What I am really writing about here is not Turk Farrell, but unlucky pitchers. I am using the mythical Turk Farrell Award and the arbitrary Turk Farrell formula to organize a discussion about the unluckiest pitchers who ever lived. In a minute, I’ll give you the Turk Farrell Award winners for each season since 1956, but actually, what is most interesting is the really unlucky pitchers, the historically significant turkeys:
1870s
George Bradley, 1879. Bradley pitched 487.0 innings with a 2.85 ERA, walking only 26 hitters, or less than one per two games. He finished with a better batting average (.247) than Winning Percentage (.245); he was 13-40. Turk Farrell Score: 514.
1880s
Will White, 1880. White pitched 517.1 innings with a better-than-league 2.14 ERA, but finished with 18 wins, 42 losses. His Turk Farrell Score: an all-time record 546.
1890s
The Baseball War of 1890, which featured a start-up league run by the players, brought the 19-year-old Amos Rusie to New York. Rusie led all three major leagues in strikeouts (341) and walks (289), posted a 2.56 ERA in 549 innings—but finished 29-34. His Turk Farrell Score, 285, was the highest of the decade.
1900s
The first decade of the 20th century still had sort-of 19th-century pitching records, and, entering the spitball/dead ball era, very low ERAs. Numerous pitchers had Turk Farrells scores higher than Farrell. The highest of them: Cy Young in 1905. Young pitched 321 innings with a 1.26 ERA (the same as Walsh’s in 1910) and a 7-to-1 strikeout/walk ratio (210-30)—but finished 18-19. Turk Farrell Score: 323. Young also had the highest Turk Farrell Score of 1906, when he finished 13-21. Walter Johnson had the highest in 1909.
1910s
Ed Walsh, as mentioned (389).
1920s
Batting totals shot up in the 1920s, and Scott Perry’s 3.61 ERA in 1920 was better than the league average (3.79). But he went 11-25, Turk Farrell Score of 226. (Season scores are not park- or era-adjusted, so the numbers rise and fall inversely to league ERAs.) Perry barely beat out Red Ruffing, 1928 (224, stats similar to Perry’s)—which would have made four straight decades that the highest Turk Farrell Score was posted by a Hall of Famer.
1930s
Paul Derringer's 1933 season, when he finished 7-27 despite a better-than-league ERA, is one of the most famous hard-luck seasons of all time. His Turk Farrell Score, 284, was by far the highest of the decade.
1940s
Ken Raffensberger, 1944 Phillies. He was 13-20 with a 3.06 ERA—but there were a lot of young men that summer who would have considered him damned lucky. Turk Farrell Score: 237.
Raffensberger would also have won the award in 1946, 1950 and 1951, and would have been well up the list in several other seasons. Seventy-two runs better than league over the course of his career (park-adjusted) but 35 games under .500 (119-154), Raffensberger is truly one of the toughest-luck pitchers of all time. With better luck, he could have won 20 games three or four times.
1950s
Warren Spahn had the same ERA in 1952 that he had in 1951—2.98. In 1951 he was his usual 22-14. In 1952 he dropped to 14-19—and posted the second-highest Turk Farrell Score of the decade at 243.
Beating him by one point, but keeping the award in Hall of Fame fingers, was Robin Roberts, 1957. Roberts, who had won 20 games from 1950 through 1955 and was the best pitcher in the majors in several of those seasons, lost 20 for the only time in his career in 1957, finishing 10-22 with a 4.07 ERA.
1960s
Turk Farrell, 1962, 296.
1970s
Jerry Koosman, 1977—8-20 despite 192 strikeouts and a 3.49 ERA. Koosman had won 20 games the year before and would win 20 again with the Twins two years later, but the ’77 Mets did not have a hitter with more than 12 home runs. Turk Farrell Score, 245.
1980s
Nolan Ryan in 1987 led the National League in strikeouts (270) and ERA (2.76)—but finished 8-16, one away from also leading the league in losses. Turk Farrell Score: 266.
1990s
Pitching for the Cleveland Indians between 1959 and 1993 was rarely lucky. Greg Swindell, 1991: 238 innings, 3.49 ERA, 169-31 K/W ratio. Finished 9-16. The team lost 105 games. Turk Farrell Score: 237.
2000s
Ben Sheets in 2004 had a truly remarkable season, striking out 264, walking only 32, posting a 2.70 ERA against a league average of 4.31, and yet finishing just 12-14. They gave the Cy Young Award to the great Roger Clemens, but Sheets had more strikeouts, fewer walks and a better ERA. If we tweaked the formula a little bit, he could rank as the unluckiest pitcher of all time. As it is, we have him at 285—the highest Turk Farrell Score since Turk Farrell himself.
Bill James
Ft. Myers, Florida
March 28, 2007 |