Comments on: Winning in Relief

By: Johnny Twisto

Johnny Twisto — Tue, 11 May 2010 03:03:35 +0000

Face's WPA that season was "only" 1.3, which was only about 4th among NL relievers (depending whether you classify certain guys as SP or RP). He was actually quite a bit higher in '60 and '62 (18-15 combined record). He had easily the highest aLI in the league in '59 (1.84).

By: Kahuna Tuna

Kahuna Tuna — Mon, 10 May 2010 22:20:18 +0000

In his 18-1 1959 season for the Pirates, Elroy Face "vultured" four wins (i.e., blew the save and then got the win), blew four other save opportunities in which he received no decision, and blew the save in his only loss. Data is missing for three of Face's games, but it appears that he inherited 37 runners over the course of the season and allowed 20 to score.

By: Kahuna Tuna

Kahuna Tuna — Mon, 10 May 2010 22:02:11 +0000

Stu Miller, 1961 Giants.

By: wboenig

wboenig — Mon, 10 May 2010 21:22:38 +0000

Bill Campbell is the correct answer. 1976 Twins and 1977 Red Sox.

Intuitively, one would think that this would be a rare occurrence only in the sense that whenever a relief pitcher gets a save, somebody else on the staff gets a win and moves one up on the reliever to lead the team in that category. I suspect that if I/we were to pull together a list of pitchers who have done this, we would see that the teams generally (a) scored a lot of runs, and (b) gave up a lot of runs and (c) had a very unstable starting rotation (see 'b') so that whatever wins did happen were spread thinly among many pitchers.

Without doing any research other than the depths of my memory, other names that come to mind include Elroy Face (1959), John Hiller (1974), and Jesse Orosco (1983).

By: Baseball-Reference Blog » Blog Archive » Inherited Runners Scoring %

Baseball-Reference Blog » Blog Archive » Inherited Runners Scoring % — Mon, 10 May 2010 17:49:35 +0000

[...] then take a look at Tyler Clippard. Raphy pointed out earlier that Clip has 6 wins already. He has an ERA of 0.76. But he's also allowed 10 out of 18 inherit [...]

By: Jeff H

Jeff H — Mon, 10 May 2010 17:36:57 +0000

Is there a less meaningful statistic than relief "wins"? Maybe the save.

By: Johnny Twisto

Johnny Twisto — Mon, 10 May 2010 17:34:17 +0000

Well, I can't find the thread where that was discussed, maybe someone else can dig it up.

By: Johnny Twisto

Johnny Twisto — Mon, 10 May 2010 17:31:32 +0000

Wboenig, I'm pretty sure there were comments about that in the recent past. I have a memory that Bill Campbell did it in the '70s. And it was not that rare back when pitchers were commonly used as both starters and relievers -- I think Lefty Grove did it more than once.

By: Andy

Andy — Mon, 10 May 2010 17:07:06 +0000

Clippard is having a very deceptive season. More on this in a new post by me later today.

By: wboenig

wboenig — Mon, 10 May 2010 16:54:52 +0000

Do you have any way of identifying pitchers who have led their teams in both wins and saves in the same year? I did some light research on this some years ago, and I seem to recall that it isn't as rare an occurrence as it might seem. In fact, I think I identified almost twenty pitchers who had done it, including one who did it twice(!) Hey, that would make a good trivia question -- name a pitcher (there may be more than one) who led his team in wins and saves in two different seasons.