Billy Pierce: Star from the 1950s on the Golden Days Hall of Fame Ballot

In the 1950s and early ’60s, a 5’10” left-handed pitcher started three All-Star Games, won over 200 games, and pitched a complete game in Game 6 of the 1962 World Series. If I were to play a game of “Who am I” with those clues, the vast majority of respondents would likely guess that the pitcher in question was the New York Yankees’ Hall of Famer Whitey Ford. You would be wrong. Ford was 5’10”, he was a lefty, he did win over 200 games. He started three times in the Mid-Summer Classic, but his complete game in the ’62 World Series was in Game 1. The pitcher I’m talking about is Billy Pierce, who won 211 games for the Tigers, White Sox, and Giants from 1945-64, started three All-Star Games, and threw a complete game in Game 6 of the ’62 Fall Classic, beating Ford in a matchup of the top A.L. lefties from the 1950s.

In a few weeks, the Hall of Fame’s “Golden Days” Eras Committee will convene to consider the candidacy of ten candidates for the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. Pierce is one of the candidates on that ballot. There will be 16 voting members on the committee, each of whom will be able to vote for up to four out of the ten candidates. A candidate must get 12 out of 16 votes (75%) in order to be elected to the Hall of Fame.

There is one other pitching candidate on the ballot, 283-game-winner Jim Kaat. The other eight candidates are Dick Allen, Tony Oliva, Minnie Minoso, Maury Wills, Gil Hodges, Ken Boyer, Roger Maris, and Danny Murtaugh.

Pierce has never gotten remotely close to the Hall of Fame and is unlikely to get close this year either. But he had a really interesting career. I will confess that the last time Pierce was on an Eras Committee ballot (the infamous ballot of December 2014 in which nobody was elected), I had never heard of him. Now that I have made it my passion in life to write about Hall of Fame candidates, I’ve had fun learning more about this hard-throwing lefty. There are some really interesting nuggets in this piece that I found fascinating. I hope you do too!

“That little so-and-so is a marvel. So little, and all that speed. And I mean speed! He got me out of there on a fastball in the ninth that I’d have needed a telescope to see.”

— Joe DiMaggio (reported by Bill James and Rob Neyer in Pierce’s SABR bio)

Cooperstown Cred: Billy Pierce (SP)

• Tigers (1945 & ’48), White Sox (1949-61), Giants (1962-64)
• Career: 211-169 (.555), 3.27 ERA, 1,999 Strikeouts
• Career: 119 ERA+, 53.4 WAR (Wins Above Replacement)
• Top 2 in the American League in ERA three times
• Won 20 games twice
• 7-time All-Star (named the A.L starter three times)

(cover photo: Associated Press)

Billy Pierce: Early Years in Detroit & Buffalo

Walter William Pierce was born on April 2nd, 1927, in Detroit, Michigan, the son of Walter and Julia Pierce. At Highland Park Community High School, the relatively short (5’10”) southpaw earned the nickname “Mr. Zero” by tossing six shutouts. The hometown Tigers signed Pierce before the 1945 season. With so many established stars unavailable due to their military service, he started his professional career with the big club, bypassing the minor leagues.

Pierce, however, merely sat on the bench for six weeks, getting into no games, before being sent to Buffalo (AA) in the International League. He did return to pitch three games in June and came back for a pair of appearances in September. Led by two-time MVP starter Hal Newhouser (a future Hall of Famer), the Tigers won the A.L. pennant and then defeated the Chicago Cubs in the World Series. Although he pitched only 10 innings in 5 appearances, Pierce was on the big-league roster long enough to earn a World Series ring at the age of 18.

With more players back from World War II in 1946, Pierce was back in the minors. An injured back limited him to just 56 innings pitched that season. Pierce was back in Buffalo in 1947 and had the good fortune of having Paul Richards as his catcher-manager. Richards had been with the Tigers in ’45 when Pierce was there and didn’t notice that the clerk who occasionally worked at a drugstore near where Richards’ lived was actually his 18-year old teammate! (Pierce’s father was the owner of the drugstore and Pierce worked there when he wasn’t with the team).

