Quiz – Who Am I ? (solved) |

Our mystery player is a 20th century pitcher. Among other accomplishments, he:

led his league in ERA, ERA+, Complete Games and Shutouts, but each only once in his career
had back-to-back 20 win seasons, but never led his league in Wins
ranks 3rd in career W-L% for his franchise (min. 1000 IP)
over his 4 year peak, made top 5 in his league in ERA, ERA+, WHIP, Complete Games, Shutouts and HR/9 (min. 750 IP)
allowed 5 hits or less in over 25% of complete games over his career
was unbeaten in multiple World Series starts

Congratulations to James Smyth! He correctly identified our mystery pitcher as none other than Babe Ruth. I chose the Babe as the subject of this quiz to alert our readers that the good people at Retrosheet.org and Baseball-Reference.com have been busy, and have now updated their databases and search engines to include complete box scores and game logs back to 1914, Ruth’s debut season.

Some other Ruth pitching tidbits.

Ruth and Walter Johnson are the only pitchers since 1914 with streaks of 50+ regular season starts without allowing a home run (Johnson had two such streaks). I mention regular season as Ruth’s streak spanned the 1916 World Series when he did allow a home run, the only run surrendered in a 14-inning 2-1 CG win over Sherry Smith, the longest two complete games in post-season history. Incidentally, the longest streak of homerless starts since World War II is 22 by Dutch Leonard in 1947-48.
Ruth recorded 6 walks pitching game 4 of the 1918 World Series, the most walks among 5 pitchers to start and win a post-season game (none were complete games) without recording a strikeout (Andy Messersmith is the last starting pitcher with a post-season win without a strikeout; Bob Turley is the last to do that in the World Series).
As a Yankee, Ruth made 5 starts and recorded 5 wins, two of them complete games. Ruth’s complete game win over the Red Sox on the final day of the 1933 season was the last by a Yankee pitcher aged 38 or older until the 1945 season (Detroit was the only other major league team without such a game in the 1934-44 period; in 113 seasons, the Tigers have recorded the grand total of 6 complete game wins by age 38+ pitchers, three by Virgil Trucks in 1956, one by Doyle Alexander in 1989, and two by Frank Tanana in 1991 and 1992)

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James Smyth

10 years ago

Is it Babe Ruth?

Author

Doug

Reply to James Smyth

Indeed it is. Well done.

What gave it away?

Reply to Doug

I already had some franchise pitching leader searches open, so when I read “3rd in W-L%” I checked Boston’s and saw The Babe. The WS starts note made me think that might be it and when the other numbers matched up, voila.

Richard Chester

I found it by running the PI for: Game Finder Player Pitching Post-season WS Most Matching Games in Multiple Years Starter There were 296 pitchers with more than 1 start, all on the first results page. Then I hit SHARE and then eliminated all the pitchers with only one start and all the pitchers with at least one loss. I saved the remaining list of players on the PI. Then I went to Player Pitching Season Finder Players with Seasons Matching Criteria W equal to or greater than 20 That left me with a list of 17 players with 2+… Read more »

Reply to Richard Chester

I forgot to mention that when I ran the Player Pitching Season Finder I used the saved report of WS pitchers.

Thanks Richard,

Good to know that I did, in fact, uniquely identify the Babe.

Editor

John Autin

I’m excited about the prospect of 1914-15 game logs — but they don’t seem to be quite ready yet. Links are there, but so far it’s just a lot of “No Data for this season, Sorry!”

Reply to John Autin

Thanks for the heads up, John.

I assumed there was data there since 1914 and 1915 are in the Box Score, Game Log and P-I menus, but evidently not yet.

TheGoof

Take a look at the progressive leaderboards for pitchers in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The active leader in some ratio categories reverts to Ruth when his pitching contemporaries of the deadball era either retire or have their numbers driven up by the lively ball. The guy was the all-time leader in home runs per at bat and home runs per inning pitched at the same time. Sure, you can say it’s not a fair comparison because Ruth wasn’t still pitching, but a) he wasn’t pitching because he was so damn good at hitting, so it wasn’t like he… Read more »

mosc

Top 6 single season pitching WAR since 1901 (post Mathewson) for a player 21 or under: Dwight Gooden (20) 1985 12.2 Bob Feller (21) 1940 9.9 Mark Fidrych (21) 1976 9.6 Bob Feller (20) 1939 9.3 Vida Blue (21) 1971 9.0 Babe Ruth (21) 1916 8.7 That said, Ruth also had 1.7 WAR with the bat that year. Adding in batting WAR, Ruth tops Feller (who’s seasons become near identical), Blue, and Fidrych who never hit. Gooden was a pretty decent hitter for a pitcher and his 1985 season just looks even better if you throw him the extra WAR… Read more »

Reply to mosc

On Ruth’s 1916 batting WAR, it looks like he was used as a pinch hitter a few times but not that many and he never took the field. His batting stats say 67 games, he started 40 as a pitcher and relieved in 4. His hitting like says 40 games as starter and 28 as substitute (68 total). The difference is game 1 of a double header on July 29th 1916 where he got roughed up (starting pitcher remember) in the 1st and was relieved before coming to bat. By my count in his 4 relief pitching appearances he totaled… Read more »