As everyone knows 27-year old Josh Beckett became the first 20-game winner in the Major Leagues since 2005 when four pitchers turned the trick. He is the first 20-game winner for Boston since 2004 when Curt Schilling won 21-games in helping the Red Sox to their first World Championship since 1918.
This is Beckett’s first time winning 20 in his career and judging by the strides he has made in his two seasons pitching in Boston I’d say it probably is not his last either.
The Red Sox have had 27 different pitchers log 47 twenty plus win seasons since 1901. Beckett is obviously the most recent but Cy Young himself was the first to do it in 1901 when he won 33 games for the then-Boston Americans (the team changed it’s name to Red Sox in 1907). Young would win 32 games the following year but those 33 wins in ’01 aren’t the franchise high for victories in a single season. That honor goes to “Smokey” Joe Wood, who won 34-games in 1912 for the team that won a World Series.
Wood and Young are the only 30-game winners in franchise history.
Several pitchers who have won 20-plus games in a season have done it more than once. Young did it a remarkable six times on his way to a record 511 wins and having an award named after him on his way to the Hall of Fame.
Three men have done it three times for the Red Sox. Bill Dinneen did it in three straight seasons from 1902 to 1904, one of my favorite all-time players Luis Tiant did it in 1973, 1974 and again in 1976 and some guy named Roger Clemens accomplished the feat in 1986, 1987 and 1990.
Nine men have done it twice. Wood (1911, 1912), Babe Ruth (1916, 1917), Carl Mays (1917, 1918), Boo Ferris (1945, 1946), Jesse Tannehill (1904, 1905), Mel Parnell (1949, 1953), Tex Hughson (1942, 1946), Wes Farrell (1935, 1936) and Pedro Martinez (1999, 2002).
Others to win 20 games while wearing a Red Sox uniform are: Tom Hughes in 1903, Hugh Bedient and Buck O’Brien in 1912, Ray Collins in 1914, Sad Sam Jones in 1921, Howard Ehmke in 1923, Lefty Grove in 1935, Ellis Kinder in 1949, Bill Monbouquette in 1963, Jim Lonborg in 1967, Dennis Eckersley in 1978, Derek Lowe in 2002, Schilling in 2004 and now Beckett.
With 5-man rotations, no scheduled double headers, pitch counts and specialists long gone are the days of 30-game winners. Those three 30 win seasons in franchise history will never be touched. Detroit’s Denny McLain was the last 30-game winner in majors in 1968 when he won 31-games.
With the aforementioned changes in the way baseball is played 20-game winners are even becoming fewer. Between 1901 and 1923 the Red Sox 23 times had pitchers notch 20-plus win seasons, including the three 30-plus win marks. From 1924 to 2007 20-plus wins was achieved 24 times for the team with the highest win total being 25 and that was done three times the last time in 1949.
This season we actually had the statistical chance to have three pitchers get to 20-wins. In addition to Beckett, both Tim Wakefield and rookie Daisuke Matsuzaka had outside chances at the 20-win plateau as late as the last week in August. But the team’s play and poor outings by both hurlers sent that chance by the wayside.
The last time the Red Sox had multiple 20-game winners was in 2002 when Martinez (21) and Lowe (20) did it. The feat of multiple twenty game winners in one season has been done 9 times in franchise history. Dinneen (21) and Young (32) in 1902, Dinneen (21), Hughes (20) and Young (28) in 1903, Dinneen (23), Tannehill (21) and Young (26) in 1904, Bedient (20), O’Brien (20) and Woods (34) in 1912, Mays (22) and Ruth (24) in 1917, Farrell (25) and Grove (20) in 1935, Ferris (25) and Hughson (20) in 1946, Kinder (23) and Parnell (25) in 1949 and then it wasn’t done again until 2002.
