Jim Palmer

Baseball Player Won-Loss Records
Home List of Articles

Jim Palmer

Hall-of-Famers as Seen Through Player Won-Lost Records: Jim Palmer

Jim Palmer was elected to the Hall of Fame in his 1st year of eligibility, 1990, with 92.6% of the vote.

Five highlights of Jim Palmer's career:

Jim Palmer was named to six All-Star teams in his career, starting four of them.

Palmer received Cy Young votes eight times, winning three awards (1973, 1975, and 1976). He received MVP votes eight times, finishing second in 1973 (to Reggie Jackson). Palmer also won four Gold Gloves in his career.

Palmer had 20 or more traditional pitcher wins eight times in his career. He led the American League in innings pitched four times, in wins three times, and in ERA twice.

Palmer never allowed a grand slam in a major-league baseball game. For his career, he faced 213 batters with the bases loaded. They batted .196/.230/.234 against him (36-for-184, 5 doubles, 1 triple, 13 walks, 40 strikeouts). Jim Palmer did allow one grand slam as a minor league pitcher, on July 1, 1967, to Johnny Bench.

Palmer's uniform number, 22, was retired by the Baltimore Orioles in 1986. He has a statue outside Oriole Park at Camden Yards which was unveiled on July 14, 2012.

The first two tables below present Jim Palmer'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
1965	BAL	19	29	4.0	4.6	0.2	-0.4
1966	BAL	20	36	14.3	13.6	3.2	1.5
1967	BAL	21	9	2.5	3.1	-0.1	-0.4
1968	-	22	-	-	-	-	-
1969	BAL	23	27	12.7	7.7	6.8	5.6
1970	BAL	24	44	20.5	15.3	8.3	6.3
1971	BAL	25	38	19.9	14.4	8.6	6.6
1972	BAL	26	36	18.9	13.7	8.0	6.1
1973	BAL	27	38	17.8	11.1	8.8	6.9
1974	BAL	28	26	9.1	10.1	0.4	-0.8
1975	BAL	29	39	20.2	12.1	10.4	8.3
1976	BAL	30	40	19.2	13.4	8.1	6.0
1977	BAL	31	39	18.4	13.2	7.4	5.3
1978	BAL	32	38	17.5	13.3	6.3	4.3
1979	BAL	33	23	8.5	6.1	3.4	2.5
1980	BAL	34	34	11.7	10.9	2.4	0.9
1981	BAL	35	22	6.6	8.0	-0.3	-1.3
1982	BAL	36	36	14.9	9.9	6.8	5.2
1983	BAL	37	14	4.1	4.0	0.7	0.1
1984	BAL	38	5	0.7	1.6	-0.7	-0.9
			------	------	------	------	------
CAREER (reg. season)			573	241.5	186.1	88.7	61.9
			------	------	------	------	------
PostSeason (career)			20	7.8	5.5	3.6	2.8
			------	------	------	------	------
COMBINED			593	249.4	191.6	92.3	64.7

Season	Team	Age	Games	eWins	eLosses	eWORL	eWOPA

Expected Player Won-Lost Records
						Value Decomposition
1965	BAL	19	29	4.2	4.5	0.5	-0.1
1966	BAL	20	36	13.2	14.6	1.2	-0.5
1967	BAL	21	9	2.6	2.9	0.2	-0.1
1968	-	22	-	-	-	-	-
1969	BAL	23	27	11.5	9.0	4.4	3.2
1970	BAL	24	44	19.0	16.8	5.6	3.5
1971	BAL	25	38	18.4	15.9	5.7	3.7
1972	BAL	26	36	17.4	15.2	5.2	3.3
1973	BAL	27	38	16.7	12.3	6.4	4.6
1974	BAL	28	26	9.5	9.7	1.1	-0.1
1975	BAL	29	39	19.2	13.1	8.4	6.3
1976	BAL	30	40	18.5	14.1	6.7	4.6
1977	BAL	31	39	18.3	13.3	7.2	5.2
1978	BAL	32	38	16.8	14.0	4.9	2.9
1979	BAL	33	23	8.4	6.2	3.2	2.3
1980	BAL	34	34	10.9	11.7	0.8	-0.6
1981	BAL	35	22	6.9	7.6	0.4	-0.6
1982	BAL	36	36	13.7	11.2	4.3	2.7
1983	BAL	37	14	3.7	4.3	-0.1	-0.6
1984	BAL	38	5	0.9	1.5	-0.4	-0.5
			------	------	------	------	------
CAREER (reg. season)			573	229.8	197.9	65.9	39.1
			------	------	------	------	------
PostSeason (career)			20	6.9	6.4	1.8	1.0
			------	------	------	------	------
COMBINED			593	236.7	204.3	67.7	40.1

The Baltimore Orioles have played in six World Series in their first 63 years of existence. Jim Palmer appeared in all six of them, pitching a complete-game shutout in Game 2 of the 1966 World Series at age 20, and pitching two shutout innings in Game 3 of the 1983 World Series to earn the win the day before his 38th birthday.

For his career, Jim Palmer appeared in the postseason 8 times, appearing in 17 games. Outside of his first appearance, the last 16 postseason games of Palmer's career came during the "Divisional Era", the period from 1969 - 1993 when there were four divisions, the winners of which were the only teams to make the postseason.

The next table shows the top ten players in postseason pWins over replacement level (pWORL) of the Divisional Era.

		Top 10: Postseason pWORL (Divisional Era, 1969 - 1993)
		pWins	pLosses	pWinPct	pWORL
1	Jim Palmer	7.2	5.2	0.580	2.4
2	Pete Rose Sr.	9.4	6.6	0.586	2.2
3	Johnny Bench	6.1	4.0	0.606	2.2
4	Ken Holtzman	5.0	3.0	0.625	2.2
5	Lenny Dykstra	4.9	2.8	0.639	2.0
6	Dave Henderson	5.2	3.2	0.621	2.0
7	Luis Tiant Jr.	2.8	1.1	0.721	1.9
8	Kirk Gibson	4.1	2.2	0.654	1.8
9	Reggie Jackson	10.2	8.1	0.557	1.7
10	Fernando Valenzuela	4.5	3.3	0.582	1.6

Article last updated: June 29, 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.

Home List of Articles