Kirk Rueter retired today.
Among his noted accomplishments, he had a .586 winning pct and is the winningest lefty in Giants history.
But he also accomplished a bizzare statistical feat.
He gave up more runs than he struck people out.
Now, if you're terrible, that's easy to do, but then you don't stay in the majors that long.
But that's really hard to do if you're actually good.... to have batters put that many balls in play and still succeed. It certainly keeps your fielders on their toes.
In fact, I went and looked it up and I could only find one other pitcher with a career of any note who has also done that.
At first I thought it was about velocity. So I thought about other junk ballers... Moyer, Wakefield, Hough, nope, nope, nope.
Not even close.
Ground ball guys? Quisenberry, Innis? Quisenberry comes close, but no cigar.
Damn.
Well, I did find two more. The first one is just amazing.
Cy Young.
Yup, that's right. What are the odds that Kirk Rueter and Cy Young wind up in any kind of a trivia question answer together?
So, then I thought maybe it had something to do with that era. So I checked out other notables... Matthewson, Grove, Waddell, Brown, Ciccote. Nope.
Well, so for a moment there, I thought I had the best trivia question ever... but then I found one more who just ruins it.
Another ground ball guy, and also a former Giant.
Billy Swift.
Fuck you, Billy Swift. You ruined my trivia question.
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