While you’re searching...can you check on the Wesley Willis Fiasco? Thanks.

Dude passed away. Rock over London, Rock on Chicago. Burger King, Home of the Whopper.

But what of the rest of the fiasco - shall we shoot their jam session down?

In a world where I had a billion hours of free time and no desire to improve the lives of my fellow men, I'd generate a list of Willis jingle/end lines. 'Be a pepper, Drink Dr. Pepper' at the end of Outburst is flat out tragic.

That was a weird piece. "I was watching a show on a game that happened 40 years ago and I wanted to talk to one of the players about it. I tried to contact him and he hasn't contacted me back. STORY!"

Imagine how good the Big Red Machine might have been if Merritt and Nolan had stayed healthy.

Gary Nolan, age 19: 226 IP, 147 ERA+, 8.2 K/9, 3.3 K/BB -- eat that Lincecum! :-)

Naturally that was only good for 3rd in the RoY voting. Tip to rookies, don't debut in the same season as Tom Seaver ... even if you had the better year!

And Dick Hughes, who I'd never heard of, finished 2nd with a great year too. He was a 29-year-old rookie -- he must have an odd story. Anyway, that might be the greatest class of rookie seasons ever. Seaver, Nolan and Hughes combined for 700 IP of about 2.67 ERA, went 46-27, K'd 537 while walking 188. Yowza.

Among those three, in that season, Seaver had the highest ERA, highest WHIP, highest walk rate, lowest K rate, worst winning percentage. He did tie for the most wins but he was 16-13 while Hughes was 16-6 (Nolan 14-8). Seaver was the best hitter of the three. :-)

Despite already having injury woes, from ages 19-24, Nolan threw 1156 IP with a 127 ERA+. The K-rate dropped throughout this whole period (it immediately dropped from 8.2 to 6.7 in his age 20 season and he was down to 4.6 by age 24). After missing nearly all of 2 seasons, he came back to be very good at 27 as a completely remade pitcher (K-rate of 3.2!) and average at 28 (1 BB/9!) then was done. Nolan was one of the guys who didn't survive the workhorse era of the 60s and 70s.

Imagine how good the Big Red Machine might have been if Merritt and Nolan had stayed healthy.

As long as you're going down this road, Wayne Simpson was a 21 year old rookie on the 1970 pennant winning Reds. He pitched 176 innings that year, going 14-3 with an ERA+ of 138. Simpson would pitch only 480 more innings in his Major League career, going 22-28 with an ERA+ of 73.

DB

Imagine how good the Big Red Machine might have been if Merritt and Nolan had stayed healthy....Nolan was one of the guys who didn't survive the workhorse era of the 60s and 70s.

The Reds also had Wayne Simpson, Gullet, and I suppose you could even count Jim Maloney who all fit in that category

EDIT : 1/3 of a coke to DB

Of course, if you really want to imagine how good the Big Red Machine might have been, just imagine if they didn't trade Frank Robinson away prior to the 1966 season.

DB

I realize that all decent starting pitchers in his day threw a lot of innings each year. But it's hard not to think that by the end of the 1970 season Merritt had nothing because he had simply been worn out:

YEAR AGE TM INN ERA+
1967 23 MIN 227.2 137
1968 24 MIN 238.1 96
1969 25 CIN 251.0 86
1970 26 CIN 234.0 102
1971 27 CIN 107.0 75
1972 28 CIN 8.0 71

Nolan was one of the guys who didn't survive the workhorse era of the 60s and 70s

If it weren't for injuries...75 pitchers from the bogus 60's would have made the Hall of Fame.

Frankie Frisch just threw up some worms...and got one of them elected!

list of pitchers aged 23 or younger with seasons of ERA+>130 while qualifying for the ERA title (1960-69)

Dean Chance 198 1964 23 LAA
Dick Ellsworth 167 1963 23 CHC
Sam McDowell 161 1965 22 CLE
Jim Palmer 154 1969 23 BAL
Larry Dierker 151 1969 22 HOU
Gary Nolan 147 1967 19 CIN
Bill Stafford 140 1961 21 NYY
Stan Bahnsen 139 1968 23 NYY
Don Drysdale 139 1960 23 LAD
Steve Hargan 138 1966 23 CLE
Al Downing 137 1963 22 NYY
Tom Seaver 137 1968 23 NYM
Andy Messersmith 137 1969 23 CAL
Jim Merritt 137 1967 23 MIN
Denny McLain 134 1965 21 DET
Wally Bunker 133 1964 19 BAL
Sam McDowell 133 1964 21 CLE
Stan Williams 132 1960 23 LAD
Dean Chance 130 1962 21 LAA
Jim Kaat 130 1962 23 MIN

Dean Chance and Sudden Sam each had two such seasons (but--Bill Stafford?? Steve Hargan??)

not a hellavu lotta HOFers

I haven't seen films of Merritt or Simpson but it's almost impossible not to watch Nolan's delivery and not cringe at the horrible things that each thrown pitch did to his shoulder.

