Bob Gibson vs. The Pirates

 Bob Gibson pitching 

at Forbes Field

Just as the death of Tom Seaver last month prompted me to see how he pitched in his Hall of Fame career against the Pirates, so, too, did the death of Bob Gibson. Thanks to the terrific baseball-almanac.com website, it took about thirty minutes of research to find out.

My memories tells me that Gibson pitched against the Pirates about ten to twelve times every year, and completely dominated them every time.  However, in fact, Gibson made 54 appearances against the Pirates over a 17 year career, an average of 3.2 games per year.  Only twice, 1969 and 1972, did he appear  as many as five times against the Bucs.

Here is a side-by-side comparison of Gibson vs. the Pirates as compared to his overall career figures.  I also threw in the figures for his landmark 1968 season and his World Series stats, just for the "Wow Factor."

Bob Gibson	vs. Pirates	Career	1968	World Series
W-L	25-16	251-174	22-9	7-2
%	0.610	0.591	0.710	0.778
ERA	3.20	2.91	1.12	1.89
WHIP	1.233	1.190	0.85	0.889
IP	410.1	3,884.1	304.2	81
R	146	1,420	49	19
ER	125	1,258	38	17
CG	22	255	28	8
ShO	5	56	134	2
K/9IP	7.70	7.22	7.92	10.2

As you can see, Gibson's career winning percentage against the Pirates was slightly above his career percentage, as was his "K's / 9 IP".  Both his ERA and his WHIP were higher against the Pirates than his overall career numbers.  I will leave it up to the Analytics gurus to decipher exactly what, if anything, that might mean.

Two games jumped out at me when I was doing the research.  In an appearance on July 26, 1960, and gave up 2 hits and 2 runs in one inning, and on May 6, 1964, Gibson gave up 1 hit, 0 runs, and 1 walk and had 0.0 innings pitched.  Both appearances were No Decisions for him.  What was up with that, I wondered.

In the 1960 game, Gibson came on in relief of Curt Simmons in a game that the Pirates won 5-4.  In the 1964 game, Ray Sadecki pitched 8.0 innings, and Gibson came on in relief of him in the ninth.  The Pirates scored in the bottom of the ninth and won the game 1-0.  The run and the loss went to Sadecki, but no Pirate was credited with an RBI in that game, so I don't know precisely what happened there.  More research for another day.  For you Bucco fans out there, Bob Friend gave up six hits and got the Win in a complete game performance.

Gibson also had three No Decisions against the Pirates in his career wherein he pitched nine innings but left after that when those games went into extra innings.

In that remarkable 1968 season, Gibson was every bit as dominant against Pittsburgh as he was against the rest of the National League:  4 games, 3 wins, 1 loss, 1.00 ERA, four complete games, two shut outs, 41 strike outs, 6 BB in 36 IP. 

Finally, no mention of Gibson vs. The Pirates would be complete without mentioning the game of August 14, 1971, when Gibson pitched a no-hitter against the Pirates.  I can vividly remember listening to that game on the radio on our Saline Street front porch that long ago Saturday night.  The Cardinals scored 5 runs in the first inning, and it was 8-0 after five innings.  The Pirates winning that game was unlikely from the start against a pitcher like Gibson, so the only thing exciting was the possibility of a no-hitter, which Gibson, of course, recorded.  Gibson walked three batters and struck out ten that night.  It was the first time that a no-hitter had ever been pitched in Pittsburgh.  And it wasn't like Gibson was going up against a line-up of lightweights that night.  Willie Stargell, Al Oliver, Dave Cash, and Bob Robertson were in the line-up that night, although for reasons that are lost to history Roberto Clemente, Manny Sanguillen, and Richie Hebner were not.  It was also the team that would go on to win the World Series two months later.  Five Hall of Famers played in that game that night: Joe Torre, Ted Simmons, and Gibson for St. Louis, and Bill Mazersoki and Stargell for the Pirates.  The dugouts that night also featured manager Red Schoendienst and Lou Brock for St. Louis and Clemente for Pittsburgh.  Eight future Hall of Famers present and accounted for that hot August night.  Not bad.