Pierce, coming back from that back injury, pitched reasonably well for Buffalo, going 14-8 with a 3.87 ERA. He was back with the big club in 1948 but rarely pitched, logging just 55.1 innings in 22 appearances. Pierce was plagued with control problems; he walked 51 batters in those 55.1 IP, contributing to a 6.34 ERA. After the season, the Detroit native was traded to the Chicago White Sox for backup catcher Aaron Robinson and $10,000.

Emergence in Chicago

The trade to the White Sox put Billy Pierce on a team that had finished last in the American League. However, the transaction to a bad team did give the 21-year-old lefty a chance to pitch regularly. In his first two years with the Chisox, he went 19-31 but with a respectable 3.94 ERA. Still, control problems plagued him; he averaged 5.7 walks per 9 innings in those two campaigns.

A reunion with Richards (the new White Sox manager for the 1951 season) proved to be the cure for Pierce’s wildness. Richards helped Pierce with his windup and convinced him to throw a slider in addition to his blazing fastball and curve. Pierce was able to throw the slider for strikes at a much higher frequency than his other pitches and it turned him from a journeyman hurler into a top-flight starter.

Thanks to Pierce’s emergence and a couple of trades, the 1951 White Sox won 81 games, a massive improvement over their 60-win campaign from 1950. One of those key acquisitions was a dynamic Cuban outfielder named Minnie Minoso, who became an instant star. (Minoso, as previously noted, is also on the Golden Days Hall of Fame ballot with Pierce).

For the season, Pierce went 15-14 with a 3.03 ERA. Most notably, Pierce’s walk rate dropped from 5.6 per 9 IP to 2.7 per 9 IP. Incidentally, Pierce’s 14 losses were the most in the American League.

Pierce emerged as a legitimate star in 1952, though not yet an All-Star. After a 6-5 start (3.32 ERA), the hard-throwing lefty was brilliant. Although he was just 9-7 in his last 20 starts, he posted a scintillating 2.11 ERA. In addition, Pierce tossed 10 complete games (with 3 shutouts) in those 20 starts. For the season, his ERA was 2.57 and Baseball-Reference credits him with a 7.3 WAR.

Perennial All-Star

Starting with the 1953 season, Billy Pierce was an American League All-Star for seven out of nine campaigns. He tossed a one-hitter in his first start of the season and was the starting pitcher for the A.L. in the All-Star Game (the first of three starts in four years for the junior circuit between ’53-’56). In the Mid-Summer Classic, Pierce tossed three innings of scoreless ball, giving up just one hit (to Stan Musial).

“Billy probably threw harder than anybody for a guy his size, he had a real big delivery, nice to look at… He was a nervous little guy, and here he was starting his first All-Star game in a bandbox park that’s tough to pitch in, and against Robin Roberts to boot. Pierce held them in the palm of his hand that day. He threw the ball right by everybody.”

— Ted Williams, My Turn At Bat: The Story of My Life (1969)

In August, Pierce had a streak of 39.2 scoreless innings. He finished the season with 186 strikeouts (leading the A.L.) and went 18-12 with a 2.72 ERA (which was the 2nd best in the league).

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Bothered by arm problems, Pierce had an off-year by his standards in 1954, going 9-10 with a 3.48 ERA. He returned to form in 1955, going 15-10 with a 1.97 ERA, best in all of Major League Baseball. His ERA mark bested the A.L. runner-up (Whitey Ford, 2.63 ERA) by over half a run per nine innings. It was the lowest ERA for a starting pitcher in the 1950s. Baseball-Reference credits Pierce with a 7.0 WAR in ’55.

In 1956, Pierce won 20 games for the first time, going 20-12 with a 3.56 ERA. Pierce also had a league-leading 21 complete games and finished 5th in the A.L. MVP voting, ahead of Ted Williams and behind Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Al Kaline, and Harvey Kuenn.

Pierce won 20 games for the second time in a row in 1957 (20-12, 3.26 ERA) and once again led the junior circuit in complete games, with 16. He finished 11th in the MVP vote.

The now 31-year old lefty had another solid campaign in 1958, going in 17-11 with a 2.68 ERA and 19 complete games, leading the A.L. for the third consecutive season. On June 27th, against the Washington Senators, Pierce nearly pitched a perfect game. He retired the first 26 batters before Ed Fitz Gerald hit a two-out double down the first base line that landed about one foot from the foul line. Pierce struck out the next batter to record the third one-hitter of his career.

