Ed Walsh: Low Average

Ed Walsh: Low Average

Ed Walsh: Low Average

In the professional baseball record books the name of Ed Walsh won’t be the first one to jump out when it comes to the best starting pitchers of all-time. However, what the man that many called “Big Ed” does have in his favor, even to this day, is that he possesses the all-time mark for the lowest Earned Run Average in the span of an entire career. The 14-year career of Ed Walsh was one of the most satisfying careers a pitcher could have when it came to the ERA statistic.

Walsh started off slow for the Chicago White Sox in the 1904 regular season. In his rookie year Walsh went 6-3 with a 2.30 ERA, recording 6 complete games, 1 shutout and 1 save. Walsh appeared to pick things up considerably the following year as he went 8-3 in 1905 with a 2.17 ERA, recording 9 complete games and 1 shutout.

1906 would end up being the crowning achievement of Walsh’s young career as he went 17-13 with 171 strikeouts and a low 1.88 ERA, recording 24 complete games, 10 shutouts and 2 saves. Ed Walsh would help the White Sox win the 1906 World Series by defeating their Windy City rivals the Chicago Cubs. For this Fall Classic Walsh went 2-0 with 17 strikeouts and a microscopic 0.60 ERA, recording 1 complete game and 1 shutout. In Game 3 on October 11 Walsh pitched a complete game, giving up only 2 hits and 1 walk but recorded an impressive 12 strikeouts. In Game 5 on October 13 Walsh pitched 5 innings and gave up 5 hits, 5 walks, 1 earned run and 6 total runs, posting that 0.60 ERA.

While he would never see another chance of winning another World Series Championship, Walsh remained steady in the statistics. He went 24-18 in 1907 with 206 strikeouts and led the American League with a small 1.60 ERA, recording 37 complete games, 5 shutouts and 4 saves. In 1908 Walsh was at his most dominant as he led the AL with 40 wins, going 40-15 with 269 strikeouts and a small 1.42 ERA, recording 42 complete games, 11 shutouts and 6 saves. In 1909 Walsh went 15-11 with 127 strikeouts and a small 1.41 ERA, recording 20 complete games, 8 shutouts and 2 saves.

1910 was the only complete season where Walsh recorded a losing record as he went 18-20. However, he was just fine in every other category as he had 258 strikeouts and a very small 1.27 ERA, which led the AL. He recorded 33 complete games, 7 shutouts and 5 saves. Walsh would bounce back in 1911 to go 27-18 with 255 strikeouts and a 2.22 ERA, recording 33 complete games, 5 shutouts and 4 saves. In 1912 Walsh went 27-17 with 254 strikeouts and a 2.15 ERA, recording 32 complete games, 6 shutouts and 10 saves.

1913 would be the first year where the decline of Ed Walsh as a pitcher became evident. He went 8-3 with a 258 ERA, recording 7 complete games, 1 shutout and 1 save. In 1914 he went 2-3 with a 2.82 ERA, 3 complete games and 1 shutout. In 1915 Walsh went 3-0 with a very small 1.33 ERA, 3 complete games and 1 shutout. The last two years of Ed Walsh’s baseball career saw him making brief appearances for the White Sox in 1916 and for the National League’s Boston Braves in 1917. Walsh attempted to make a comeback in 1917 with the Braves but he never got going, and he would be released after losing just 1 game.

In 1946 the Professional Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York opened its doors to Ed Walsh as he would be inducted. It is uncertain how good Walsh’s official statistics are since most of his career didn’t include the Earned Run Average statistic. The ERA was officially accepted by both the National League and the American League in 1912. Nonetheless, Ed Walsh holds the all-time career lowest ERA with 1.82.

One good reason why the ERA statistic came to be in baseball was because the act of relief pitching became an option for teams to use. The credit to the invention of the ERA statistic belongs to Henry Chadwick, a sportswriter and baseball historian. What Earned Run Average basically means is that the mean of earned runs per 9 innings pitched will be divided by the number of earned runs allowed by the number of innings that are pitched. After this is done you simply multiply by 9 and you get your Earned Run Average. In the time that Ed Walsh pitched it was routine for pitchers to pitch complete games, which was part of the inspiration Chadwick had for inventing the statistic.

Today in the game of baseball one of the most important statistics a pitcher has is the ERA. One example of a measuring stick to determine a pitcher with a good ERA or a bad ERA is to find numbers that range from 0.00 to 4.00.