To Absent Friends - Bob Gibson

 Bob Gibson

1935 - 2020

255 W -174 L

2.91 ERA

255 CG, 56 Shut Outs

3,117 Strike Outs

The great, and I mean truly great, Bob Gibson, Hall of Fame pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals, died yesterday at the age of 84.  I am long past the stage of my life where I consider ball players and athletes heroes, but Bob Gibson has always been one of my very favorite athletes of all time.  As a Pirates fan, I often categorize baseball players by saying "In a critical game, who would I LEAST like to see the Pirates come up against?", and when you're talking about pitchers, Bob Gibson tops that list.  No pitcher of his era (1959-1975) was more intimidating on the mound.

The year 1968 is now commonly known as the "Year of the Pitcher" in Major League Baseball history.  Pitching was so dominant in that season, that MLB changed the rules of the game, primarily by  lowering the height of the pitcher's mound, and no pitcher in that season was more dominant than Gibson.  He pitched 304.2 innings that year, went 22-9, with an ERA of 1.12.  He had 28 complete games, and 13 shutouts.

A popular discussion point in bar room discussions or talk show debates is "If you needed to win just ONE game and your life depended on it, who would want to pitch in that game?"  The answer to that question has always been an easy one for me - Bob Gibson, and I know that I am not alone in that opinion.  He pitched in three World Series for the Cardinals in his career, 1964-67-68, and his record in those Series bears out that judgement.  In nine World Series games, Gibson went 7-2, 1.89 ERA.  He pitched 8 complete games and two shutouts.  He went 3-0 in 1967, and he started all three Games Seven in those Series, going 2-1.  He had 92 strike outs in Series play, and I believe that he still holds the World Series record for 17 K's in a single game, set in 1968 against the Tigers.

Former Cardinals and Pirates pitcher Nellie Briles spoke at a Pittsburgh SABR meeting once, and I asked him to talk just a bit about his former teammate, Gibson.  "He burned with a competitive fire and a will to  win like no other person I ever played with or against."  That's not an exact quote from Briles, but it is the gist of what he said, and it confirmed everything that I ever felt about Bob Gibson.

Within the space of a month, both Lou Brock and Bob Gibson have left us. What  terrible month for fans of the St. Louis Cardinals.

RIP Bob Gibson.

Gibson, Flood...and Those Who Followed

I just finished reading this book by one of my baseball heroes, Bob Gibson.  The book is, as the title indicates, a pitch-by-pitch account of Gibson's performance in Game One of the 1968 World Series against the Detroit Tigers, a game in which Gibson shut out the Tigers 4-0 and set a still standing record of 17 strike outs in a World Series game.

As great as Gibson was, and as great as that game was, a pitch-by-pitch account of any game can become somewhat stultifying after a couple of innings worth of description ("with a 1-2 count on Freehan, I thought that a back door slider would be just the thing"...you get the idea).  Still, the book is worthwhile because it is, after all BOB GIBSON telling the story, and his comments about his teammates on the Cardinals, his Tigers opponents (like Denny McLain), and his contemporary players  (Koufax, Aaron, Stargell etc) are interesting and worth reading.

Gibson facing Norm Cash in Game One

I was particularly interested in Gibson's narrative about his teammate and roommate, Curt Flood.  He tells the story of Flood's refusal to accept a trade of him by the Cardinals to the Phillies after the 1969 season, the lawsuit that followed, the trip to the Supreme Court, Flood's checkered life that followed his baseball life, which included alcoholism, and death at age 59 from throat cancer (Jesse Jackson gave his eulogy).  

Let me let Gibson tell the story:

"Curt's story was tragic, in the personal sense, but it was also essential on a level that makes him both historic and heroic. It set the narrative for the punishing process that had to occur in the interest of progress. Somebody had to take the brunt of it.  Somebody, in effect, had to martyr himself, and Curt was the guy.  He fully understood the ramifications of what he was doing.

"The greater tragedy, to me, is that so many of the modern players who have benefited from Curt's sacrifice have no idea what he went through or even who he was.  The fact is, while Curt lost his case and his career and the life in which he'd flourished, the players who came after him won and won big."

I just wonder if the guys who struck it big in MLB this past week, guys like David Price, Zach Grienke, and, yes, even Neil Walker, will pause for a moment and give thanks to the memory of Curt Flood.

