The Greatest Strikeout Season of All Time: Dazzy Vance
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by user Harold Friend
Many fans, especially those who actually saw Sandy Koufax, consider Koufax' 1966 season the best of any pitcher that they have ever seen. Certainly Los Angeles fans probably consider it the greatest single season pitching performance in Los Angeles franchise history, but once upon a time, during a kinder time and in a friendlier place, there was a franchise called the Brooklyn Dodgers. The Brooklyn Dodgers had a pitcher who had a season that might have been equal to or even better than the one Koufax had in 1966. The pitcher was Dazzy Vance and the season was 1924.
Dazzy Vance didn't win a game until he was thirty one years old. He was Pittsburgh Pirates property until the Yankees purchased his contract in 1915. Vance toiled in the minors until the Yankees sold his services to the Brooklyn Robins prior to the 1922 season. He won 18 games in both 1922 and 1923, and then had an amazing 1924 season for a team that lost the pennant to the rival Giants by 1 1/2 games.
In 1924, Dazzy Vance started 34 games, completed 30 of them, won 28 and lost 6. He pitched 308 1/3 innings, allowing 238 hits and had a 2.16 ERA.
In 1966 Sandy Koufax started 41 games, completed 27 of them, won 27 and lost 9. He pitched 323 innings, allowing 241 hits and had a 1.73 ERA.
The numbers are close so let us examine the league in which they performed. The 1924 National League had an ERA of 3.75, which was 1.59 higher than Vance's ERA. Put another way, Vance had a 174 ERA+. The 1966 National League had an ERA of 3.28, which was 1.55 higher than Koufax' ERA. Koufax had a 190 ERA+, again extremely close to Vance's 174.
But now we get to something extraordinary. Something that distinguishes Dazzy Vance's 1924 season from any season any pitcher ever had. In 1924, Dazzy Vance struck out 262 batters. Okay, that's good but not extraordinary. In 1966, Koufax had 317 strikeouts.
Baseball was played differently in 1924. It was a disgrace for a hitter to strike out. In 1924, George Grantham of the Cubs led National League batters by striking out 63 times, while Stuffy McInnis had 581 at bats and struck out in only 6 of them. The entire Cincinnati team struck out only 334 times. In 2005, Adam Dunn struck out 168 times and Richie Sexson struck out 167 for a total of 335 times. Two players struck one more time than an entire team. Horrible.
In 1924, National League batters struck out a total of 3408 times. Dazzy Vance struck out 262 or 7.7% of them. In 1966, National League batters struck out 9312 times. Koufax struck out 317 or almost 3.4% of them. Now, in 1966, the National League was a ten team league, so we eliminate the expansion Mets and Astros, and the league strikeout total becomes 7435, which means that Koufax accounted for 4.3% of the league's strikeouts, still well below Vance's 7.7%, and it was much easier to get strikeouts in 1966 since striking out was well on its way to being considered "just another out."
The only other National League pitcher to strike out as many as 100 hitters in 1924 was Vance's teammate, spitballer Burleigh Grimes with 135. No other pitcher in the league had as many as 87 strikeouts. Looking at it another way, of the eight National League teams in 1924, only Brooklyn had a pitcher (s) with as many as 100 strikeouts. One cannot help but conclude that Vance was as dominating that season as any pitcher in any season. In Koufax' 1966, Jim Bunning, Bob Veale, Bob Gibson, Juan Marichal, Don Sutton, Jim Maloney, and Gaylord Perry, all had over 200 strikeouts. Vance had 127 more strikeouts than his closet rival, and that was almost twice as many as the pitcher who finished second.
When viewed in the context of the league in which they pitched, Dazzy Vance's 1924 season was the greatest strikeout season in baseball history. There is a method by which a pitcher's strikeout total is compared to the league average in order to determine his strikeout rate. If the league's batters' strikeout an average of 75 times in a season and a pitcher strikes out 75 hitters, the pitcher's K rate is 100, while a pitcher who strikes out 150 has a K rate of 200. Simple enough.
The highest K rate was Dazzy Vance's 290 in 1924, followed by Rube Waddell's 284 in 1902, and Vance's 279 in 1925. Among modern pitchers, the only one to crack the top ten was Pedro Martinez' 233 in 1999 when he struck out 313 hitters. Randy Johnson's best K rate was 216 in 1995, while Nolan Ryan's best was 215 in 1976.
Dazzy Vance's career K rate of 216 is the highest in baseball history. He struck out batters when it was difficult to strike them out. Rube Waddell's 190 is second, Randy Johnson's 182 is third, Amos Rusie's 179 is fourth, and Nolan Ryan's 178 is fifth. Roger Clemens is not in the top ten.
One must be careful when using statistics and even more careful when interpreting them, but put as simply as possible, when Dazzy Vance struck out 262 hitters in 1924, no other pitcher came close to that total. No hitter struck out more than 63 times. Dazzy Vance, one of the most effective of all pitchers in striking out hitters, had the best strikeout season in baseball history in 1924.
References:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/v/vanceda01.shtml
http://www.baseball-reference.com/k/koufasa01.shtml
http://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/NL_1924.shtml
http://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/NL_1966.shtml
http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/strike-zone-dominance-in-context-dazzy-and-pedro/
Date
Sat 08/05/06, 7:13 am EST
