Spahn And Sain And Pray For Rain

[Volod]

Originally Posted by BobC

I don't think so, not when you look at how well he did in the minors after getting sent down by Stengel, and then again looking at how well he did right out of the gate after getting out of the service and back to pitching in the majors. He seems to have been on somewhat of a par with Felller in that he was good right from the start, and/or it didn't take him long to get really good. I would find it extremely hard to believe that had he not gone off to the war that he would have floundered in the majors all those missing years. With 363 victories in his career, he was only 37 short of 400 wins. Assuming he missed just 3 years due to the war, that means he would have only needed to average 12-13 wins for each of those three seasons to reach 400 wins. Starting in 1947, Spahn had 17 straight seasons where he topped that and never had less than 14 wins.

These cherry picked stats might give some insight into what Spahn could have done during the war years.