And, I know that the conventional wisdom is that Wayne Simpson was a budding superstar whose career was derailed by injuries (and, of course, that may be true) but his allegedly promising 1970 season really wasn't very good (although contemporary metrics didn't understand this). He walked 85 guys in 171 innings and had a BABIP of .219. Further, his MLEs don't support the contention that he was going to be all that good. In fact, when you look at his cERA (both minor and major league) they support his actual post-injury numbers very closely. Now, I didn't see him throw so I may be missing something but I'm very dubious that Simpson was ever going to be much more that what he actually became.

I suppose you could even count Jim Maloney who all fit in that category

My brain is incapable of recalling both Merrit and Maloney at the same time. I'm only human!

Denny McLain 134 1965 21 DET

Always the classic. I stumbled across him the other day in the Frank Howard thread when looking at the 71 Senators -- McLain was still only 27 and already done.

And looking at his page, here's a trade that would have been one of the biggest in baseball history if it had only happened 3-4 years earlier than it did -- Denny McLain for Orlando Cepeda.

And who knew Cepeda played for the Red Sox (good season) and Royals (not so much) at the end?

The Reds also had Wayne Simpson, Gullet, and I suppose you could even count Jim Maloney who all fit in that category

And Billy McCool

And Sammy Ellis

Check the numbers for those two rookies in '64. Ellis was 23, McCool 19.

Imagine how bad the Big Red Machine would have been if all the young players on their competitors had panned out!

And Dick Hughes, who I'd never heard of, finished 2nd with a great year too. He was a 29-year-old rookie

I followed the '67 Cardinals very closely on the radio, so I was very much aware that Hughes was a 29-year-old rookie, but I didn't know the back story.

Now that bb-ref has minor league database, we can look him up. What story does that record seem to tell? It looks like he stepped up the ladder of the many levels of the minors mostly one step at a time, reaching AAA at age 23 - but he was just wild as hell that whole time and was killing himself with walks. He probably always had impressive stuff, but > 6 BB/9 is not a good thing. Starting at age 24, he started to get the walks under control, and he had a great year at age 25 across several teams at the AA and AAA level. But he didn't get called up, and spent the next three years stalled out at AAA, and remaining a good pitcher, a power pitcher. Most of those minor league seasons were fractured over several teams and leagues, occasionally in other organizations than the Cardinals - I'm guessing the Cardinals always had his contract but occasionally lent him out to other organizations.

So why didn't he get called up in '64, '65, or '66 (he did have a cup of coffee in '66)? It appears that the Cardinals had tremendous depth in pitchers at that time: established veterans in Gibson, Broglio, Simmons, and what openings did occur got snapped up by candidates who were either nearly the same age as Hughes (Tracy Stallard, Ray Washburn) or significantly younger (Ray Sadecki, Larry Jaster, Nelson Briles, Steve Carlton). Of course, the team did manage to find ways to trade off that pitching depth for more offense - Broglio for Brock, Sadecki for Cepeda. It's not hard to imagine that Hughes not being particularly young and having that wild past made it easy to look past him, especially when there were other promising candidates to look at.

In 1967, the team was a pennant contender from the beginning of the season. They started with a rotation of Gibson, Jaster, Washburn, and Jackson, with Carlton getting some spot starts. Nelson Briles and Hughes were around as swingmen. Jaster got hurt and Hughes picked up a couple of starts taking that spot. Jaster came back, but Jackson was being ineffective, so Hughes kept getting more starts. Washburn missed some turns with some injury, giving someone named Jim Cosman a few starts. Then Washburn came back but Gibson got hurt (the only major injury of Gibson's career, and it was a doozy - a broken bone caused by a line drive). At that point, Briles moved into the rotation. All along, all Hughes did was keep pitching well. In the World Series, the rotation was Gibson, Hughes, Briles, Gibson, Carlton, Hughes, Gibson. Hughes had a 5.00 ERA in 9 IP and was the losing pitcher both times.

And as good as he was in 1967, his standing with the organization was that he still got no respect. He pitched mostly in relief in 1968, behind a rotation of Gibson, Carlton, Briles, Washburn, and Jaster - in effect, Briles leapfrogged over him to claim that spot. And Hughes didn't pitch particularly well, and he retired after the season. Was he hurt in 1968? I don't remember that, which doesn't mean it didn't happen.

Here's a game to remember Hughes for: http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/CIN/CIN196705300.shtml. Hughes probably shouldn't have come out after the rain delay, but he did have a no-no going. And check out the play that ended the game.