Boston Red Sox: Top 5 starting pitchers in franchise history
The BoSox Injection staff ranks the top handful of players in Boston Red Sox history at each position. We begin with starting pitchers.
October 6, 2016; Cleveland, OH, USA; Boston Red Sox starting pitcher Rick Porcello (22) throws in the third inning against the Cleveland Indians during game one of the 2016 ALDS playoff baseball game at Progressive Field. Mandatory Credit: Ken Blaze-USA TODAY Sports
The Boston Red Sox will enter the 2017 season with a loaded rotation, led by a trio of aces that form what is expected to be the most dominant staff in the American League.
As great as this pitching staff is capable of being, none of them crack the top five on this list of the greatest pitchers in franchise history. The Red Sox have a rich history chalk full of legendary figures that are among the best to ever take the mound.
To compile this list we need to look beyond overall career accomplishments and consider what they contributed to this franchise. Perhaps Chris Sale continues on his current trajectory to earn a spot on this list one day, but he’s yet to throw a pitch in a Red Sox uniform so we can’t count him. David Price has had a spectacular career, but his one season in Boston wasn’t exactly his best. Rick Porcello is the reigning Cy Young Award winner, but this year was really the only great season he’s ever put together.
So who does make the list? Let’s find out.
Jul 20, 2014; Boston, MA, USA; Boston Red Sox starting pitcher Jon Lester (31) throws a pitch against the Kansas City Royals in the first inning at Fenway Park. Mandatory Credit: David Butler II-USA TODAY Sports
Honorable Mentions
Before we get to our top five, let’s take a look at a handful of pitchers that have unquestionably had a tremendous impact on the franchise, but didn’t quite make the cut.
Curt Schilling: His stint in Boston came at the tail end of a Hall of Fame caliber career, the last few years of which were below his lofty standards. He’s worth mentioning based solely on his outstanding 2004 season, when he won 21 games, finished second in Cy Young voting and delivered one of the all-time most memorable postseason performances.
Jon Lester: Sits ninth in both career wins and fWAR in Red Sox history. Lester made three All-star appearances during his eight seasons in Boston, but never finished higher than fourth in Cy Young voting. He put up solid, but not spectacular, numbers during the regular season, but shined on the postseason stage.
Tim Wakefield: The ageless knuckleball pitcher gets credit for longevity. While his career 4.43 ERA won’t dazzle anyone, he is the franchise leader in innings pitched and third with 186 wins.
Smoky Joe Wood: Unlike any pitcher you’ll see these days, routinely making appearances out of the bullpen between starts. In 1912 he made 43 appearances, including 38 starts, totaling an absurd 344 innings. He led the league with 34 wins, 35 complete games and ten shutouts. He won 117 games with the Red Sox with a 1.99 ERA.
Dennis Eckersley: The Hall of Famer’s path to Cooperstown was paved mostly by his years as a dominant reliever for the Oakland A’s, but before that he had some outstanding seasons in the Red Sox rotation.
El Tiante had an inconsistent run during his eight seasons in Boston, but when he was at the top of his game there were few better on the mound.
Tiant bounced back from a disappointing first season with the Red Sox to post a league-leading 1.91 ERA in 1972. He wouldn’t capture another ERA title after that, but he did win 20+ games in three of the next four seasons.
The right-hander from Cuba was a workhorse, reaching at least 260 innings in four consecutive seasons. In 1974 he tossed an absurd 311 1/3 innings, including 25 complete games and a league high 7 shutouts.
Red Sox fans will fondly remember Tiant for his postseason performance in 1975. After defeating Oakland in a complete game three-hit shutout in the ALCS, Tiant would go on to win two of his starts in the World Series. That included another complete game shutout in Game 1, followed by a gutsy 155-pitch effort in Game 4 on the road in Cincinnati to even the series. Drained from the heavy workload, Tiant was roughed up in Game 6, only to be saved by Carlton Fisk‘s iconic 12th inning home run. He would finish that postseason with a 3-0 record and 2.86 ERA over four starts. While Boston ultimately fell short in Game 7, they don’t make it that far without Tiant’s heroics.
Robert Moses Grove had already established himself as one of the best pitchers in baseball long before he arrived in Boston, leading the league in ERA in five of his last eight seasons with the Philadelphia A’s (yes, this was back in the old days, before the A’s moved to Oakland and Philly had an American League team).
The trade that shipped him to Boston in 1933 failed to pay immediate dividends for the Red Sox, as Grove was derailed by an arm injury that limited him to 12 starts and a brutal 6.50 ERA that was more than double his career mark.
If Boston was suffering from any buyer’s remorse, Grove quickly washed it away by reeling off five straight All-Star campaigns, capturing four more ERA titles along the way.
Grove is one of the few pitchers in major league history to win 300 games. While only 105 of those game in a Red Sox uniform, that’s still enough to place him 11th in franchise history. His 3.34 ERA during his time in Boston would look significantly better if not for that injury plagued first season. The final two years of his career were a bit below his usual standards, dragging his numbers down further, but in fairness he retired at the age of 41.
He may only have had five great seasons in Boston, but he was so dominant during that time that he still ranks 4th in franchise history with 34.6 WAR.
