Hoyt Wilhelm

Baseball Player Won-Loss Records
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Hoyt Wilhelm

Hall-of-Famers as Seen Through Player Won-Lost Records: Hoyt Wilhelm

Hoyt Wilhelm was elected to the Hall of Fame in his 8th year of eligibility, 1985, with 83.8% of the vote.

Five highlights of Hoyt Wilhelm's career:

Hoyt Wilhelm pitched enough innings to qualify for his league's ERA title twice in his career, in 1952, when he pitched 159.1 innings in 72 games, all in relief; and 1959, when he had a career-high 27 games started and pitched a career-high 226 innings. In both seasons in which Wilhelm pitched enough innings to qualify for an ERA title, he led the league in ERA (2.43 in 1952, 2.19 in 1959).

From 1962 through 1968, Wilhelm had an ERA below 2.00 in six of seven seasons, with a combined ERA over these seven seasons of 1.92 in 768.2 innings pitched.

Wilhelm's career ERA was 2.52. This is the lowest ERA of any pitcher who pitched at least 1,000 innings between 1920 and 2000.

Although the save did not become an official statistic in MLB until 1969, Wilhelm set the unofficial record for career saves in 1964 and held the record (with 228) until 1980, when Rollie Fingers passed him.

Hoyt Wilhelm was the first pitcher in major-league history to appear in 1,000 games. His 1,070 games played were a major-league record until 1998.

The first two tables below present Hoyt Wilhelm'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
1952	NY1	29	71	9.9	7.0	4.7	3.1
1953	NY1	30	68	8.3	8.9	1.1	-0.5
1954	NY1	31	57	6.1	4.2	2.8	1.9
1955	NY1	32	59	3.4	4.0	0.1	-0.6
1956	NY1	33	64	5.6	6.0	0.7	-0.4
+– 1957		34	42	3.1	2.7	1.0	0.4
	CLE		2	0.3	0.1	0.3	0.2
	SLN		40	2.8	2.6	0.7	0.2
+– 1958		35	39	7.3	7.8	0.9	-0.1
	BAL		9	2.7	2.4	0.8	0.5
	CLE		30	4.6	5.5	0.1	-0.6
1959	BAL	36	32	14.4	13.0	3.9	2.3
1960	BAL	37	41	9.6	9.0	2.3	0.9
1961	BAL	38	51	8.9	6.3	3.9	2.6
1962	BAL	39	52	7.0	5.9	2.1	1.0
1963	CHA	40	55	8.2	7.3	2.3	1.0
1964	CHA	41	73	9.6	6.6	4.4	2.9
1965	CHA	42	66	7.8	5.8	3.1	1.8
1966	CHA	43	46	3.8	3.6	0.9	0.2
1967	CHA	44	49	7.3	4.3	3.9	2.9
1968	CHA	45	72	4.1	3.3	1.3	0.6
+– 1969		46	52	5.7	4.0	2.5	1.6
	ATL		8	1.2	0.5	0.9	0.8
	CAL		44	4.4	3.5	1.6	0.8
+– 1970		47	53	5.9	5.5	1.4	0.4
	ATL		50	5.8	4.9	1.7	0.8
	CHN		3	0.2	0.5	-0.3	-0.4
+– 1971		48	12	1.0	0.8	0.4	0.2
	ATL		3	0.1	0.2	-0.1	-0.1
	LAN		9	1.0	0.6	0.5	0.3
1972	LAN	49	16	0.6	0.5	0.1	0.0
			------	------	------	------	------
CAREER (reg. season)			1,070	137.6	116.6	43.9	22.4
			------	------	------	------	------
PostSeason (career)			2	0.2	0.2	0.1	0.1
			------	------	------	------	------
COMBINED			1,072	137.8	116.8	44.0	22.4