All told, during what were the best eight seasons of his 18-year career, Pierce went 129-90 with a 2.89 ERA from 1951-58. That was the third-best mark in all of Major League Baseball for those years, behind only Hall of Famers Ford and Robin Roberts. Pierce also led all MLB hurlers with 1,255 strikeouts and 30 shutouts between ’51-’58.

1959: The White Sox in the Fall Classic

Billy Pierce began the downward phase of his career in the same year, ironically, that the White Sox won the pennant by winning 94 games, which was 5 games better than the second-place Cleveland Indians. For the season, Pierce went 14-15 with a 3.62 ERA, his highest total since 1950. Less than a month after tossing the fourth and final one-hitter of his career, Pierce was an All-Star for the 6th time, despite a 4.19 ERA as of July 4th. (From 1959-62, two All-Star Games were played each year. Pierce was not named to the squad for the second game).

In early August, Pierce pitched a whopping 16 innings of one-run ball in a game against the Baltimore Orioles that ended in a 2-2 tie after 18 innings (Hall of Famer Hoyt Wilhelm pitched 10 scoreless frames in relief for the O’s). The 32-year-old lefty managed to pitch only 6.1 innings in his next two starts, with a pulled back muscle and strained ligaments putting him on the shelf for over three weeks.

Pierce came back in September to author three excellent starts (with one relief appearance) but he slumped in his final two starts of the season, failing to last five innings in either.

Because of his late-season swoon, Pierce was not tabbed for any starts in the Fall Classic against the Los Angeles Dodgers. Instead, manager Al Lopez went with future Hall of Famer Early Wynn (22-10, 3.17 ERA), Bob Shaw (18-6, 2.69 ERA), and Dick Donovan (9-10, 3.66 ERA) in the six-game series loss. Pierce was disappointed not to get a start but did pitch effectively out of the bullpen (tossing four scoreless innings in three appearances).

After the World Series defeat, Billy Pierce pitched just two more seasons with the Chicago White Sox. In 1960, he went 14-7 with a 3.62 ERA but didn’t go as deep into games. He threw only 8 complete games (his lowest total since 1949) and managed just 196.1 innings in 32 appearances (31 starts). A year after winning the A.L. pennant with 94 wins, the Chisox won 87 contests, which was only good enough for 3rd place in the A.L.

Pierce went 10-9 with a 3.80 ERA in 1961 and was no longer a full-time starting pitcher. In 180 innings, the 34-year-old lefty made 28 starts and 11 relief appearances. The team won 86 games, finishing in 4th place.

1962-64: Swan Song in San Francisco

In November 1961, Billy Pierce was traded (with former Yankees’ World Series hero Don Larsen) to the San Francisco Giants in a 6-player deal. The most notable player received by the White Sox was pitcher Eddie Fisher, who became an All-Star in 1965.

Pierce had often been plagued by poor run support while with the White Sox but this was not a problem at the beginning of his tenure with San Francisco. With three future Hall of Famers in the lineup (Willie Mays, Orlando Cepeda, and Willie McCovey), the Giants scored 60 runs in Pierce’s first 8 starts; he was the winning pitcher in all of them, despite a solid but not sterling 3.43 ERA. Unfortunately, after losing his 9th start, Pierce was spiked in his 10th outing and had to leave the game in the first inning.

Pierce returned a month later but got hammered by the expansion New York Mets. Giants’ manager Al Dark used the 35-year-old lefty just three times (in relief) before putting Pierce back in the rotation in August. Pierce started 11 games in August in September (while pitching in relief twice) and went 7-3 with a 3.46 ERA.

The Giants were in a pennant race right down to the wire with the Los Angeles Dodgers. After 162 games, the teams were tied with 101 wins each.

The 1962 Playoff and Fall Classic

Baseball’s rules at the time required a 3-game playoff to determine the pennant winner between the Dodgers and Giants. Pierce was the fourth starter on the Giants, behind future Hall of Famer Juan Marichal (18-11, 3.46 ERA), Jack Sanford (24-7, 3.43 ERA), and Billy O’Dell (19-14, 3.53 ERA).

However, since the trio mentioned above had started in the team’s final series, Billy Pierce was tabbed to start the first game of the playoff at Candlestick Park against Sandy Koufax. The Left Arm of God wasn’t yet the unbeatable force he would become in the succeeding four seasons (and he had missed most of the last two months due to a hand injury) but he still led the N.L. with a 2.54 ERA.