His accomplishments may be a bit overlooked, in part because he began his career with a franchise that has twice since moved to other cities, but the man affectionately known as “Lefty” was one of the top left-handed pitchers to ever take the mound. Grove was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1947. While some of his best years came in Philadelphia, it’s a Boston cap that is emblazoned on his plaque.
The award recognizing the best pitcher in each league is named after the guy, so clearly we had to find room on this list for Cy Young.
Young is the all-time major league leader with 511 wins, 192 of which came during his eight seasons in Boston to tie him for the franchise record.
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Among pitchers that have thrown at least 300 innings in a Red Sox uniform, only Smoky Joe Wood has a lower ERA than the 2.00 mark that Young produced in Boston, while his 2.01 FIP is the best in franchise history among that qualified group.
Young of course never won the award that would eventually be named after him, but if it had existed in his day he certainly would have captured several. He led the league in wins three times in Boston, twice topping 32. He won an ERA title in his first season with the Red Sox back in 1901 and posted a sub-2.00 ERA in three of his first five years in Boston.
Most impressive may be his massive workload. Young topped 320 innings in six of his first seven seasons with the Red Sox. The all-time major league leader in complete games tossed 275 of them in Boston, by far the most in franchise history. They don’t make pitchers like Cy Young anymore, with teams now terrified of seeing their prized aces break down or having their arms fall off if they even approached the number of innings he once found routine.
Clearly he played in a very different era, but we’ll certainly never see another pitcher like Young again.
Jul 30, 2013; Boston, MA, USA; Boston Red Sox former pitcher Roger Clemens waves to the crowd during pre game ceremonies against the Seattle Mariners at Fenway Park. Mandatory Credit: Bob DeChiara-USA TODAY Sports
The Rocket is one of the best pitchers to ever take the mound in baseball history. While his tainted past leaves his Hall of Fame candidacy in question, you can build a solid argument that the 13 seasons Clemens spent with the Red Sox stamped his ticket to Cooperstown before PEDs ever entered the equation.
Clemens made five All-Star appearances during his time in Boston, capturing three Cy Young awards and four ERA titles. In 1986 he won an MVP award, a rarity for a starting pitcher, by leading the league with 24 wins and a 2.48 ERA.
There have only been five instances in which a pitcher has struck out 20 batters in nine innings of the same game, two of which belong to Clemens. The first was in ’86 when he struck out 20 Seattle Mariners in a 3-1 victory, setting the tone early for what would become an MVP season that would end with a World Series appearance. A decade later he would accomplish the feat again by shutting out the Detroit Tigers in September at the tail end of what would be his last season in Boston.
Clemens is tied with Cy Young for the franchise record in wins with 192. His 2590 strikeouts are by far the most in franchise history and he also has a sizable lead in the Red Sox record books with 76.8 WAR.
His 133.7 WAR is the highest in major league history for a pitcher, according to FanGraphs. Even if you only count his years with the Red Sox, he would still rank 24th among pitchers. If Hall of Fame voters want to punish Clemens for using steroids, I get it. However, there was never any evidence that Clemens was cheating during his time in Boston, so let’s not pretend that PED use was the reason he put up numbers worthy of Cooperstown.
Jul 29, 2015; Boston, MA, USA; Hall of Fame player Pedro Martinez stops to smell the roses during his number retirement ceremony performed in Spanish before the game between the Chicago White Sox and the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park. Mandatory Credit: Greg M. Cooper-USA TODAY Sports
Nothing in baseball can compare to what it was like watching Pedro Martinez take the mound at Fenway Park. His starts created an electric atmosphere that kept the crowd buzzing with the anticipation that they were about to witness something special, which often times they did.
The Red Sox traded for Martinez following a career year for the Montreal Expos in which he captured his first Cy Young. After finishing as the runner-up in his first season in Boston, Pedro would win the award in each of the following two season.
His 1999 and 2000 seasons showcased the best pitching performance you will ever see in the modern era in consecutive seasons. Pedro went 23-4 while leading the league with a 2.07 ERA, 0.92 WHIP and 313 strikeouts in ’99. That season was also notable for his brilliant All-Star Game performance. Martinez struck out five of the six batters he faced to earn MVP honors at the Mid-Summer Classic played at Fenway Park. In case that wasn’t impressive enough, Pedro followed that season with an arguably better one, posting a 1.74 ERA and 0.73 WHIP.
Martinez is third among Red Sox pitchers with a 51.9 WAR, but pitched about half as many innings as Young or Clemens did in Boston because he only played here for seven seasons.
His 2.52 ERA ranks 10th among Red Sox pitchers with at least 800 innings pitched and none of the other pitchers ahead of him in that group pitched for the franchise more recently than Babe Ruth‘s last year in Boston in 1919.
Pedro is also the franchise leader in strikeout rate (10.95 K/9), strikeout percentage (30.6%) and strikeout-to-walk ratio (5.45).
2004 was the last year that Pedro spent in Boston, but he left the city on top by helping the Red Sox break an 86-year World Series title drought.
Martinez was elected into the baseball Hall of Fame in 2015, his first year on the ballot. Later that year the Red Sox made him the first pitcher in franchise history to have his number retired at Fenway.
His dominant run, dazzling statistical resume and contributions to that historic championship team will forever make Pedro an icon in the city of Boston, which is why he earns the top spot as the best pitcher in Red Sox history.
