The 33 Greatest Starting Rotations of All-Time

In Chronological Order

Apropos Nothing in Particular

(*One more than Joe would have.)

            1.  New York Giants, 1903.   Joe McGinnity, Christy Mathewson, Luther Taylor, Hooks Wiltse. 

            Joe McGinnity was named "The Iron Man" not because of his pitching load, but because his wife’s family owned an Iron foundry in McAlester, Oklahoma.   Pitching 408 innings and starting both games of double-headers and pitching in the minors until he was in his mid-fifties sort of kept the whole "Iron Man" thing going.   Luther Taylor was a deaf mute who worked off-seasons for newspapers in two small towns in Kansas, Winchester and Oskaloosa.  I used to live in Winchester, 90 years later, and had an office in Oskaloosa.   Taylor was a likeable, friendly man who was a live wire despite his disability.    Wiltse was called "Hooks" because of his curve ball.

            2.  Chicago White Sox, 1905.   Nick Altrock, Frank Owen, Frank Smith, Doc White, Ed Walsh.

            Altrock was a guy with a funny-looking face who made a living as a comedian/coach for many years after his playing career.   He did vaudeville in the off-season; during the season he was a legitimate coach, but he was a legitimate coach who doubled as an entertainer between innings and sometimes during innings.   I’d like to see somebody do that now, and God knows there is no shortage of funny-looking coaches. . ..Doc White held the record for consecutive scoreless innings for 60-some years, finally broken by Drysdale.   Walsh, of course, is the big star of the group, but he didn’t become a star until 1907.

            3.  Chicago Cubs, 1909.   Three Finger Brown, Orval Overall, Ed Reulbach, Jack Pfiester, Rube Kroh. 

            The Cubs had fantastic rotations every year in this era; I think 1909 was the best, and my rules don’t allow multiple selections from the same team in the same decade.   It wasn’t really so much that these were great pitchers as it was that the infield behind them (Tinker, Evers and Chance) was so fantastic that they made whoever took the mound LOOK like a superstar in that game, with the dead balls and the infield grass four inches high.

            4.  Philadelphia Athletics, 1910.   Jack Coombs, Chief Bender, Cy Morgan, Eddie Plank.  

            Bender and Plank were the Hall of Famers.    This is actually the first team we’ve hit that won the World Series.

            5.  1913 New York Giants.   

            Mathewson and Marquard are Hall of Famers, although Marquard may be the worst pitcher in the Hall of Fame.    Note that Demaree has only 17 decisions with 200 innings pitched—a sign that John McGraw by 1913 was already using his bullpen quite a bit.  

            6.   1917 Boston Red Sox.

            Let me explain a little bit how I’m choosing these teams, because I’m choosing a lot of teams that didn’t win the World Series or didn’t even win their league, like the Red Sox, who won the World Series in 1916 and 1918, but not 1917.  I’m choosing the teams in this way.  First, I figure the Season Score for each pitcher.   Then I multiply the Season Score for the #1 pitcher on the team by 1, for the number 2 pitcher by 2, for the number 3 pitcher by 3, and by the number 4 pitcher by 4.    Then I’m choosing the three highest totals from each decade, except that I won’t choose two teams from the same team in the same decade, and then I have some other little rules and stuff to handle hard cases. 

            7.   1920 Chicago White Sox.

            The only team to have four twenty-game winners, other than the 1971 Orioles.   Faber is in the Hall of Fame and Cicotte would be if he wasn’t dirty, although actually Cicotte was a good guy who just got caught up in something he should have stayed away from.   He was a very modest, very dignified man.

            8.  New York Giants, 1920.

            This is the first team we have hit that did not have a Hall of Famer in the starting rotation.   These are all interesting guys.   Toney was a big, strong guy who is famous for pitching half of the double no-hit game, matched up against Hippo Vaughn.   He also was involved in a famous scandal in 1918 after he abandoned his wife and was living with some floozy.   His wife sued him for non-support and he was prosecuted for violation of the Mann act (taking a woman across state lines for immoral purposes, probably involving sex, I’m just guessing), and agreed to join the Army in exchange for the prosecution being dropped.   Jesse Barnes was a cousin of mine, not really a distant cousin; his mother was a James, and he grew up about 20 miles from me.   Art Nehf was a little lefty, sort of an earlier-day Carl Hubbell.   Phil Douglas was thrown out of baseball after he wrote a spiteful letter, drunk, in which he sort of obliquely offered to throw games to get even with John McGraw for treating him so bad.   Benton was an alcoholic who had a large number of incidents involving public intoxication, and bounced from team to team for that reason.   He testified against the Black Sox before the grand jury investigating the 1919 fix, and was himself accused of making a lot of money betting against the Sox.    Widely regarded as a ne’er-do-well and undesirable, he was released in mid-season 1921 although he was pitching well, and was banned from the American League by Ban Johnson, then re-instated by Commissioner Landis in direct contravention of Landis’ announced policies, probably because Landis wanted to cut Ban Johnson off at the knees.  