With Koufax anything but his best, Mays tagged him for a two-run home run in the first inning; Dodgers’ manager Walter Alston pulled Koufax in the bottom of the 2nd after a solo tater by Jim Davenport and single by Ed Bailey. Those initial runs were all Pierce would need. He tossed a 3-hit shutout in the Giants’ 8-0 victory.

The second game (at Dodger Stadium) would have fit in nicely with 21st-century baseball. A total of 13 pitchers were used (8 by San Francisco, 5 by Los Angeles) in a 4 hour, 18-minute nail-biter that the Dodgers would win 8-7 in the bottom of the 9th.

In the third game (also in Los Angeles), Marichal was matched up against veteran Johnny Podres, the MVP of the 1955 World Series when the Dodgers were in Brooklyn. In this classic game that featured multiple moves of managerial chess, the Giants had a 2-1 lead after five innings. In the top of the 6th, after three consecutive singles, Alston took Podres out of the game, replacing him with one of his top relievers (Ed Roebuck), who got out of the jam unscathed. Then, the Dodgers scored three runs off Marichal in the 6th and 7th to take a 4-2 lead.

In the bottom of the 8th, after a leadoff walk to Tommy Davis, Dark went to his bullpen, bringing Larsen (the 1956 World Series MVP) in for Marichal. Larsen got two outs before Dark made the decision to issue two intentional walks to load the bases to bring Roebuck to the plate. Roebuck had already tossed three scoreless innings and Alston decided to keep him in the game to bat, eschewing the option of using a pinch-hitter. Roebuck grounded out to 3rd to end the threat.

Alston’s gambit backfired, as the Giants rallied for four runs against Roebuck (and two other relievers) in the top of the 9th to take a 6-4 lead. Dark summoned Pierce (pitching on one day of rest) out of the bullpen to close the game and Pierce delivered with a 1-2-3 inning for what we now call a “save.”

In the World Series, the Giants were matched up against the New York Yankees, a team with whom Pierce was intimately familiar from his years in the American League. After the teams split the first two games, Pierce was tabbed to start Game 3 (at Yankee Stadium) against the Yankees’ 24-year-old righty Bill Stafford. The two starters matched zeroes until the bottom of the 7th when the Yankees tagged Pierce with three consecutive hits, culminated by a two-run single by Roger Maris. Dark took Pierce out of the game and the Yankees held on to win 3-2.

After the teams split Game 4 and 5, the Yankees had the opportunity to clinch in Game 6 at Candlestick Park. The game was delayed, however, for three days due to non-stop rain caused by Typhoon Freda. After four days off in total, the series resumed with a battle of lefties, Pierce against Ford, the future Hall of Famer. In what could be considered the crowning achievement of his career, Pierce won the battle. The Giants won 5-2, with Pierce tossing a complete game with just a pair of runs allowed on three hits. Maris had tagged Pierce with a solo tater in the 5th but Pierce struck him out to end the game.

Unfortunately for Pierce and the Giants, the World Series dream wouldn’t be realized, as the Yankees won Game 7 by a 1-0 score.

After the season, Pierce finished 3rd in the Cy Young vote, behind Don Drysdale and Stafford. (From 1956-67, only one Cy Young Award was conferred, to the best pitcher in all of Major League Baseball).

End of the Line

Billy Pierce’s career petered out after the Fall Classic. After a complete-game shutout in the Giants’ home opener to win his first start of the 1963 campaign, Pierce went into a deep slump and finished the season as a middle reliever. He went 3-11 with a 4.27 ERA for the season in just 99 innings.

Although he was released at the end of the ’63 campaign, Pierce was re-signed by the Giants in April 1964. He pitched exclusively in relief before making one final start, in early September, at Candlestick Park against the Dodgers. Pierce tossed 7.2 innings of one-run ball to earn the 211th win of his career. He also struck out three batters, giving him 1,997 for his career. The 37-year-old lefty, however, only appeared in one more game, getting two strikeouts. Pierce announced his retirement on the final day of the season, finishing his career with 1,999 whiffs.

