Bruce Sutter

Baseball Player Won-Loss Records
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Bruce Sutter

Hall-of-Famers as Seen Through Player Won-Lost Records: Bruce Sutter

Bruce Sutter was elected to the Hall of Fame in his 13th year of eligibility, 2006, with 76.9% of the vote.

Five highlights of Bruce Sutter's career:

Bruce Sutter was named to six All-Star teams, received Cy Young votes five times, and received MVP votes six times.

Bruce Sutter led the National League in saves five times. His 45 saves in 1984 tied the major-league record for saves in a season (since broken).

Sutter was named the NL Rolaids Relief Man of the Year four times, in 1979, 1981, 1982, and 1984.

Sutter won the 1979 Cy Young award. That season, Sutter pitched 101.1 innings in 62 games, all in relief, with 6 wins, 37 saves, 110 strikeouts and a 2.22 ERA.

Bruce Sutter was the first player elected to the Hall of Fame who never started a major-league game. Trevor Hoffman was the second such player.

The first two tables below present Bruce Sutter's career as measured by Player won-lost records, in and out of context.

Season	Team	Age	Games	pWins	pLosses	pWORL	pWOPA

Basic Player Won-Lost Records
						Value Decomposition
1976	CHN	23	52	4.9	2.9	2.6	1.9
1977	CHN	24	62	10.0	4.8	6.3	5.0
1978	CHN	25	64	8.7	6.8	3.2	1.9
1979	CHN	26	62	9.8	6.0	5.0	3.6
1980	CHN	27	60	7.9	6.1	2.9	1.6
1981	SLN	28	48	6.7	4.7	2.8	1.8
1982	SLN	29	70	9.7	6.5	4.3	2.9
1983	SLN	30	60	8.1	7.2	2.1	0.7
1984	SLN	31	71	10.0	6.8	4.5	3.0
1985	ATL	32	58	6.5	6.4	1.0	-0.1
1986	ATL	33	16	0.9	1.1	-0.1	-0.2
1987	-	34	-	-	-	-	-
1988	ATL	35	38	4.3	3.3	1.6	0.9
			------	------	------	------	------
CAREER (reg. season)			661	87.6	62.7	36.1	22.9
			------	------	------	------	------
PostSeason (career)			6	0.8	0.2	0.7	0.6
			------	------	------	------	------
COMBINED			667	88.4	62.9	36.8	23.5

Season	Team	Age	Games	eWins	eLosses	eWORL	eWOPA

Expected Player Won-Lost Records
						Value Decomposition
1976	CHN	23	52	4.4	3.4	1.7	1.0
1977	CHN	24	62	9.2	5.7	4.9	3.6
1978	CHN	25	64	7.5	8.0	1.1	-0.3
1979	CHN	26	62	9.3	6.6	4.0	2.6
1980	CHN	27	60	7.4	6.6	1.9	0.7
1981	SLN	28	48	5.9	5.5	1.5	0.5
1982	SLN	29	70	8.6	7.6	2.3	0.9
1983	SLN	30	60	7.3	8.0	0.6	-0.7
1984	SLN	31	71	8.9	7.9	2.4	0.9
1985	ATL	32	58	6.1	6.7	0.5	-0.7
1986	ATL	33	16	0.9	1.1	0.0	-0.1
1987	-	34	-	-	-	-	-
1988	ATL	35	38	3.8	3.8	0.7	0.1
			------	------	------	------	------
CAREER (reg. season)			661	79.3	71.0	21.7	8.6
			------	------	------	------	------
PostSeason (career)			6	0.6	0.4	0.4	0.3
			------	------	------	------	------
COMBINED			667	80.0	71.3	22.1	8.8

Bruce Sutter had his first 30-save season in 1977 when he pitched 107.1 innings, all in relief, with 7 wins, 31 saves, 129 strikeouts, and a 1.34 ERA.

He had his last 30-save season in 1984 when he tied the single-season save record with 45 and had the second sub-2.00 ERA of his career: 1.54 in 122.2 IP.

In between these two seasons, he led the National League in saves four times and had 21 or more saves every season.

Sutter made the All-Star team, received Cy Young votes and/or received MVP votes in seven of the eight seasons from 1977 through 1984 (1983 was the exception).

The next table shows the top 25 players over these eight seasons in pWins over positional average (pWOPA).

		Top 25 Players, pWins over Positional Average (pWOPA) (1977 - 1984)
		pWins	pLosses	pWOPA	pWORL
1	Mike Schmidt	174.5	127.0	43.0	57.5
2	Eddie Murray	150.5	107.5	36.3	49.1
3	Steve Carlton	135.5	111.9	32.3	46.5
4	George Brett	138.3	107.3	29.8	41.7
5	Robin Yount	156.7	137.5	29.0	43.3
6	Ron Guidry	108.0	80.8	28.5	40.8
7	Joe L. Morgan	129.8	106.3	26.0	37.4
8	Lou Whitaker	125.7	105.4	25.1	36.2
9	Amos Otis	122.4	96.3	24.0	34.6
10	Andre Dawson	169.6	139.3	23.3	38.2
11	Jim Rice	171.2	142.3	22.6	38.3
12	Rich Gossage	66.1	42.3	22.1	31.7
13	George Foster	171.6	139.8	22.0	37.0
14	Gary Carter	130.1	110.3	21.8	33.3
15	Dwight Evans	143.2	116.2	21.6	34.1
16	Carlton Fisk	102.6	85.3	21.3	30.5
17	Dan Quisenberry	49.9	27.4	21.0	27.9
18	Willie Randolph	138.2	122.7	20.9	33.5
19	Bruce Sutter	71.1	48.9	20.5	31.0
20	Alan Trammell	117.5	105.1	20.1	30.9
21	Doug DeCinces	131.3	110.2	20.1	31.8
22	Graig Nettles	127.9	106.6	20.0	31.4
23	Darrell Porter	99.3	82.3	19.7	28.7
24	Ken Singleton	127.7	103.3	19.2	31.6
25	Dave Winfield	173.5	146.0	18.8	34.2

By this measure, Bruce Sutter was one of the most valuable players in baseball in his prime.

Article last updated: February 16, 2020

All articles are written so that they pull data directly from the most recent version of the Player won-lost database. Hence, any numbers cited within these articles should automatically incorporate the most recent update to Player won-lost records. In some cases, however, the accompanying text may have been written based on previous versions of Player won-lost records. I apologize if this results in non-sensical text in any cases.

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