            9.  1927 Yankees.

            Not as famous as the batting side of the team, but they’re here on merit.   Wilcy Moore was a reliever, but also made 12 starts and pitched 213 innings.    Hoyt and Pennock are Hall of Famers, of course, although neither is overwhelmingly qualified, and Shocker, Ruether and Pipgras were all fine pitchers.

            10.  1931 Philadelphia Athletics.

            Lefty Grove was perhaps the greatest pitcher of all time, having his greatest season.   Earnshaw for two or three years was a beast.

            11.  New York Giants, 1933.  

            The Giants are hitting every decade—1903, 1913, 1920, 1933.    They won the World Series in ’33, and Hubbell was the MVP.    Freddie Fitzsimmons was a fascinating guy, a squat man with unnaturally long arms, kind of a hobbit; nobody ever had much confidence in him but somehow he always won.   Roy Parmalee was perhaps the hardest thrower in baseball at this time, and was always flirting with no-hitters.   His fastball apparently had fantastic movement, leading to a lot of wild pitches and hit batsmen.   There’s a good entry on him in the Neyer/James Guide.

            12.   Chicago Cubs, 1935.

            The second team we have encountered without a Hall of Famer, although Warneke was very near to a Hall of Fame standard, Root won 201 games, and Big Bill Lee pitched at a Hall of Fame level from 1935 to 1939.   The ’35 Cubs might have won the World Series, but Charlie Grimm fantastically mis-handled his starting pitching, using Lee, Warneke and French all in one game, forcing him to start Tex Carleton, his sixth starter, the next day.  It’s one of the most obvious blunders in World Series history, but is hardly ever mentioned; Grimm escaped from it almost entirely unscathed. 

            13.   Cincinnati Reds, 1940. 

            No Hall of Famers again, but they did win the World Series.   Walters, the 1939 MVP, was fantastic again in 1940.   Jim Turner and Bucky Walters were among the most prominent early pitching coaches.

            14.   St. Louis Cardinals, 1944. 

            The Cardinal farm system at this time was a machine, producing two to five outstanding pitching prospects every year, although oddly enough none of them became truly great.   Cooper was the MVP in 1942, and pitched at a comparable level in ’43 and ’44.   The 1944 Cardinals beat the Browns, who played in the same park, to win the World Championship.   Lanier was banned from baseball for three years for signing with the Mexican League in ’46; actually he was banned for life, but it was lifted after three years because he was able to prove that he had never associated with Pete Rose.   His son was the shortstop from the 1960s—one of the worst hitting regulars of all time.  By the early 1950s the entire National League was populated by Cardinal castoff pitchers.  

            15.  Detroit Tigers, 1946.

             Newhouser was at the level of Koufax, Carlton in ’72, Guidry in ’78.  Trout and Trucks had wonderful arms and won 170 games apiece.    Hutchinson, although most famous as a manager, was also notable for two other things:  1)  he had the best control of his era, other than perhaps Robin Roberts, and 2) he was the best hitting pitcher of that generation, hitting .315 in 1946, .302 in ’47, and .326 in 1950.

            Hutchinson controlled the strike zone, both as a hitter and a pitcher, at a very unusual level.    His strikeout/walk ratios, as a pitcher, were among the best of his era, if not the best of his era; he led the American League in strikeout/walk ratio four times.  His strikeout/walk ratios, as a hitter, were perhaps the best of any pitcher since 1900.  

            16.   New York Yankees, 1953. 

            The Yankees have rarely been known for outstanding starting pitching.   It’s one of those mind-numbingly obvious things that people will totally overlook when they are a’mind to lecture you about the importance of pitching; they’ll talk about how it is great pitching that dominates in October, etc. etc., totally oblivious to the fact that the Yankees, who have had had several fairly good Octobers, have never really done it with pitching.  