Pierce’s #19 was retired by the Chicago White Sox in 1987. In July 2007, a statue in Pierce’s honor was unveiled at U.S. Cellular Field. Pierce passed away in July 2015 at the age of 88 from gallbladder cancer.

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The Hall of Fame Case for and Against Billy Pierce

Given that Billy Pierce only won 211 games and tossed 3,306.2 innings in his 18-year career, it’s no surprise that he got absolutely nowhere when his turn came to join the BBWAA (Baseball Writers Association of America) Hall of Fame ballot. He was on the ballot five times (from 1970-74) and never got more than 1.9% of the vote in an election requiring 75% for election to Cooperstown. (The Hall of Fame did not yet have the strict rule that a player would be ineligible for future ballots after getting less than 5%).

Despite Pierce’s weak showing with the BBWAA, given that he’s now been selected twice to be considered by the Eras Committee, there’s clearly something to his career that makes him a worthy candidate of consideration. The Chicago Tribune’s Robert Markus noticed it in 1974, the year that Whitey Ford got elected to the Hall of Fame (with 284 votes for 77.8%) in the same year that Pierce got a whopping four votes (for 1.1%).

“Why should 284 baseball writers deem Whitey Ford an immortal while only four thought as much of Billy Pierce?… It could well be argued that the one thing Ford had that Billy Pierce lacked was opportunity… I don’t know how many times these two faced each other or what the results were but I know that Pierce generally gave a good account of himself. Why, then, should one man be in the Hall and the other not?”

— Robert Markus (Chicago Tribune, January 17th, 1974)

Markus never got the chance to take another look since Pierce never appeared on the ballot again.

“It’s a gross oversight that Pierce hasn’t received more serious Hall of Fame consideration. The primary difference between Pierce and Whitey Ford was that one played with the Chicago White Sox and the other with the New York Yankees. Change teams and Pierce would have had a plaque in Cooperstown years ago. Only Warren Spahn, Robin Roberts and Early Wynn won more games in the 1950s, and all are in the Hall of Fame today.”

— Paul Ladewski, The Daily Southtown (date unknown)

The 1991 Spink Award winner (Jerome Holtzman, a longtime scribe in Chicago) also had praise for Pierce:

“Pierce won 211 games with mediocre to poor ballclubs. He should be in the Hall of Fame… Whitey Ford won 236 games, but Ford was playing with championship teams. Billy Pierce played with a lot of dog teams.”

— Jerome Holtzman, The Chicago Tribune (April 3, 2000)

Comparison to Whitey Ford

Forgetting for a moment that Pierce actually did pitch for quite a few good ballclubs as well, since all three writers listed made an equivalency between Billy Pierce and Whitey Ford, let’s start by looking at the numbers:

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It’s easy to see why Ford was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1974 and why Pierce got nowhere. It’s because of Ford’s 2.75 ERA and .690 winning percentage,  the best in modern baseball history (post-1901) for a pitcher with more than 2,000 innings pitched.

Interestingly enough, however, the other numbers are remarkably similar. Both pitchers’ innings were limited early in their careers by their managers (Casey Stengel in New York, Paul Richards in Chicago).

So, why does Baseball-Reference give both lefties nearly identical scores on Wins Above Replacement (WAR) despite Ford’s significantly superior ERA? The reason is that the Yankees generally fielded better defensive squads behind Ford than the White Sox did behind Pierce and that Pierce faced more difficult opponents over the course of his career than Ford did. This makes sense, of course, because Ford never had to face the Yankees, who won 11 pennants in the years Ford toed the rubber in the Bronx. Only once did the Yankees win fewer than 92 games during Ford’s first 13 seasons with the Bronx Bombers. The White Sox were a good team, too, but the difference is stark.

Look at the difference (I’m excluding 1951-52 for the Yankees because of Ford’s military service and 1966 & 67 because he pitched only 73 and 44 innings):

• Yankees (1950, 1953-65): 1,344-848 (.613)
• White Sox (1949-61): 1,083-927 (.539)

OK, so let’s be fair. Ford outperformed his team for the listed years (.705 to .613) at a much greater rate than Pierce did (.550 to .539). Still, there is that pesky factor that inherently favors Ford. The Chairman of the Board never had to face the Yankees!

