Bob Feller and World War II

Did His Service Hurt or Help His Career?

For a long time during his retirement years, Bob Feller would famously carry around typewritten copies of what his career statistics could have been if he hadn’t lost nearly four seasons to service in the Navy during WWII. The revised numbers were, of course, very flattering to Bob Feller.

Why Feller, already a Hall of Fame pitcher and the subject of nationwide adulation during his playing career, felt the need to tell folks he was even better than his career stats indicated, is an interesting psychological question that I’m not going to try to answer. I’ll just point out that, while lots of people have tried to project the missing stats of players who served in the military during the war, it’s kind of unusual for the player himself to carry around those projections in his pocket.

But it is a fun exercise to go through, one that a few folks have done in the past, including Joe Posnanski. Overall, the various projections, including the one Feller carried around, all look something like this:

They’re all pretty consistent, and I’ve run the math, it all checks out. Of course, all of these projections beg the question of whether Feller’s arm would have stayed healthy without that three-plus year break in his career.

In his four full seasons immediately before the war, Feller averaged 309 innings, a remarkable workload even for an older pitcher, let alone an extremely young one.

Feller was just 19 years old in 1938, his first season as a full-time member of Cleveland’s rotation. He pitched 277.2 innings that year, the highest total for a pitcher that young in 45 years. It remains the most innings thrown by a 19-year old in the last 130 years.

And then his workload went up.

As a 20-year old, Feller threw 296.2 innings, leading the league. It was the most innings by a 20-year old in 38 years, and remains the most by any 20-year old in the last 122 years.

And then his workload went up AGAIN.

As a 21-year old in 1940, Feller threw 320.1 innings, again leading the league. It was the most by a 21-year old in 23 years, and remains the most by any 21-year old in the last 106 years.

And then his workload went up AGAIN.

As a 22-year old in 1941, Feller threw 343 innings, again leading the league. It was the most by a 22-year old in 29 years, and remains the most by any 22-year old in the last 111 years.

Overall, Feller pitched 1237.2 total innings in those four years, 60 more than the next closest pitcher, Bucky Walters. That total is 137 more innings pitched than any other pitcher of those ages since 1900. It’s a mark that will almost certainly never be surpassed.

The history of pitchers who threw more than 200 innings as a 19-year old is pretty awful. Here’s the entire list of pitchers to do it since 1900:

Taking the others one at a time:

• Pete Schneider - Saw his workload increase for a couple more seasons, but was a below average pitcher by the time he was 22, hurt his arm at 23, and never pitched again.

• Charles Bender - Pitched 14 more years and eventually made the Hall of Fame, though he probably shouldn’t have. His longevity, though, was largely due to the fact that he never again threw as many innings in any season as he did when he was 19. Connie Mack notoriously had to closely manage his workload due to a variety of ailments.

• Gary Nolan - Didn’t surpass even 200 innings again until he was 22, and then fought arm trouble most years after that. Was out of baseball at 29.

• Dwight Gooden - Followed up his 19-year old season with one of the finest seasons any pitcher has ever had, winning the 1985 pitching Triple Crown and Cy Young Award as a 20-year old. And then he was never the same again. Never made another All-Star team after age 23, never got any Cy Young votes after age 25, and never surpassed even 200 innings in a season after age 28. He had a variety of off-field problems besides arm trouble, but he was a shadow of his younger self before he even turned 30.

• Wally Bunker - Developed arm trouble almost immediately after his big season at the age of 19, and only surpassed 200 innings in one more season. He was out of baseball before he was 27.

Without question, Feller had a better career than any of these guys. But he also had something that none of them had; A break of nearly four years without continuing to pile up wear and tear on his arm.

When Pearl Harbor was attacked, Feller immediately enlisted in the Navy. He pitched for Navy teams briefly, and then volunteered for sea duty, serving as a gun captain on the battleship U.S.S. Alabama. He was discharged in the summer of 1945, and, for basically that entire time, the only wear on his pitching arm was the exercise regimen he put himself through to stay in shape.