            Casey, of course, switched his pitchers between starting and relief to get the matchups he wanted, in a way that would never be accepted now.   In ’53 he had five outstanding pitchers, all of whom had very good careers as well, but Sain and Reynolds relieved more often than they started, and the other guys relieved on occasion as well.

            17.  Cleveland Indians, 1954.

            This team is often cited as having the greatest starting rotation of all time, and it’s certainly a legitimate candidate.   1954 was the right time to visit Cleveland, with Rock ‘n Roll, the ’54 Indians and the Sam Sheppard case.  If we really listed the five best pitching rotations of the 1950s, I think that would be five Cleveland Indians teams. . .different combinations of Wynn, Lemon, Feller, Garcia, and Herb Score.   In ’54 Garcia led the league in ERA at 2.64—and their team ERA was 2.78.   

            This is the first rotation we have seen with three Hall of Famers, although you have to go to the #5 guy to reach the third Hall of Famer.

            18.   Chicago White Sox, 1954.  

            1)  The first team on the list without a Hall of Famer since the Cardinals in ’44.

            2)  I think Virgil Trucks is the second pitcher to make our list twice, the other being Christy Mathewson.

            3)  This is a really interesting team.   Trucks was a great pitcher with a fascinating career.   Consuegra was a Cuban guy who made it to the majors late and didn’t pitch a lot of innings, but pitched at an extremely high level of effectiveness from 1953 to 1955.

            Harshman spent years trying to make the majors as a first baseman.   He hit 37 homers in the minors in 1947, 40 homers in 1949, and 47 homers in 1951, but didn’t get called up.   He switched to pitching, made the majors in months, and had a good major league career, also hit 21 homers in 522 at bats in the majors.   On August 13, 1954, he pitched a 16-inning shutout over Detroit, took one day off, and came in on August 15 to pitch two innings in relief. 

            Billy Pierce, of course, was a near-Hall of Famer who was outstanding in every season from 1951 to 1958 except 1954.  Pierce also was a member of a rotation that could be listed here but isn’t, the 1962 Giants, and pitched well enough in ’62 to be one of four pitchers mentioned in the Cy Young voting that year. 

            19.   New York Yankees, 1963. 

            This is a very underrated rotation, probably the best pitching rotation in the history of the New York Yankees, and, at least as it is scored by my system, the best pitching rotation of the 1960s.

            Now that’s a shocking thing for me to say, since I have always regarded the 1966 Dodgers as the greatest rotation of the 1960s, but this team scores better, and, now that I look at the facts, I kind of see the point.   In number ones you’ve got Koufax against Ford.   OK, maybe Koufax in ’66 was better than Ford in ’63, but Ford was awfully good.   Ford had a longer career than Koufax, a better winning percentage, and a lower ERA, despite playing in a significantly higher-run context.  

            OK, Ford in ’63 wasn’t Koufax in ’66, but this isn’t about the number ones; it’s about the rotations.   The ’63 Yankees’ #2, Jim Bouton, was better than anybody else the Dodgers had, and their #3, Ralph Terry, was a very good match for the Dodgers’ #2, Osteen.    Al Downing, a rookie who made 22 starts, was totally, Koufax-like dominant, posting the lowest hits/innings ratio in the majors in fourteen years, and Stan Williams was a more-than-competent #5.  

            20.   The 1966 Dodgers.

            The starting rotation of the 1966 Dodgers has in the past, I am forced to conclude, been horribly overrated by. . .well, me.   I have in the past listed this as one of the greatest starting rotations of all time.    When I drew up this list they initially ranked sixth for the decade, which was a shock to me, and of course my first thought was to try to fix the system.   But then I stopped to look at the facts.

            The 1966 Dodgers have three Hall of Famers in their front four—one of the few teams ever that does—and the other starter won 196 games, so he wasn’t chopped raisinettes, either.   They pitched a ton of innings—1063 among the four of them—with good ERAs and good strikeout/walk ratios, and Koufax was one of the greatest ever.   With a better offense behind them they might all have won 20 games, and Koufax might have won 30.

            Yes, but.   We all know that the low offense/great pitching thing is in large part a park illusion.  The Dodger offense in ’66, park-adjusted, was about average.   Three of these guys have a combined won-lost record of 42-42, which, say what you will about won-lost records, is not all that good, and that’s different in 84 decisions than it is in 27.  If we adjust for the offensive support we have to adjust for the park as well.    Drysdale’s ERA was barely better than the league average if you don’t park-adjust it, and, even pitching in the best pitcher’s park in the league, no one on the team other than Koufax was anywhere near the league leaders in ERA.   