Pierce vs. the Yankees

In his career (not including the ’62 World Series), Billy Pierce faced the Yankees 88 times (76 starts): in 532.1 innings, he went 25-37 (.403) with a 3.94 ERA. Compare that to every other pitcher in the American League from 1948-61:

• Pierce vs Yankees (1948-61): 25-37 (.403), 3.94 ERA
• All others vs. Yankees (’48-61): 784-1,315 (.374), 4.62 ERA

Pierce’s record in non-Yankees games was 186-132 (.585) with a 3.15 ERA.

Two other quick notes about this. The first one is fascinating. You might recall that Robert Markus remarked that he didn’t know what the results were when Billy Pierce and Whitey Ford faced off against each other but that Pierce gave a “good account of himself.” Of course, Markus wrote this in 1974, decades before we had Baseball-Reference to answer that kind of question.

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It’s interesting that, while Pierce’s overall record against the Yankees is about what you’d expect, he really stepped up his game when Ford was his mound opponent. (Pierce’s record against the Bronx Bombers in non-Ford games was 16-30 (.348) with a 4.44 ERA).

Billy Pierce and Paul Richards in Chicago (1951-54)

The other point is a more general one, and it’s a stronger point than Pierce’s pitching record was really better than it looked. When Paul Richards was the White Sox manager (from 1951-54), he would sometimes hold back his ace lefty for a day or two in order to leverage him against the best teams in the league. Those teams were the Yankees and the Cleveland Indians, who averaged 97 wins from 1951-54. As you can see, Pierce pitched much more against the best two teams in the A.L. and it hurt his overall record.

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I’m sure that, if you took the time to research the records of elite starting pitchers against the best teams in their leagues, you’ll find similar ERA splits. Pitching against the best teams in your league is part of the job. The difference is that Pierce logged 41.4% of his innings against the best two teams in the league and only 58.6% against the other five.

Would Billy Pierce Have Won a Cy Young Award?

I’m sure that question sounds odd, so let me explain. When I ask “would Pierce have won a Cy Young Award,” the question I’m really asking is this: “would Pierce have won a Cy Young Award if it existed prior to 1956 and if it were awarded in both leagues prior to 1967?” I ask this question because the presence of Cy Young trophies enhances a player’s Cooperstown credentials. Even though I’m sure most writers knew this when they were not thinking carefully about Pierce’s Hall of Fame candidacy back in the 1970s, it’s a useful exercise to determine his worthiness now. Being the best pitcher in your league for a year or two is something that enhances any player’s Hall of Fame case.

I’m going to create a few hypothetical American League Cy Young races in 1952, ’53, ’55, ’56, and ’57, the years in which he finished in the top 30 of the MVP vote. We can take the MVP rankings as an indicator of how the writers valued the top pitchers in the league each year, even if we might today look at things differently.

1952: 15-12, 2.57 ERA, 7.3 WAR

Because won-loss records were so highly prized until just the last decade or so, it should be no surprise that Pierce finished just 29th in the MVP balloting and was behind eight other hurlers. By WAR, he was the second-best pitcher in the league but his ERA was only 6th best and his 15 wins were bested by 6 other starters. The best pitcher in the league was Philadelphia’s Bobby Shantz (24-4, 2.48 ERA, 8.8 WAR) and that’s how the writers saw it at the time, giving him the MVP trophy. Interestingly, another pitcher (the Yankees’ Allie Reynolds) finished 2nd in the MVP vote; Reynolds had a 20-8 record with a league-leading 2.06 ERA.

1953: 18-12, 2.72 ERA, 6.2 WAR

Pierce finished 10th in the MVP vote in a year in which he led the league in pitching WAR. On the MVP vote, he was third among pitchers, behind his teammate Virgil Trucks (20-10, 2.93 ERA, 6.1 WAR) and Washington’s Bob Porterfield (22-10, 3.35 ERA, 4.2 WAR). We can call this a hypothetical 3rd place Cy Young finish. If today’s writers were transported back to 1953 armed with their laptops, it would have been a toss-up between Pierce and Trucks.

1955: 15-10, 1.97 ERA, 7.0 WAR

Despite leading the league with a sub-2.00 ERA (a rarity for these years), Pierce only finished 18th in the MVP vote (and only the 4th best among pitchers), thanks to only winning 15 games. Pierce’s 7.0 WAR was easily the best in the league (Cleveland’s Early Wynn was second at 6.1) but, of course, WAR didn’t exist at the time. However, ERA did exist, and his 1.97 mark was way ahead of Ford (2.63) and Wynn (2.82).

