The Greatest Pitchers You've Never Heard Of 7/10/12

Hey Guys!

While all of you have heard of the records of Cy Young (511 career wins) and Nolan Ryan (5,714 career strikeouts and seven no-hitters), today I am going to blog about some other all-time pitching records that I doubt will ever be broken, and all of those records are owned by Hall of Fame pitchers whose names you probably have never even heard of.  Here we go:

Kid Nichols:
Nichols was the fastest pitcher to ever get to 300 wins, doing it with the Boston Beaneaters when he was just 30 years old!!  He played from 1890-1906 with the Beaneaters, Cardinals, and Phillies. In his career, he had seven 30+ win seasons and eleven 20+ win seasons. Pretty impressive for someone who isn't very well known. His career record was 361 - 208.

Ed Walsh:
Ed has the lowest career ERA in baseball history.  It is a minuscule 1.82.  In a 13 year career with the White Sox from 1904-1916, he had a 195-126 record, and only allowed 598 earned runs. That's amazing. He only pitched 13 years years because his arm basically was shot from so many innings pitched.

Addie Joss:
Joss holds the record for the lowest career WHIP (walks+hits given up per inning) with a WHIP of 0.968. He also has the second-lowest career ERA with 1.89. He played nine years from 1902-1910 with the Indians, and is the only Hall of Famer who played for less than 10 years (he died of meningitis at age 31). He had a 160 - 97 record. Can you imagine what his numbers would've been if he lived longer??

Al Spalding:
In a seven-year career with the Red Stockings and Cubs from 1871-1877, Al had a record of 252-65 (that's right, almost 200 games over .500), which means that his win-loss percentage was .795, the highest in baseball history. These are the amount of games he won each year of his career: 1871:19, 1872: 38, 1873: 41, 1874: 52, 1875: 54, 1876: 47, 1877: 1. Wow!!!!  He also started the Spalding sporting goods company.  He was elected to the Hall of Fame as a pioneer/executive in 1939.

Old Hoss Radbourn:
In an 11-year career from 1881-1891, Hoss set the record for most wins in a season with 59 in 1884 (and he pitched 678 2/3 innings that year, the 2nd highest ever).  Some books even say that he won 60 games in 1884.  He won 309 games and lost only 194 in his career. Can you believe that he did this in just 11 years? To compare his 59-win season to some of the all time greats in their highest victory seasons, Cy Young won 36 games in 1892, Walter Johnson had 36 wins in 1913, and Christy Mathewson had 37 wins in 1908. Those three pitchers are considered among the best all time, and Hoss had the most wins ever in a season by far. Isn't that funny?

P.S.  - If you haven't yet done so, please don't forget to vote in the last semifinal of the group nicknames survey round, this time for All-Around Athletes. The contestants include Stan the Man (Stan Musial), The Say Hey Kid (Willie Mays), Charlie Hustle (Pete Rose), Mr. October (Reggie Jackson) and The Iron Horse (Lou Gehrig).  As usual, the survey appears in the right column above the Blog Archive.  Next week, once we have the winner of this week's survey, we will add the winner into the final round survey for the greatest baseball nickname ever, along with the other finalists, Larcenous Lou (Lou Brock), The Wizard of Oz (Ozzie Smith), Dr. K (Dwight Gooden) and The Sultan of Swat (Babe Ruth)!!