            Is it a good staff, yes, but there are other staffs that have more to sell—better won-lost records, and better ERAs even if you don’t park-adjust the ERAs.   The three highest-scoring staffs of the 1960s, by the system I used here, are the ’63 Yankees, the ’68 Indians and the ’69 Orioles.   There are two problems with including the ’69 Orioles:  1) that they are redundant of the 1971 Orioles, who will be included from the next decade, and 2)  that we haven’t included a National League pitching staff here since 1944, and we probably should find one that we like pretty soon.  

            OK, we throw out the Orioles, the Dodgers’ are still fifth.   They’re fifth, but they rate a few points behind the ’63 Cincinnati Reds, and I couldn’t really argue with a straight face that the ’63 Reds had a better starting rotation than the ’66 Dodgers (John Tsitouris, excuse me?).   The other team they rate a few points behind is the ’65 Dodgers, which is basically the same team, except that Drysdale was great in ’65 and the fourth spot was occupied by an aging Johnny Podres, rather than a young Don Sutton. 

            Ultimately, I am happier with the ’66 Dodgers on this list than without them, but I have to say, this is not the starting rotation that I have always thought that it was.

            21.   The 1968 Cleveland Indians.

            Second mention for Stan Williams.   Two pitchers with 547 strikeouts between them and ERAs in the ones; that’s pretty good.   Third and fourth starters were winning pitchers with better-than-league ERAs in a neutral park, and they both had good careers.

            Some people will be annoyed that none of the White Sox staffs with Gary Peters, Juan Pizarro, Tommy John and Joe Horlen made it on to the list, but that’s just the way the scores worked out, and those teams received massive help from extremely low park factors. 

            22.   The 1971 Baltimore Orioles. 

            Four twenty-game winners.  Cuellar and McNally were both as good as many pitchers who are in the Hall of Fame.   The best starting rotation between the 1954 Indians and the 1990s Braves.

            23.   1973 Los Angeles Dodgers.

            Second listing for Sutton, Osteen and Downing.   All five legitimate high-quality pitchers, and perhaps the first team we’ve had with a true five-man rotation.    I try to mention Andy Messersmith on this site at least once a week.

            24.   1978 Kansas City Royals.

            Funny; I would have expected the 1985 Royals to make the list for the 1980s—they weren’t close—but would not have expected the ’78 team to be here.   All four of their starters had winning records and ERAs much better than the league, despite playing in a hitter’s park.  

Leonard won 20 games in ’77, ’78 and ’80, and probably would have won 20 in 1981 without the strike.   Gale came out of the minors early in the ‘78 and started 13-3.   He was 6-foot-8 with a great, moving fastball, but he over-analyzed everything and was behind in the count from the day he was born.   Splittorff still holds the Royals’ record for career wins.

            The interesting guy here was Larry Gura, who had been knocking around the majors for almost a decade before he finally nailed down a rotation spot with the ’78 Royals, due to injuries to Steve Busby and Andy Hassler.   Gura had come up with the Cubs under Durocher, and had bounced to the Yankees, where he went 5-1 with a 2.41 ERA in eight starts in 1974.  

            I would compare Gura very strongly to Craig Breslow, the Yale-educated lefty who pitched in 75 games for Oakland last year; he’s about the same size as Gura, same build, same coloring.  Like Breslow, Gura was a lefty without an outstanding fastball, but like Breslow he was intelligent, had excellent balance and was always in shape.   Breslow, like Gura, has struggled to get opportunities consistent with his performance.

            After Gura went 5-1 with the Yankees in ’74 the Yankees hired Billy Martin as their manager.   Gura and Martin were like Marilyn Monroe and Curly from the Three Stooges; they just didn’t really belong together.    One time Martin saw Gura leaving the hotel in tennis whites.  He might as well have been holding hands with Liberace.   Not that Gura was gay; that’s not what I’m saying.   Martin was macho; worse, he was a midget, alcoholic macho who perpetually had to be more macho than the big guys.    He was a moron; he was a great manager, but he was a troglodyte.  

