Average Pitcher, 1992-2011
.500 W-L%, 4.48 ERA, 1.408 WHIP, 6.35 K/9, 3.375 BB/9
Tim Wakefield, 1992-2011
.529 W-L%, 4.40 ERA, 1.348 WHIP, 6.00 K/9, 3.40 BB/9
Yet unless the baseball gods conspire against him, Wakefield will cross the 200-win threshold in the coming weeks, a feat accomplished by only 87 of the over 35,000 players to pitch an inning in the major leagues. History will regard him as one of the strangest of this group. He’ll be the seventh knuckleballer, and he’ll sport the second-highest career ERA of any pitcher with over 100 wins.
How has Wakefield managed to stick around so long and record so many victories with such modest numbers?
The answer lies in part in the manner in which he began his career. Wakefield entered the league in 1992 as a late-July call-up for the pennant-chasing Pirates and made an immediate impact, going 8-1 down the stretch with four complete games and a 2.15 ERA. This was good enough to place him third in the Rookie of the Year voting, though he had been in the majors for just over two months.
First impressions are all-important in baseball. In their 2000 study “ Career Trajectories in Baseball," Teddy Schall and Gary Smith at Pomona College found a statistically significant relationship between first-year performance and career length. The rookie year is the hardest to survive, especially for players like Wakefield who lack can’t-miss talent. A productive first season can make the difference between a roster spot the following year and a career spent toiling in the minors.
If his first year had gone as poorly as his next two, a good chunk of which was spent in the minors struggling with severe control issues, he wouldn’t have garnered any interest from teams upon his release from Pittsburgh in early 1995. As it was, the Red Sox snapped him up, and, with some guidance from the Niekro brothers, Wakefield recorded the best season of his career, finishing third for the Cy Young (16-8, 2.95 ERA) -- and effectively cementing his place on the team for years to come.