Season	Team	Age	Games	eWins	eLosses	eWORL	eWOPA

Expected Player Won-Lost Records
						Value Decomposition
1952	NY1	29	71	8.9	8.0	2.7	1.1
1953	NY1	30	68	8.2	8.9	1.1	-0.5
1954	NY1	31	57	5.7	4.6	2.2	1.3
1955	NY1	32	59	3.6	3.8	0.6	-0.1
1956	NY1	33	64	5.6	6.0	0.7	-0.4
+– 1957		34	42	2.6	3.2	0.0	-0.5
	CLE		2	0.2	0.2	-0.0	-0.1
	SLN		40	2.5	3.0	0.0	-0.5
+– 1958		35	39	8.1	7.1	2.5	1.4
	BAL		9	3.0	2.1	1.4	1.0
	CLE		30	5.1	5.0	1.1	0.4
1959	BAL	36	32	14.0	13.4	3.4	1.8
1960	BAL	37	41	9.3	9.2	2.0	0.6
1961	BAL	38	51	8.0	7.2	2.5	1.1
1962	BAL	39	52	6.8	6.1	2.0	0.8
1963	CHA	40	55	8.4	7.1	2.8	1.5
1964	CHA	41	73	9.1	7.1	3.5	2.1
1965	CHA	42	66	7.5	6.1	2.8	1.6
1966	CHA	43	46	4.1	3.4	1.4	0.7
1967	CHA	44	49	6.2	5.4	2.0	0.9
1968	CHA	45	72	4.3	3.1	1.9	1.2
+– 1969		46	52	5.4	4.3	2.1	1.3
	ATL		8	1.0	0.6	0.6	0.4
	CAL		44	4.4	3.6	1.6	0.9
+– 1970		47	53	5.6	5.8	0.9	-0.2
	ATL		50	5.4	5.4	1.0	0.0
	CHN		3	0.3	0.5	-0.2	-0.2
+– 1971		48	12	1.0	0.8	0.4	0.2
	ATL		3	0.0	0.2	-0.1	-0.1
	LAN		9	0.9	0.6	0.5	0.4
1972	LAN	49	16	0.6	0.6	0.1	-0.0
			------	------	------	------	------
CAREER (reg. season)			1,070	133.2	121.0	37.5	16.0
			------	------	------	------	------
PostSeason (career)			2	0.2	0.2	0.1	0.1
			------	------	------	------	------
COMBINED			1,072	133.4	121.2	37.7	16.1

Hoyt Wilhelm was the first player who was primarily a relief pitcher who was inducted into the Hall of Fame. As one might expect of the first relief pitcher inducted into the Hall of Fame, Hoyt Wilhelm was the best relief pitcher in major-league history at the time of his retirement. This is shown in two tables.

The first table shows the top 10 players in eWins over positional average earned as a relief pitcher from 1916 through 1972, Wilhelm's final season.

		Top 10 Relief Pitchers through 1972 (ranked by eWOPA at Relief Pitcher)
		eWins	eLosses	eWOPA
1	Hoyt Wilhelm	105.0	89.7	13.0
2	Stu Miller	63.1	52.8	9.8
3	Lindy McDaniel	74.3	63.4	9.4
4	Roy Face	69.0	60.2	7.5
5	Dick Hall	39.3	31.2	7.4
6	Bob Locker	34.4	27.0	6.2
7	Ellis Kinder	34.3	28.0	5.9
8	Dick Radatz	43.9	37.1	5.2
9	Frank Linzy	38.0	32.6	5.1
10	Firpo Marberry	31.2	26.4	5.0

The second table shows the top 10 players in pWins over replacement level who earned the majority of their career wins as a relief pitcher, again through 1972.

		Top 10 Relief Pitchers through 1972 (ranked by career pWORL)
	Player	pWins	pLosses	pWOPA	pWORL
1	Hoyt Wilhelm	137.6	116.6	22.4	43.9
2	Stu Miller	106.2	92.8	15.2	30.9
3	Lindy McDaniel	105.7	92.8	14.0	30.3
4	Ron Perranoski	69.6	59.4	9.5	21.2
5	Johnny Murphy	62.2	55.1	9.0	18.7
6	Hugh Casey	55.9	48.1	9.6	17.8
7	Dick Radatz	47.2	38.6	8.4	16.1
8	Ted Abernathy	68.4	64.0	4.7	15.9
9	Joe Heving	56.9	52.5	6.4	15.4
10	Roy Face	79.7	79.2	0.5	14.4

Article last updated: October 26, 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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