White Sox legend and chronically-underrated starting pitcher in the 1970s, Wilbur Wood, died on Saturday at age 84.
The 17-year veteran came into his own after arriving on the South Side in 1966, first as a bullpen specialist and later as a throwback innings-eater. In the process, he was named to three All-Star Games and finished among the Top 5 in Cy Young voting in three consecutive years.
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The key to Wood’s excellence was the knuckleball, which allowed him to throw an extraordinary 1,070 innings over his three Cy Young-contention seasons. Those seasons yielded a 70-50 record, 2.64 ERA/2.94 FIP, 142 games, 63 complete games, 19 shutouts and even a save — all adding up to a 30.0 WAR. To put that value in perspective, only nine other pitchers in White Sox history have more than 30.0 career WAR.
Wood’s 376 2/3 innings in 1972 rank 274th all-time (all but a handful of bigger workloads were from the 1800s, however) and most since Grover Cleveland Alexander in 1917. Wood started 49 games that year, which works out to more than 30% of the club’s starts, and his innings pitched added up to more than 27% of the team’s total innings load.
Legend has it that Hall-of-Famer Hoyt Wilhelm and fellow pitching star Eddie Fisher welcomed Wood to the White Sox in 1966 with a career-changing gift — teaching the lefty the knuckleball. But while Wood struggled over parts of four seasons in Boston and Pittsburgh (1-8, 4.13 ERA) and suddenly became a bullpen force in Chicago due to the pitch, the two veterans were more mentors who guided Wood than teachers who made him.
“I just decided to junk my curve and everything else and go 100% with the knuckleball,” Wood told our Mark Liptak back in 2005. “I had actually thrown that pitch for a long time; I started using it back in high school and semipro ball.”
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After a “modest” 51-game debut (41 in relief) in 1967 that yielded a 2.45 ERA, the “new knuckleballer” led the AL in appearances in each of the next three seasons. In two of those years (1968 and 1970) Wood led the AL in games finished, and compiled 52 saves from 1968-70.
In 1971, new White Sox manager Chuck Tanner and pitching coach Johnny Sain opted to shift Wood to the starting rotation, and the southpaw thrived, with an MLB-best 11.7 WAR and 1.91 ERA.
In Wood’s five starring years as a starter (1971-75), he averaged 336 1/3 innings per season. He led the majors in starts in four seasons and the AL in starts in all five. Amazingly, nearly 30% of his starts during that stretch came on two days’ or less rest. The southpaw shrugged that off, however, with 99 complete games in that stretch.
What stopped Wood’s career was not the wear-and-tear of the heavy workload, but a line drive off the bat of Ron LeFlore in Detroit on May 9, 1976. The smash shattered Wood’s kneecap and ended his season. True to form, though, Wood had completed five of his six starts to that point, with a 2.24 ERA.
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Wood returned in 1977 and 1978, starting 45 games total — but his ERA ballooned to 5.11 in the two seasons. He was granted free agency after the 1978 season, and when no teams called on him to eat some innings in 1979, Wood’s career was over, at 37.
After his baseball career, Wood worked in various sales positions. At the turn of the century, he was named to the White Sox’s All-Century Team.
By JAWS calculations measuring peak value, Wood stands as the 106th-best starting pitcher in baseball history. His 51.7 career WAR with the White Sox places him as the fourth-best pitcher and seventh-best player in team history. His 50.0 career WAR overall ranks 320th in baseball history, tied with Roy Oswalt. Yet Wood never received more than 7% support for Hall of Fame election.
