Bob Feller Career

[Tomi]

Originally Posted by BobC

Unfortunately, Feller gave up almost four full seasons at the absolute prime of his career to enlist in the Navy and serve as a gun captain aboard the USS Alabama. He was the very first professional athlete, not just a baseball player, to voluntarily enlist in the service after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He remained in the Navy till after the Japanese unconditionally surrendered on August 14, 1945, and was officially discharged on August 22, 1945. And in typical Feller fashion, just two days later he took the mound for the Indians on August 24 and pitched a complete game, 12 strikeout, 4-2 win over the season's eventual World Series champs, the Tigers.

In 1941, his last full season before he enlisted in the Navy, he led all the majors in wins, games started, innings pitched, strikeouts, walks given, and batters faced. He additionally led just the AL in games pitched in, shutouts, hits given up, and SO per 9 innings. He pitched 28 complete games with an ERA of 3.15 on 343.0 innings pitched, and per Baseball Reference had a WAR of 8.2, which was actually a somewhat down year for him as he had a 9.9 and 9.2 WAR for the previous 1940 and 1939 seasons, respectfully.

Then in his first full season back in 1946, he led all the majors again in wins, games started, innings pitched, strikeouts, walks given, and batters faced, and added also leading the majors in total games pitched in, shutouts, and hits given up. And I can already hear all the trolls and naysayers chomping at the bit to jump on and put him down for giving up all those hits and walks, but that year he did so with an ERA of 2.18. Or are all the sabremetric and statistical nerds going to argue he was the luckiest pitcher alive and must have had one of the greatest and luckiest defenses in baseball behind him, over the entire season? In that first year back, he pitched 36 complete games, out of a total of 42 that he started, 10 of which were shut outs, with 348 strikeouts over 371.1 innings pitched. He literally pitched less than every fourth day for the entire season. And he ended up per Baseball Reference with a 10.0 WAR for that year.

I couldn't find or figure out on Baseball Reference how to get a listing of total WAR for all players by season back then, it kept wanting to give me listings for just offensive or position player WAR. So over on FanGraph I found some total WAR listings for all MLB players which showed that Bob Feller ranked #1 in WAR for all of baseball in 1939 and 1940, was #6 in 1941, and then came back to rank #2 in WAR for 1946, second only to Ted Williams. And don't forget, Feller has three no-hitters, including the only Opening Day no-hitter in MLB history back in 1940, the same year he also won the AL's Pitching Triple Crown.

Now, go back and fill in the four seasons that Feller lost due to WW II, based on how he was doing before he left and after he came back, and then tell everyone where he should rank. Oh, and maybe keep in mind that Feller actually didn't have to go into the service and was eligible for a deferment due to his father's health. Stats and metrics are okay, but there is so much they can't/don't take into account. Feller was probably top 2-3 in his era. I don't see the waste of time in arguing who is this or that over all time because of the differences in the game, context, rules, equipment, and everything else. And then top it off with all the statistics-centric people that view the modern game and players as being so much better than everyone before them.

Well said. I guess he will be another "what could have been" player due to missing time even though he had a great career anyway. It's just sad pitchers back in the day who were elite were pitching a lot of innings but today's pitchers are being babied by the analytics managers and are even being pulled from games that are no hitters with only 80 or so pitches thrown.