20-Game Losers Populate the Baseball Hall of Fame

This article appears in SABR’s “20-Game Losers” (2017), edited by Bill Nowlin and Emmet R. Nowlin.

These days if a pitcher loses 20 games in a single season, he might not have much of a job the following year. For more than one reason, most managers wouldn’t send a guy out there who already had 18 or 19 losses. A pitcher would only rarely have the opportunity to lose 20 games. That’s why since 1980 there’s been only one pitcher who has lost 20. Mike Maroth was 9-21 in his sophomore season for the 2003 Detroit Tigers but was kept on board and had a couple of good years in ’04 and ’05.

Of the 74 pitchers currently honored in the National Baseball Hall of Fame, 21 are 20-game losers. That’s 28.4 percent. How could it be that more than 25 percent of the pitchers in the Hall have lost 20 or more games in a season? Doesn’t that seem to defy reason? Isn’t it counterintuitive?

Several of them were “repeat offenders” – they didn’t have just one bad season in which they lost 20 games. They had more than one.

In fact, Pud Galvin lost 20 or more games for 10 years in a row!

The 20-game losers who are in the Hall of Fame:

Steve Carlton – 13-20 in 1973, the year after his 27-10 season in 1972. Carlton lost 19 in 1970. He was six times a 20-game winner.

Jack Chesbro – Over a six-year stretch, he averages 25.5 wins per season. In 1905 he won “only” 19, falling just that one W short of six years in a row of winning 20 or more. His 41 wins in 1904 (he was 41-12) almost, but not quite, got the New York Highlanders to the American League pennant. His 20-loss season in 1908 was the last year he had more than five decisions, and the last year in which he recorded a win. Teammate Joe Lake lost 22.

John Clarkson – Clarkson lost 21 games for Chicago in 1887 (but he won 38) and 20 games for 1888 (when he won 30). Including those two seasons, he was a 20-game winner for eight years in a row, and two of them were stupendous seasons (53-16 in 1885 and 49-19 in 1889). He started 70 of his team’s 113 games. Teammate Jim McCormick (20-4) was another 20-game winner that year, but there were seven seasons in which the UK-born McCormick lost 20 or more, twice losing 30 and once (in 1879) losing 40.

Candy Cummings – Cummings had a short six-season career. He lost 20 for the New York Mutuals in 1872 (but won 33) and he lost 26 for the Philadelphia Whites in 1974 (he won 28). Generally considered the inventor of the curveball, he may have been the most “lightweight” major leaguer, listed as 120 pounds.

Pud Galvin – From 1879 through 1888 – 10 seasons in a row – Galvin never lost fewer than 22 games. No other pitcher lost 20 or more games for 10 years in a row, getting hired year after year. In back-to-back seasons of 1883 and 1884, Galvin won 46 games each year.

Jesse Haines – In his first full season for the Cardinals, he was 13-20 despite a very good 2.98 ERA. He later had three 20-win seasons, and was overall 210-158 (3.64) and 3-1 over the course of four World Series. He was voted into the Hall by the Veterans Committee in 1970.

Walter Johnson – Universally acclaimed as one of the best pitchers in baseball history, Johnson had six seasons in a row in which he won 20 or more games. (In fact, he averaged 29 wins over that stretch.) And in the season he lost 20 (1916), he won 25. There followed three more seasons of 20 or more wins – for an overall span of 10 consecutive 20-win seasons, and then – just for good measure – he added a couple more later in his career, helping the Senators win back-to-back pennants in 1924 and 1925. All told, Johnson won 417 games with a career 2.17 ERA.

Tim Keefe – The pride of Cambridge, Massachusetts, Keefe was a 20-game loser three years in a row, with a fourth such season later on in 1886 (a year in which he won 22 games more than the 20 he lost). Six years in a row, he won 32 or more games (1883-1888.)

Ted Lyons – Ted Lyons pitched in parts of 21 seasons for the Chicago White Sox. He was twice a 20-game loser (1929 and 1933), but thrice a 20-game winner (1925, 1927, and 1930).

Rube Marquard – Coming off three consecutive seasons of 23 wins or more (1911-1913, all three seasons seeing his New York Giants in the World Series), Marquardt lost 22 in 1914 – despite a 3.06 earned-run average that year that was just marginally better than his 3.08 career ERA.

