The Evolution of Pitcher Usage - Firpo Marberry

by Lincoln Mitchell

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NOTE - This article comes from Lincoln Mitchell's Substack page, Kibitzing with Lincoln . Please click HERE to follow Lincoln on Substack.

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In the top of the sixth inning of game seven of the 1924 World Series, the New York Giants were trailing the Washington Senators by a score of 1-0. After the first two Giants batters reached base, Senators player-manager Bucky Harris brought Firpo Marberry, a 25-year-old who had just completed his second year in the big leagues, to get the Senators out of the jam.

Marberry gave up a sacrifice fly to Irish Meusel. Then Hack Wilson singled to reload the bases. The Senators defense then let Marberry down, but after two unearned runs scored, Marberry got out of the inning and pitched a scoreless seventh and eighth before giving way to some guy named Walter Johnson with the score knotted at three. Johnson pitched four shutout innings and the Senators pushed the winning run across in the bottom of the 12th. That game, including Marberry’s stellar relief work, gave the Senators their only World Series championship.

Marberry may be the least known pitcher in this series, but he was an excellent pitcher for whom a very solid Hall of Fame case could be made. At first glance, his number are impressive, but don’t give a full picture of his career. Marberry had a career record of 148-88 win an ERA of 3.63, good for an ERA+ of 116. His 30.7 career WAR is well below that of most Hall of Fame starting pitchers, but very much in line with most of the relievers enshrined in Cooperstown.

During his career, which lasted from 1923-1936. Marberry appeared in 551 games and started 186 of them. He led the American League in games six times. Saves were not a counted back then, but we now know that he led the league in that category six times as well. Marberry spent most of his career with the Senators but also had brief stints with the Tigers and Giants. Marberry became the all time saves leader in 1926 and retired after the 1936 season with 99 saves, the most by any pitcher until Johnny Murphy saved his hundredth game in 1946.

Marberry’s 1926 season was probably the first great season by a relief pitcher. He appeared in 64 games, 59 in relief, posted a 12-7 record with 22 saves and an ERA+ of 129, good for 3.6 WAR. That kind of line would not look out of place in a relief pitcher for much of the 1950s, 1960s or 1970s. Those 22 saves remained the single-season record until Joe Page saved 27 games for the Yankees in 1949.

Marberry is illustrative of the early days of the relief specialist. There were others as well, but Marberry was the best of this group. For example, the 1927 Yankees, led by Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig are considered by some to be the greatest team ever. The best pitcher on that team may have been a 30-year-old rookie named Wilcy Moore who started 12 games, relieved in 38 more, saved 13 and had a 2.28 ERA over 213 innings, good enough for 6.6 pitching WAR. About a decade later, White Sox and Indians pitcher Clint Brown also emerged as a star reliever, apprearing in more than thirty games while starting none in four different seasons.

Pitchers like Brown, Moore, who never approached his 1927 level again, and Marberry were the exceptions in the 1920s. Most relievers were still failed starters and few were impact players. Between 1920-1940 pitchers only appeared in 50 or more games while starting fewer than ten, in other words were important parts of the team pitching primarily in relief, 33 times. Moreover, five of those seasons were Marberry’s.

In those years, the best starters also sometimes doubled as relievers. Indeed, the most famous moment involving a relief pitcher in this era occurred in the 1926 World Series when the great Grover Cleveland Alexander struck out Tony Lazzeri, the Yankees Hall of Fame second baseman in the 7th inning of game seven. Alexander came out of the bullpen to face Lazzeri with the tying and go ahead runs on base. Alexander was not a relief specialist, but a starter in 600 of the 696 games he pitched in a fantastic big league career that lasted from 1911-1930.

Although few pitchers ever were as good as Alexander, the way he was used was pretty typical for top pitchers of that era. In fact, during that World Series, Alexander had started and pitched complete game victories in games two and six before picking up the save in game seven. In addition to Alexander, pitching greats from the 1920s and 1930s including Dizzy Dean, Carl Hubbell and Waite Hoyt had seasons where, in addition to being top-notch starters, they led their team in saves.

By Marberry’s time, starting pitching had stabilized into something very close to four man rotations. Between 1920-1940 only one pitcher started more than 40 games in a season with most teams spreading starts somewhat evenly among four or five pitchers. Managers still frequently tried to start their best pitchers in key games, so rotations where not yet entirely regularized.

Marberry was the first great pitcher who was primarily a reliever. This made him something of an oddity while he was playing, but it is clear now that he, along with Bucky Harris, Marberry’s manager for half the pitcher’s time in the big leagues. was helping to redefine pitching and pitcher usage.