            So anyway, Martin ran Gura out of New York, and he wound up in Kansas City, where he went 4-0 with a 2.30 ERA in 1976.    Mid-1978, he was still struggling for starts.   By mid-September he was 14-4 and still winning.   I asked Whitey Herzog how he explained Gura’s emergence.   He looked at me straight and said, "It’s just a man getting an opportunity and taking advantage of it."

            I remember that I was so impressed by that answer, and I still am, because Herzog didn’t try to dress up what had happened by talking about the great work of his pitching coach, or Gura’s maturity, or how his slider had come around, or any of that nonsense.   He frankly admitted, not in so many words, that Gura had always been able to pitch; he just hadn’t given him the chance to do it before.   Gura shut out Toronto late in the year; by now it seemed likely that the Royals would play the Yankees in October, but Billy Martin had been fired earlier in the season.   Somebody asked Gura in the post-game scrum if it would mean more to him to play the Yankees if Billy Martin was still there. 

            "If Martin was still there," said Gura, "we’d be playing the Red Sox."  

            25.   Dodgers, 1985.

            Which one of those guys wouldn’t you want pitching for you?  Jerry Reuss or Cole Hamels, who do you want?  I’ll take Reuss.  

            26.   New York Mets, 1986.

            By 1991 they were starting Wally Whitehurst, Anthony Young and Pete Schourek. 

            27.   Oakland A’s, 1989.  

            Second listing for Bob Welch.    This team got 76 wins from their front four—probably the most in the last 30 years, I don’t know—and three of those guys were really that good.    They won the earthquake-delayed World Series over the Giants, but none of the starters will make the Hall of Fame.   We haven’t seen a Hall of Famer in one of these rotations since Sutton in ’73.  

            28.   Milwaukee Brewers, 1992.

            This is the weakest starting rotation to make the list, and needless to say there are at least five Braves’ staffs from the 1990s that would rank ahead of it.   With league ERAs around five, constantly juggling five-man rotations and the bullpens eating up more and more innings, it’s hard to find starting rotations in the 1990s that put together four or five quality pitchers. 

            29.   Chicago White Sox, 1993.

            I have less to say about the recent pitchers because I assume that everybody else remembers the same things I remember.   I never know if this is a wise choice, or whether I should write to an unseen reader who doesn’t remember that Black Jack McDowell was (and is) a rock musician as serious about his music as his pitching, or that he was one of the last pitchers to stubbornly burn himself out completing games he didn’t need to complete, or that Wilson Alvarez threw a no-hitter in his second major league start, or that Alex Fernandez was once looked upon as the second coming of Tom Seaver.    For the most part I assume that you know these things.

            30.   Atlanta Braves, 1997.

            This is the real standard, of course, that the Phillies will have to match.   The Braves won 98 games and led the National League in ERA in 1992, the year before they signed Greg Maddux.   I remember when Maddux signed there I thought that they could never live up to the expectations of their fans.    They did, and so I am more reluctant to say the same about the Phillies.   It won’t be easy.

            31.   Oakland A’s, 2001. 

            This team will figure prominently in the next long article that I post here, the 2001 A’s; they did something that no other team has done.

            Who has had a career like Barry Zito?   Since 2001 (his first full season) he has never made less than 32 starts in a season.    He has won 142 major league games, and he is 22 games over .500 in his career.

            And yet, somehow, he is not only regarded as a failure, but as a symbol of failure, a symbol of the waste of money and the waste of potential.    Who else is like that?

            Lidle is dead, of course.  Tim Hudson, on the other hand, remains effective after all these years, or at least is effective again after his injury.   Tim Hudson now has exactly the same career won-lost record as Sandy Koufax—165 wins, 87 losses.   

            32.  Seattle Mariners, 2001. 

            In 2001 and 2002 the Arizona Diamondbacks had perhaps the greatest one-two pitching punch in the history of baseball, Randy Johnson and Schilling, who were the two best pitchers in baseball both years, but they don’t make the list because their fourth starter in 2001 was Brian Anderson (4-9, 5.20 ERA) and in 2002 it was Rick Helling (10-12, 4.51).  Their number three starter both years, Miguel Batista, probably wasn’t any better than John (Is your Mama) Halama, the Mariners’ number six.  This category is more about depth than the one-two punch.   Garcia and Jamie Moyer were a long way from Johnson and Schilling, but the D’Backs three-four guys were a longer way away from 32-9.

            33.   2002 Atlanta Braves.

            2002, really?  It seems like yesterday.