there’s a reason that 2 of 3 of al lawson’s starts were complete games even though the dude sucked at pitching. pitchers just did that back then
in the dead ball era you had guys like Old Hoss Radbourn who back then were considered great but not too remarkable but you read about that guy nowadays and are like “HEY WHAT THE FUCK”
i don’t know if this conversation is about blaseball or actual baseball and that terrifies me
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the more you look at it the more fucked up it gets. 678.2 fucking innings
almost every pitcher record was set in the 1800s and is unbreakable because pitchers don’t do that shit anymore. the ones that weren’t were set by nolan ryan and are similarly unbreakable because he just didn’t stop pitching
for half the season Old Hoss Radbourn was the literal only pitcher on the Providence Grays. after 1884 for a solid 6 months his arm lost the ability to do anything except throw a baseball
all of these guys were throwing absurd amounts of pitches, half of which are illegal spitballs nowadays, and batters had no idea how to deal with them
and into this environment comes ALFRED LAWSON, america’s most beautiful failson, who endeavours to be a TERRIBLE pitcher in this era
i’m trying to find a way to get stats for his two individual games in pittsburgh without luck. i’m intrigued because he has two starts, one of which is a complete game, and 10 total innings. this implies he was pulled after at most two innings in one of his games. which is rare today, let alone in the dead ball era. what did he do
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everything about this man is so fucking funny
he has an ERA+ of 99 in boston (which implies he was around league average) but got cut after only one start. he has an ERA+ of 39 in pittsburgh (which means he was fucking awful)
i think an important part of why i find him so funny is exactly what you’re finding now; there is statistical records on him
anyway if we want to find those games we’re probably going to have to use retrosheet
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apparently pittsburgh’s defence was awful enough to provide negative run support for him. he’s still 13 runs worse than the average pittsburgh pitcher
hold on i’m finding the games he started on retrosheet
okay, damn, we just have the final score for his start with the Beaneaters in 1890: a 7-2 loss to the Giants
in 3 fielding attempts in pittsburgh he had two errors. to count the runs against him unearned seems generous
or it might be he got 3 right and 2 errors. i’m not sure what the A means but his average is listed as .600
truly, one of the most baffling baseball careers of all