The top MVP vote-getter this year was Indians’ reliever Ray Narleski, who finished 6th (he went 9-1 with a 3.71 ERA in 111.2 innings). Today, we can look at this and start LOL-ing but relief pitchers were shiny new objects to the writers back then.

If one were to pick a year in which Pierce absolutely deserved a hypothetical Cy Young Award, it was in 1955.

1956: 20-9, 3.32 ERA, 5.2 WAR

Ironically, in a year that he was tied for 5th in WAR and was in 9th place in ERA, this was the one year in which Pierce led all A.L. pitchers in MVP votes. He finished 5th overall, ahead of Bob Lemon (20-14, 3.03 ERA), Ford (19-6, with a league-best 2.47 ERA), Wynn (20-9, 2.72), Frank Lary (21-13, 3.15), and Herb Score (20-9, 3.53).

In the real world, the Dodgers’ Don Newcombe won the first MLB Cy Young Award (27-7, 3.06 ERA). Ford got one first-place vote despite finishing just 12th in the MVP vote.

1957: 20-12, 3.26 ERA, 3.6 WAR

Pierce finished in 11th place in the MVP voting this year, behind Jim Bunning, who finished 9th (20-8, 2.69 ERA, 6.3 WAR). Pierce was 6th in WAR and 11th in ERA in 1957, so there’s no case to be made that he was the best pitcher in the league.

Warren Spahn was the ML Cy Young winner (21-11, 2.69 ERA), with Pierce’s teammate Dick Donovan (16-6, 2.77 ERA) the only other pitcher to get a vote.

Pierce did actually finish 3rd in the Cy Young voting in 1962, even though he had a 3.49 ERA, just 25th best in all of baseball. This 3rd place finish was almost certainly aided by his heroic efforts in the three-game playoff against the Dodgers, which counted as regular-season games.

Conclusion: because of the timing of the creation of the Cy Young Award, Pierce never had a chance to win one. In a parallel universe in which the award had been created for both leagues a couple of decades earlier, he might have won one or two, but possibly none.

Was Billy Pierce the Best Pitcher in the A.L. in the 1950s?

Last month, I did a podcast with Baseball-Reference’s Adam Darowski to talk about the potential candidates for the Golden Days Hall of Fame ballot. At one point, I mentioned that I felt that the 1950s were fairly “picked clean” among Hall of Fame starting pitcher candidates. However, Darowski begged to differ and noted that the 50s were in fact a “lull” in quality starting pitchers, especially compared to the decades that followed.

Here is how Pierce compares to other pitchers in baseball from 1950-59.

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It’s pretty clear that Warren Spahn and Robin Roberts were the best pitchers in the 1950s; both plied their trade in the National League. Among American League hurlers, Wynn had 33 more wins than Pierce but Pierce had a better ERA (3.06 to 3.28) and WAR (43.9 to 37.4). Either way you slice it or dice it, Pierce was either the 1st or 2nd best starting pitcher in the A.L. for an entire decade. The only pitchers on these lists who have superior numbers to Pierce’s are not-borderline Hall of Famers.

If you expand the frame to encompass Pierce’s entire career (1945-64), he’s still 3rd in WAR behind Spahn and Roberts. However, if you expand it to five years before Pierce’s career began and five years after it ended (from 1940-69), he’s just 9th in WAR. He is behind eight Hall of Famers but barely above Larry Jackson’s 52.6. His ERA is merely tied for 16th best for those years but he is tied for the 5th most wins, behind four Hall of Famers.

Pierce’s ERA+

There is one other point that I made on the podcast with Darowski that’s worth pointing out. It’s that Pierce actually had a very good ERA for his career (3.27) and the adjusted version (119 ERA+) is even better.

Here’s the good news. There are only two pitchers in the entire 20th century to pitch at least 3,000 innings and log an ERA+ of better than Pierce’s 119 that are not in the Hall of Fame. They are Roger Clemens (146 ERA+) and Eddie Cicotte (123). Clemens is not in the Hall because of his alleged use of PEDs. Cicotte was never considered because he was banned from baseball for life for his role in the Black Sox scandal of 1919. So, that’s the good news for Pierce.

