Pitching trends are constantly evolving. Part of the reason is changes in game strategy, player usage, or even equipment. Part of it is improvement in players’ skills which, in turn, results in changes in expectations of player performance.
This quiz identifies pitchers who, like James Fenimore Cooper’s Mohican, were the last of a breed. In our case, “breed” is a statistical “feat” that the pitcher accomplished during a season of play.
Thanks to those who played and succeeded in solving 6 of the 10 quizzes (bolded). Here is the solution, for pitcher seasons since 1901:
- Hank Wyse (1950) is the last pitcher (of 38) with twice as many walks as strikeouts (min. 162 IP).
- Hugh Mulcahy (1937) is the last pitcher (of 7) to both start and relieve in 25 or more games.
- Omar Daal (1995) is the only pitcher to appear in 20 or more games and not start or finish any of them
- David Wells (1998) is the last pitcher (of 41) to have more shutouts than losses (min. 162 IP)
- Byron Houck (1913) is the only pitcher with an ERA+ lower than 100 times his W-L% (min. 162 IP)
- Elmer Jacobs (1917) is the last pitcher (of 10) with an ERA under 3.00 that is greater than 10 times his W-L% (min. 162 IP)
- Ted Wingfield (1927) is the only pitcher with a WHIP higher than his strikeout total (min. 20 games)
- Bill Lee (1945) is the last pitcher (of 23) with a WHIP higher than his SO/9 ratio (min. 162 IP)
- Carl Lundgren (1907) is the only pitcher with a BB/9 ratio 3 times as high as his ERA (min. 162 IP)
- Matt Keough (1982) is the last pitcher (of 7) with a HR/9 ratio twice as high as his SO/BB ratio (min. 162 IP)
Some rules:
- feats are those achieved in seasons, based on either 162 IP, or 20 appearances and less than 162 IP
- feats are based on either one or two metrics that can be seen on Baseball-Reference or FanGraphs, on a main player page.
- none of these feats has been achieved in this century