When he returned, in time to get 9 starts at the end of the 1945 season, he appeared to be his old self. He posted a 5-3 record, a 2.50 ERA, and struck out 7.4 batters per nine innings, all numbers that were very much in line with his pre-war performance.

So it’s entirely fair to say that Feller’s arm and career may actually have been saved by the war. His Navy service effectively put the brakes on the accumulation of damage that other young pitchers with high inning counts experienced. It’s a fair argument to make that Feller’s projected numbers may have actually been worse, not better, if not for the war.

There is, however, one curveball to throw into this discussion. And that curveball is Feller’s ego and greed.

We’ve already seen the ego in the form of his pocket stat projections, but it had another impact immediately after his return from Navy service. Having missed most of four seasons, Feller was anxious to be in the headlines again, and also make up for the salaries he’d lost during the war. Those two driving forces - his ego and his greed - led to a series of decisions that caused serious damage to his arm.

First, Feller made a push during the 1946 season to break the all-time single-season strikeout record of 343, set by Rube Waddell in 1904. To that end, Feller badly abused his pitching arm. Through that year’s All-Star break, he had 190 strikeouts in 20 starts. The Indians were mired in 5th place, seven games under .500 and 19 games out of first place. It was a dead end season, so Feller decided there was no harm in going for a personal record.

From that point of the season onward, he started a remarkable 22 games, often on just 3 days rest. He completed 17 of those starts, and also made 6 relief appearances, all in an effort to pile up strikeouts.

The wear on his arm showed up in his performance. Before the All-Star break, he’d been pitching remarkably well, posting a 15-5 record, 1.90 ERA, and striking out 9.5 hitters per nine innings pitched. After the All-Star break, he went 11-10, saw his ERA climb by over half a run per game, and his strikeout rate drop to 7.4 per nine innings. His total inning count a season’s end was an incredible 371.1.

He got his record in the end, but only because people in 1904 couldn’t count. His final total of 348 strikeouts was considered the new record. But, as it turns out, once records from 1904 were reviewed more closely, Waddell hadn’t struck out 343 hitters. It had actually been 349. Feller put in all that effort to fall one strikeout short.

Despite the wear and tear on his arm, and the drop in his performance, Feller didn’t take any time to rest. Eager to make extra money, he launched a lengthy barnstorming tour as soon as the season ended. Throwing against a team led by Satchel Paige, Feller was pitching nearly every day, and flying all over the country to make as many appearances and collect as much ticket money as possible.

It was a great financial success, but it likely ruined his pitching arm for good. His 1947 season saw a noticeable drop in his performance. He was still quite good, winning 20 games and leading the league in strikeouts again, but he clearly wasn’t the same. His ERA jumped from 2.18 to 2.68, his inning count dropped to 299, and his strikeout rate dropped from 8.4 to 5.8 per nine innings.

From that point, the downward slide in his performance only accelerated. Take a look at the 162-game averages for the different stages of his career; His peak from 1938 through 1946, the next 5 seasons after all the arm damage he self-inflicted in the summer and fall of 1946, and the final five seasons of his career.

That, folks, is a pretty straight downward line, all starting at the point he tried to make up for lost money and headlines during the 1946 season.

In essence, I think Feller’s pretty fortunate to have the career that he had. If the war hadn’t interrupted his career, I think there’s a good chance he would have suffered the same fate as Doc Gooden and Gary Nolan and the other pitchers who threw too many innings at the age of 19. But, since the war did interrupt his career, and he decided to quickly make up as much of the lost income as he could, he inflicted even greater damage on his pitching arm than he missed during the war.

In short, Feller’s potential career of over 350 wins and 3500 strikeouts is most likely a pipe dream that would have never been a reality anywhere outside of that paper he kept in his pocket.