MVPs from the bullpen

Last month, I was checking on an online sports card shop and found some lucky bags available. I bought some packs and found some autograph cards. One is a Rollie Fingers autograph card, which looks pretty good. And, I went to check on his stats on the great baseball reference website.

Rollie Fingers spent 17 years in the big leagues with the Athletics, Padres and Brewers. He made 37 starts and 907 relief appearances. In total, he tossed 1701.1 innings in his career, posting a 2.90 ERA (2.91 ERA on MLB.com) and a 1.16 WHIP. Additionally, Fingers struck out 1299 batters and he collected 341 saves, he was the first player to reach 300 saves. Moreover, he won the World Series titles 3 times with the A’s from 1972 to 1974 and was named the WS MVP in 1974. Furthermore, he’s a 7-time All-Star and more importantly, in 1981, Fingers won the AL Cy Young award and the AL MVP award. During the 1981 season, he made 47 relief appearances and owned a 1.04 ERA and 0.87 WHIP in 78 innings. Fingers recorded 28 saves, 6 wins and 3 losses. Normally, it’s not common to see a pitcher win the MVP award. But, Justin Verlander won the AL MVP award in 2011 and Clayton Kershaw won the 2014 NL MVP award in 2014. Additionally, two-way player Shohei Ohtani won the AL MVP award last year. Recently, we can still see some outstanding pitchers win the MVP award. However, a relief pitcher wins the MVP award, that’s very rare. After carefully checking the list of the MVP winners, only two pitchers won the MVP award without throwing at least 100 innings in the season of winning the award. One is Rollie Fingers who threw 78 innings in 1981 and the other player is Dennis Eckersley, who won the 1992 AL MVP award. In the 1992 season, Eckersley made 69 relief appearances and tossed 80 innings. He finished the season with 51 saves and posted a 1.91 ERA and a 0.91 WHIP. In addition, Willie Hernandez was the 1984 AL MVP and he made 80 relief appearances in that season. Hernandez collected 32 saves with a 1.92 ERA and a 0.94 WHIP over 140.1 innings. Furthermore, Jim Konstanty won the 1950 NL MVP award and back then, he made 74 relief appearances and tossed 152 innings. He finished the season with 16 wins, 7 losses and 22 saves, posting a 2.66 ERA and a 1.04 WHIP. The current incarnation of the MVP award was established in 1931. As we can see, over these 90+ years, it’s extremely rare to see a relief pitcher win the MVP award. Meanwhile, it’s even rarer to see a pitcher without throwing at least 100 innings in a single season win the MVP award. Also, Eric Gagne won the NL Cy Young award in 2003 and since then, we haven’t seen a closer win the Cy Young award. It's been a while since we last saw a relief pitcher win the Cy Young award and we might have to be very patient to see who will be the next MVP from the bullpen.