Baseball Toaster was unplugged on February 4, 2009.
Hey Joe, What Do You Know? III
Expanding on the Mays query from last night, how many pitchers have started and won a playoff game with 5 or fewer starts for their team. I have included World Series, LCS, and division series. I list them in reverse order by wins with the team for the season and include the player's total stats if he switched teams mid-year:
Name Year PO? Tm W L All tms W L Virgil Trucks 1945 WS DET 0 0 Red Munger 1946 WS STL 2 2 Tom Zachary 1928 WS NYY 3 3 WSH-NYY 9 12 Bob Wolcott 1995 ALCS SEA 3 2 Larry Christenson 1981 NLDS PHI 4 7 Tommy John 1982 ALCS CAL 4 2 NYY-CAL 14 12 Don Sutton 1982 ALCS MIL 4 1 HOU-MIL 17 9 David Cone 1992 ALCS TOR 4 3 NYM-TOR 17 10 Ken Hill 1995 ALCS CLE 4 1 StL-CLE 10 8 Ed Crane 1888 WS NYG 5 6 Alex Ferguson 1925 WS WSH 5 1 BosA-NYY-WSH 9 5 Marius Russo 1943 WS NYY 5 10 Roger Craig 1955 WS BRO 5 3 Mike Krukow 1987 NLCS SFG 5 6 John Burkett 1996 ALDS TEX 5 2 FLA-TEX 11 12
Note that Trucks started one game that year. Actually Trucks and Munger were two guys like Mays who missed a substantial portion of the given year but enjoyed success the previous year. Craig, Crane, and Wolcott were rookies. Christenson, Russo, and Krukow were old vets finishing out careers. The others were mid-season acquisitions.
Actually, Larry Christenson got old quick destroying his knees in some Tug McGraw bicycle race for charity at the age of 24. He was never the same. Considering that he won 45 games by age 23, LC could have been pretty good.
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