Here is the pin in that balloon. Carl Mays and Dutch Leonard also had an ERA+ of 119 in over 3,000 innings pitched, and Dolf Luque’s ERA+ was 118.

The White Sox and the Hall of Fame

Sometimes the baseball gods smile on players as Hall of Fame candidates who don’t deserve it and other times they shun players who are worthy. Billy Pierce had three teammates on the 1959 pennant-winning White Sox who eventually got into the Hall of Fame. Early Wynn made it fairly easily based on lasting long enough to win 300 games. Shortstop Luis Aparicio made it on the basis of 9 Gold Gloves, 10 All-Star seasons, and 506 career stolen bases (while leading the A.L. nine times). Second baseman Nellie Fox earned his spot because of his MVP Award in ’59, 12 All-Star seasons, 2,663 hits, and six seasons in which he hit over .300.

Interestingly, the creators of WAR on Baseball-Reference equate the three Hall of Famers about equally with Pierce:

• Luis Aparicio: 55.8 WAR
• Billy Pierce: 53.4
• Early Wynn: 51.6
• Nellie Fox: 49.5

It’s interesting how the “elevator pitch” and a few shiny objects elevate three players into Cooperstown while keeping another far away.

The White Sox, as a franchise, has 32 former players who are in the Hall of Fame. Only a handful, most notably and recently Frank Thomas, were slam-dunk selections based on what they did in Chicago. There are others (such as Tom Seaver, Ken Griffey Jr.) who were nearly unanimous choices but they made it to Cooperstown based on their feats with other teams.

Interestingly, the Chisox have a lot of players (both in the Hall and outside it) who could fairly be considered “borderline,” the most recent example being Harold Baines. Regarding Pierce’s teammates, I think we’d all agree that Aparicio, Fox, and Pierce all fit into the borderline category (not Wynn, who won 300 games, a magic number).

When I look at the totality of Pierce’s career resume, it reminds me of another lefty who spent most of his career with the White Sox, Mark Buehrle, who won 214 games with a 3.81 ERA (117 ERA+) and posted a 60.0 career WAR. Buehrle did better on the BBWAA ballot than Pierce ever did (11% in 2021) but isn’t remotely close to Cooperstown at this point.

Conclusion

There are certainly a healthy number of players who had careers inferior to Billy Pierce who are already in the Hall of Fame but the same can be said about all of the players on the 2022 Golden Days ballot. And, it’s clear, there are many other pitchers from other eras (like Buehrle) who have cases equally as valid as Pierce’s. Of course, we don’t have to choose between the popular White Sox left-handers right now.

Anyway, to summarize the points in favor of Pierce:

• Pierce was one of the top two A.L. starters in the 1950s.
• He probably would have won an A.L. Cy Young or two if they existed at the time.
• His overall record is diminished from his true worth due to his heavy usage against the powerful Yankees and Indians in the first four big years of his career (1951-54).
• He started three All-Star Games. Only six pitchers have started more. They’re all in the Hall of Fame except for Max Scherzer, who will be five years after he retires.

The points against are obvious: only 211 wins and only 3,306.1 IP, both low numbers for pitchers in the 20th century.

Remember this: Pierce is on a ballot with those nine other candidates on the Golden Days ballot. The committee members who will vote on Pierce and the nine others are limited to four selections. I don’t see how he’s one of the top four. Personally, I’d rank him 7th on this ballot, behind Dick Allen, Minnie Minoso (his former teammate), Jim Kaat, Ken Boyer, Gil Hodges, and Tony Oliva.

Regarding Kaat, the other pitcher on this ballot, Pierce has a higher WAR and ERA+ and a lower ERA, but Kaat has 283 wins and 4,530.1 innings pitched. Volume matters too (you can see my case for Kaat by clicking here).

The Hall of Fame would not be diminished if Pierce were to make it but I don’t see a compelling reason to give him a Cooperstown plaque right now.

You may have noticed that, in this piece, I threw a lot of stuff against the wall. A lot of it is interesting. But none of it is so compelling that it screams in neon lights, “put him in the Hall of Fame now!!” Pierce was really good and I might smile upon his Cooperstown candidacy with more warmth in the future but right now I don’t see it.

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