Jones if some of Plank’s HBP are missing from his season totals, as were Jones’s. FWIW, Season-Finder and Game-Finder agree on Plank’s HBP total for the last two seasons of Plank’s career.
See I had very incorrectly surmised your quiz listed the career leaders in HBP for pitchers (receiving) and a bonus list of pitchers who had been plunked twice in a game. Not that I had any reason to guess that. Notorious plunker Ryan never got plunked in 957 PA’s. Don’t play with fire? Juicy.
Sam Jones’s HBP seem to be plate discipline driven. He wasn’t much of a hitter but had a very respectable 9% walk rate, especially considering the era and his lack of intimidation in the batter’s box. He was probably in there trying to foul off pitches and work the walk.
Totally unrelated, the 1979 Phillies started out the season fairly well and appeared on their way to a possible 4th straight division title. Recently acquired Nino Espinosa was on fire and had a 5-1 log with a 1.25 ERA in mid-May….and made the cover of the 4th Philadelphia daily news rag, The Philadelphia Journal (Inquirer, Bulletin, Daily News were the others) with the headline “ARNULFO”, resplendent in pinstripes sporting an afro that Oscar Gamble would have been very proud of.
Alas, the Phillies collapsed amidst a rash of injuries (the curse of Pete Rose?) and Ozark got fired. Interestingly, the years Pete Rose performed best for the Phillies during the contract (1979 and 1981), they seemed to not do so well. And in the years he was basically replacement level (1980, 1983), they won the World series and NL Pennant.
As for the Philadelphia Journal, they died before the others. But, not before a woman handed over her decapitated paramour’s head to a policeman on the Camden NJ courthouse steps. The headline: “Woman Gives Cop Head”.
I digress
I always remember the 1979 Phillies for this game, right about the time of Espinosa’s appearance on the front page.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/CHN/CHN197905170.shtml
For years, if friends were to give “scouting reports” on various bars and the female “talent” apparently available, a rating of “Wrigley Field with the wind blowing out” could not be topped.
I know there are others in this category, but each of them has a 6.00+ ERA season. I can’t find another linking factor just yet.
Interesting factoid about Frank Baumann. In 1960 he led the AL in ERA+ (qualifying pitchers). In 1961 he was dead last.
Nice find, Richard. Even odder considering 1961 was an expansion year.
Reminds me of Greg Minton, first among expansion pitchers in career HR/9 and last in SO/BB.
Nice to hear about Greg Minton. I remember him from an old RBI nintendo game. If the game´s graphics are accurate, he was a submarine type pitcher.
He was a submariner, Luis.
Moon Minton was one of those goofy, flaky characters from the ’70s/’80s in the same mold as Spaceman Bill Lee, The Mad Hungarian, and Mark Bird Fidrych. I miss guys like that.
Frank Zupo’s name has come up before on either this or the old BR blog. Didn’t he and George Zuverink form the only “Z” battery in the ML, on 7-1-57 and 9-18-57 for the Orioles?
Zupo’s name was also mentioned because he formed a teen-age battery with Jerry Walker in 1957 with the O’s.
In the same game that Zupo appeared with Trout, he (Zupo) made the youngest ever battery with Milt Pappas, 26 days younger by combined age than when Zupo and Walker had hooked up a month before.
Zupo’s appearance with Trout was the career finale for the latter, a 2 game comeback 5 years after retiring and going into broadcasting. Maybe it was just a lark but Trout did play a few games in the minors before moving up to Baltimore, so who knows what it might have been about. His first appearance went well enough, retiring his only batter to end the 8th inning. Not so his outing with Zupo; coming in to start the 4th inning with the Orioles behind 4-0, it was double, single, triple, single, end of comeback.