The World Series and Madison Bumgarner

I cannot let any more time pass by without a salute to the Giants historic, or at least quasi-historic, World Series victory, their third such title in the last five seasons (see The Grandstander of October 11, 2014).  It is a remarkable feat in this era of wild cards and multiple tiers post-season playoffs.  A dynasty?  Yeah, I would say so.

I will also point out this quote from The Grandstander's World Series preview from October 21:

Okay, you want a prediction.  I'll give you the Giants to win in six games.  The biggest reason for that will be the ace pitcher of the Giants, Madison Bumgarner.  He has been completely dominant in the post-season, and I believe that he will be the difference between the two teams.

Well, it took seven games, not six, but otherwise, as the saying goes, I believe I had that.

And how about that Game Seven?  Really, it was everything you would have wanted in a seventh game, and when you tie in the performance of Series MVP Madison Bumgarner, pitching five innings of near flawless relief on only two days rest, you have, as Sam Spade might put it, the stuff that dreams are made of.

Much was made off the World Series performance of Bumgarner, not only in his other worldly 2014 Series, but of his total World Series performances when his 2010 and 2012 records are included.  That got me to thinking, so I decided to do a little comparison shopping to see just exactly how Bumgarner compares to some of the greatest pitching performances in the history of the Fall Classic.

I make no claim that this list is all-inclusive.  I just picked some of what I knew, without giving it too much deep thinking, to be among the greatest pitching performances in World Series history. I am sure that there are many that I have left out, but I think this is a pretty good list.  In some instances, I included just one World Series (a couple of the pitchers were only in one Series), and in some cases, I included both a single season, and a pitcher's complete World Series record.  I also confined this ONLY to the World Series and did not include Divisional and LCS records.

Here you go:

Pitcher	Season	Games	IP	W-L	Save	ERA	K	BB	WHIP
Madison Bumgarner	2014	3	21	2-0	1	0.43	17	1	0.476
	Career (3 WS)	5	36	4-0	1	0.25	31	5	0.528
Christy Mathewson	1905	3	27	3-0	0	0.00	18	1	0.519
	Career (4 WS)	11	101.2	5-5	0	0.97	48	10	0.836
Babe Adams	1909	3	27	3-0	0	1.33	11	6	0.889
Mickey Lolich	1968	3	27	3-0	0	1.67	21	6	0.963
Bob Gibson	1967	3	27	3-0	0	1.00	26	5	0.704
	Career (3 WS)	9	81	7-2	0	1.89	92	17	0.889
Sandy Koufax	1965	3	24	2-1	0	0.38	29	5	0.750
	Career (4 WS)	8	51	4-3	0	0.95	61	11	0.825
Lew Burdette	1957	3	27	3-0	0	0.67	13	4	0.926
Randy Johnson	2001	3	17.1	3-0	0	1.04	19	3	0.692
Whitey Ford	1960	2	18	2-0	0	0.00	8	2	0.722
	Career (11 WS)	22	146	10-8	0	2.71	94	34	1.137
Mariano Rivera	Career (7 WS)	24	36.1	2-1	11	0.99	32	8	0.963
Babe Ruth	Career (2 WS)	3	31	3-0	0	0.87	8	10	0.935

You can draw your own conclusions form this, but here are some of mine:

• For a WS career, that 0.25 ERA of Bumgarner's is the best.  Ever.
• For one single WS, I don't think anyone is ever going to top Matty's performance in 1905.
• But if you're an "analytics guy", it needs to be noted that Bumgarner's WHIP in 2014 is better than Matty's of 1905.  In fact, it is the best such number on this particular list.
• It was hard to choose which single Series of Koufax' to select here.  He was the MVP in both the '63 and '65 Series.
• As a Pirate fan, I am glad that Whitey Ford didn't get a third start in 1960.
• That Babe Ruth guy was some ball player.  I heard that he could even hit a little.

So as to the original premise, I think that we can presume that if Madison Bumgarner never throws another pitch, or if his career fizzles out beginning in 2015, it is safe to say that he most definitely now belongs in the pantheon of All-Time World Series Greats.

All that said, if you were a manager, and had to pick ONE pitcher to start ONE game with everything on the line, who would it be?  

I'm still picking this guy: