The Evolution of Pitcher Usage - Hoyt Wilhelm

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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Hoyt Wilhelm was the first player to carve out a Hall of Fame career almost entirely based on his work as a relief pitcher. That career was also one of the strangest in baseball history.

Wilhelm began playing professionally in 1942, but did not pitch in his first big league game until fully a decade later. One of the reasons Wilhelm took so long to make it to the big leagues was because he spent three years in the Army during World War II, and won a Purple Heart for his heroism. Wilhelm the pitched for a total of nine teams over the course of his 21-year career before being elected to the Hall of Fame in 1985, thirteen years after retiring midway through the 1972 season.

One of the major reasons Wilhelm, who retired when he was 49 years old, was able to pitch so long was that he relied heavily on the knuckleball, a pitch that while extremely difficult to master, is much easier on the arm than other kinds of pitches. Wilhelm is still probably the second-best knuckleballer ever. Only Phil Niekro was clearly better.

As a 29-year-old rookie with the New York Giants in 1952, Wilhelm was used exclusively as a reliever, going 15-3 with 11 saves and a 2.43 ERA out of the bullpen. He finished second in the Rookie of the Year balloting and fourth in the MVP vote that year. It was not until 1958, while pitching for Cleveland that Wilhelm finally started a game. Between 1958 and 1960, he started 48 games for Cleveland and then Baltimore, but then only started four more games during his entire career.

In 1968, Wilhelm set the record for total games pitched and retired after pitching in 1,070 games. That record would stand until Dennis Eckersley broke it in 1998. Jesse Orosco eclipsed Eckersley the following year. Orosco’s 1, 252 games is still the most by any pitcher.

Although Wilhelm held the record for career saves from 1964-1979, his 228 are now 43rd on the all-time list, just below Joakim Soria. Wilhelm was generally used more as a fireman, coming in to stop a rally in whatever inning was needed, rather than in the closer role that emerged later. That was how most of the top relievers of Wilhelm’s era were used.

Wilhelm’s best season out of the bullpen was probably 1965 when he went 7-7 with 21 saves and a 1.81 ERA for a White Sox team that finished in second place, seven games behind the Twins. Notably, Wilhelm, who was 42 and in his 14th big league season, shared the closer role on that team with Eddie Fisher. Calling Fisher the closer on that team is a little inacurrate as neither the term nor the role existed at the time. Instead, the two pitchers shared relief duties, reflecting bullpen use at the time. Wilhelm finished the game in 45 of his 66 relief appearances, while Fisher did the same in 60 of his 82 relief appearances.

Wilhelm and Fisher were both very good at their craft, but their usage was not atypical. They came in when needed, frequently entered the game before the ninth inning and both averaged just over two innings per relief appearance.

Wilhelm is significant in part because he was the best pitcher during the period when most teams began to value and prioritize good relief pitching. By the late 1950s and 1960s pitchers like Phil Regan, nicknamed the Vulture because he was seen as picking up wins after the starting pitcher did most of the work, Ryne Duren, Ron Perranoski, Luis Arroyo, Elroy Face, Stu Miller and Lindy McDaniel were also gaining recognition for their work out of the bullpen, but Wilhelm was better and more consistent than all of them.

Wilhelm pitched for so long that by the end of his career, Rollie Fingers, Goose Gossage, Sparky Lyle, Mike Marshall, Tug McGraw and others had already established themselves as elite relievers in the modern sense. By that time, relievers were no longer a novelty, but were understood to be an essential part of the team.