Burleigh Grimes had another outstanding season for the Brooklyn Dodgers,
though his team fell in the standings. This was the first year that the
spitball had been banned in baseball, but an exception was given to pitchers
who already threw it. Grimes was such a pitcher, and would continue to
throw the spitter for another decade.
Grimes rates a slight edge over Pirates' lefty
Wilbur Cooper. Cooper was a terrific pitcher for many years, one of the workhorses
in the league. His 29 complete games this year were a career high, and
came in the middle of a streak of seven consecutive years with 25+ complete games,
something no one has done since. Cooper won 216 games in his career; he
wasn't a great pitcher, but he was as good as Pop Haines, Eppa Rixey, or
Rube Marquard, some comtemporary pitchers who are in the Hall Of Fame.
After Grimes and Cooper, it is not clear who
to chose next. Eppa Rixey pitched well with a weak Cincinnati team, and was
stuck with a mediocre won-loss record. Bill Doak was a good pitcher for
several years, though his performance tended to bounce up and down a lot.
Doak was nicknamed "Spittin' Bill", so you know what his pitch of choice
was. Joe Oeschger had a fine year, in a career that was filled mostly
with bad losing seasons.
Babe Adams was 39 years old; he had the
last outstanding year of his career, though he would continue to pitch
for another five years. Adams had two careers; his career had effectively
ended five years earlier, but Adams made a late-in-life comeback, pitching
extremely well and hardly walking anybody. He had a fine
career, winning 194 games, all of them with the Pittsburgh Pirates.