Joe McGinnity – Iron Man McGinnity began his career with eight consecutive seasons winning 20 or more games. Only twice did he lose that many, in his 1901 season (26-20) with Baltimore and his 31-20 season with the Giants in 1903. He had a career 2.66 ERA.

Phil Niekro – A master of the knuckleball, the elder of the two Niekro brothers pitched in 24 major-league seasons, winning 318 games with a 3.35 ERA. In 1977 he lost 20 games and in 1979 he lost 20 games. He had three seasons when he won 20 or more – 1969, 1974, and the just-mentioned 1979 (he was 21-20). He was a five-time All-Star and won four Gold Gloves.

Hank O’Day – O’Day pitched in only seven seasons and in just one of them – his last – did he have a winning record. In three of his first five seasons he lost more than 20 games. How did a guy with a 73-110 career record get into the Hall of Fame in the year 2013? He was voted in as an umpire. O’Day umpired 3,984 major-league games over the course of 35 years.

Old Hoss Radbourn – Radbourn started 64 percent of his team’s games when he pitched for the 1884 Providence Grays; his record that year was 59-12. He’d improved on his 49-25 season the year before, the first of his four 20-game-loss seasons. He won 309 games in 11 seasons, averaging 28 wins a year.

Eppa Rixey – Eppa Rixey pitched eight years for the Phillies and 13 years for the Cincinnati Reds. His 21- and 22-loss seasons both came for Philadelphia. After his 11-22 year in 1920 (he’d been 22-10 just the year before), the Phils traded him to the Reds for Greasy Neale and Jimmy Ring. He then added three more 20-win seasons to his résumé.

Robin Roberts – Robin Roberts won 20 or more games for the Phillies six seasons in a row, 1950 through 1955. He won “only” 19 in 1956. And then he bore a 10-22 season, his 20-loss campaign (in a year the Phillies finished 77-77.)

Red Ruffing – In 1928 and 1929 Ruffing lost 25 and 22 games respectively for the Boston Red Sox. He sort of had two careers – he was 36-96 in seven seasons for the Red Sox, hardly Hall of Fame material. But after Boston traded him to the Yankees (for Cedric Durst), he built a 231-124 career that embraced four consecutive 20-win seasons (1936-39).

Amos Rusie – “The Hoosier Thunderbolt” pitched nine seasons of nineteenth-century baseball. In more than half of them (five seasons), he lost 20 or more games (twice more than 30 games), but at the same time he won 20 or more games in eight of the nine seasons – every one but his rookie year. From 1891 through 1894, he won 32 or more games.

Ed Walsh – Big Ed Walsh followed up his 24-18 season in 1907 with a spectacular 40-15 season in 1908, and back-to-back 27-win seasons in 1911 and 1912. The year he lost 20 was 1910, when he was 18-20 and yet led the league with a 1.27 ERA (the fifth year in a row his ERA was under 2.00).

John Montgomery Ward – In 17 seasons, Ward played over 1,500 games as a position player. In the first seven of those seasons, he pitched in 293 games (winning 164). Ward’s first seasons (1878-1880, for Providence) saw him average 36 wins a year. His 1880 season resulted in a 39-24 record.

Mickey Welch – Welch’s rookie year, with the Troy Trojans in 1880, saw him put up a record of 34-30. He put together nine 20-plus-win seasons, mostly with the New York Giants, and four 20-loss campaigns. His best season was 1884, when his record was 44-15.

Vic Willis – Pitching for the Boston Beaneaters from 1898 to 1905, Willis had three 20-win seasons but also three 20-loss seasons. In 1905 he was 12-29 and he was traded to the Pittsburgh Pirates for Dave Brain, Del Howard, and Vive Lindaman. He reeled off four 20-win seasons and never lost more than 13.

Cy Young – Last but by no means least, Cy Young won 511 major-league games, with a staggering 749 complete games out of 815 games started. In 22 years he compiled an ERA of 2.63. He was a three-time 20-game loser, twice in the nineteenth century with the Cleveland Spiders (both times he won more games than he lost) and once in the twentieth with the dismal 1906 Boston Americans. Fifteen times he was a 20-game winner, and five of those years, he was a 30-game winner.

A remarkable group of pitchers, ranging from the nineteenth century into the latter years of the twentieth. It just goes to show you can lose 20 games – and sometimes quite a bit more – but still make it to the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

BILL NOWLIN has never lost even one major-league game. A member of SABR’s board of directors since 2004, he has written or edited more than 60 books, mostly on baseball, and is a co-founder of Rounder Records.