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I just ran across this stat over on Baseball Reference. As most of you senior Cardinal fans are aware he saved 300 games in his career. Alot of them for the Redbirds.
But did anybody know that he blew 101 saves in his career? I found that hard to believe. I assume that stat does not necessarily mean he blew all 101 in the 9th inning. So having said that, I am not sure what to make of the 101 blown saves stat.
r/Esteemed Rat
Closer then was nothing like closer now.
Bruce would be brought into games during the 7th or 8th inning, bases loaded, no out and be expected to get the final 5, 6, 7, 8 outs.
Sutter rarely started the 9th needing 3 outs with no one on base. Different game then.
I know this is going to be an unpopular opinion, but his best years were with the Cubs, and he wasn’t as good as nostalgia and the mists of time have made him seem to a lot of Cardinals fans. But his two best seasons with the Cubs were really good.
Now people can throw rotten vegetables at me . . .
Well, he was the NL CYA winner with the Cubs, so that alone bolsters your statement. However, in my view Sutter was the linchpin of the ’82 season along with L. Smith who finished a close 2nd in the NL MVP voting that season. In any event, I don’t think Sutter gets voted as a member of the HOF without the WS title with the Cardinals and his K of Thomas for the final out of that WS.
RBK – Well, he did win a Cy Young with the Cubs and he was a great Cub.
However, arguably his best season was 1984 with The Cards. He had a career high 45 Saves and pitched a career high 122.2 innings.
He was probably better than most remember. Today, a closer might pitch 60 or 70 innings. Maybe less. Sutter regularly pitched 100 innings out of the pen and many of those innings he came into the game with runners on base.
If during his heyday he was used like a closer is today, he might have 70 or 80 saves a season.
RBK,
You are correct. 1977 and 1979 were his best seasons – period. 1984 might have seen him with the low ERA and the most saves of his career but his stats were better in 1977 and 1979.r/Esteemed Rat
1TD — I agree that “moment” of the final out from 1982 is indelibly etched in people’s minds and doesn’t hurt his cause. I also think it helped that he revolutionized a pitch that became a staple of the game, and his name will forever be associated with it. Made his story more unique.
All that said, I think his HOF case wasn’t very strong.
Sutter logged 68 wins and many or most would be some of those blown saves. I find it amazing that he logged 139 decisions even though he never started a game.
No disrespect to Sutter, but I have always disagreed with the decision to retire his number. I feel he lacked the longevity with the team for that honor. The DeWitts didn’t see it that way, and since it is their team…
No disrespect to Sutter, but I have always disagreed with the decision to retire his number. I feel he lacked the longevity with the team for that honor. The DeWitts didn’t see it that way, and since it is their team…
My impression is the number retirement was derivative of his HOF induction. But for the for the latter, they probably wouldn’t have done the former.
Yes, that is what happened. But I disagreed with that. My fear was they would be tempted to start retiring every new Hall entrant’s number to make the celebration a bigger event.
Not every Hall of Famer has a retired number, nor should they. I have written over the years that I think there should be a five-year waiting period between the two events. I feel a retired number is an elevated honor reflecting longevity with the team that should only be for the top tier of Hall of Famers.
A great player who played just four years here would not meet my bar.
Watering down isn’t limited to the Uni number retirements.
Are you saying it’s a feature, not a bug of current Cardinals baseball?
In regards to retired numbers, are 4 and 5 no longer available on a Cardinal jersey?
Technically available, but no player is insane (or tone deaf) enough to ask for them.
And if a player were to ask for one of those numbers, I’m sure they would be heavily “counseled” on the matter.
I don’t know how many involved in this discussion saw Sutter work, but I saw plenty of him with both the Cubs and Cardinals and when he had command of his signature pitch, he was unhittable and could make the best hitters in the NL look foolish. Bruce was no joke.
P.S. I was never able to confirm it, but I wondered if Sutter’s decision to have the Cardinals logo on the cap on his plaque led to his retired number.
1TD — At his best, he was no joke. But it feels strange to say this, he was already starting to decline by the time he reached St. Louis in 1981. Look at his Cubs career compared to his Cardinals years:
Team/ IP / K/9 / BB/9 / HR/9 / ERA / FIP / fWAR
Cubs: 493/9.02/2.72/0.49/2.39/2.32/16.1
Cards: 396/5.88/2.52/0.68/2.72/3.28/3.2Don’t get me wrong, he was pretty good with the Cardinals, but not like he was in Chicago. For whatever reason, his K-rate really plummeted in his final year in Chicago, and never recovered. In his true prime, he struck out a lot of hitters and missed a lot of bats while carrying a heavier workload. By the time he got to St. Louis, his K rate was down almost 1/3 from his time with the Cubs.
Brian, thought you might enjoy this Daily News article about the Yankees having similar issues with number retirements.
From the first graph: “As of 2023, the New York Yankees have won 27 championships; so, it’s probably not much of a surprise that they’ve also retired 22 player numbers, the most in baseball. The only team that is close to retiring that many numbers are the St Louis Cardinals, with 14.”
https://www.dailynewsgems.com/2023/04/have-the-new-york-yankees-retired-too-many-numbers.html
Yeah, I’d say Wainwright has more than a decent chance to have his #50 retired. If that happens, he and Boyer will probably share an exclusive trait.
If the Cardinals hadn’t taken so many decades to create their Hall of Fame, they would have had a more appropriate way to recognize Boyer’s passing than number retirement. It didn’t fit, but I guess it was the best they had. Around that same time, Busch retired 85 for himself.
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