Player Appreciation: Dan Quisenberry

We admit Rivera's run was longer, but during a concentrated stretch of seven seasons.
Consider the organization
The 1970s Royals were very strong teams. They had George Brett, Willie Mays Aikens, Darrell Porter and Dennis Leonard.
They won the American League West title in 1976,1977 and 1978, but were quickly knocked out of the playoffs.
In 1979, the Royals finished three games back of the Angels. However, they had a 26-year-old rookie reliever. He tossed 40 innings to the tune of a 3.15 ERA.
That 3.15 ERA was impressive for a rookie, but Quisenberry would learn a new release point and become an even greater performer.
Once he perfected the submarine approach requested by manager Jim Frey, Quisenberry's ERA would never go higher than 3.10 for the next eight seasons. His shutdown motion proved the difference for a team that reached two World Series, including a 1985 World Series championship.

Comparing greatness
When you compare him to Mariano Rivera, the game's most dominant and durable closer, you realize that it is a tragedy Quisenberry, who died in 1998, is not enshrined in the Hall of Fame.
Consider their eras of dominance:
Rivera's run lasted three seasons longer than Quisenberry's.
The Yankee legend tossed 814 innings over 701 games and average 3.43 strike outs per walk and 6.8 hits per nine innings.
Quisenberry tossed 895 innings over a 674-game span from 1979 to 1987. He averaged 2.33 strike outs per walk and 8.9 hits over nine innings.
What he did do better than Rivera, in fact better than any pitcher whose career took place after 1926, was not walk batters. His career 1.4 walks per nine innings is the best of any pitcher since then.
One way to realize how good a control pitcher Quisenberry was is to look at one statistic: wild pitches.
The right-hander threw four in his entire career.
As Vizzini says, "That's inconceivable."
Consider these three wild pitch facts:

• 1. Quisenberry threw four wild pitches in 1,043 career innnings. Trevor Hoffman has thrown 47 in 1,022.


• 2. In his four Cy Young seasons, Greg Maddux lost control of 14 pitches.


• 3. Walter Johnson might be the best pitcher of all time. He once threw four wild pitches in an inning.

Quiz was far from the strike out pitcher Rivera was during much of his stretch, but he didn't give up runs and pitched more innings over many fewer games.
But that just shows how how the game has changed since the dawn of the one-inning closer.
What really blows us away about how dominant Quisenberry was is when you compare the hardware.
Rivera, who's stiffest competition has come in the form of Jonathan Pappelbon during recent seasons, won four Rolaids Relief Man Awards.
Quizenberry topped that and had to do it against much more impressive closers.

Stiff Competition
The American League during the the late 1970s and early 1980s was probably the golden era of closers. You had Hall of Famers Goose Gossege, Rollie Fingers and Dennis Eckersley leading the charge.
But none of them won as many Rolaids Relief Man Awards as Dan Quisenberry, who tallied five.
Yep, that's right, he has more than Rivera too. Quisenberry, a three-time all-star, won the award in 1980, then again every in every season from 1982 to 85.
The Royals used Quisenberry's arm so much from 1980 to 1985, you'd have thought he was baseball's version of Kevin Bacon.
In 1983, he became the first reliever to save 45 games in a season.
He threw more than 125 innings five times in his career. Of his contemporaries, Fingers reached the mark six times, Gossage did it four times while Sutter and Eckersley never did it.
Quisenberry was such an important cog in the Royals machine he was given a life-time contract.

A quick exit
As much as Quisenberry dominated from 1979 to 1985, he was effective from '86 to '87, but he was out of baseball by 1990.
He had a horrific half season with the Royals in 1988, posting a 6.16 ERA. However, he got picked up by the Cardinals and didn't pitch much better.
In 1989, he had his last good season, posting a 2.64 era in 78 games for the Red Birds.
He capped his career with an awful season in San Francisco.

Compared to another great
Maybe, since Quisenberry's run was as dominant as Rivera's, but over a shorter span, it's more fair to compare the Royal relief ace to another legendary pitcher: Sandy Koufax.
Sure it's hard to compare a starter's importance to that of a reliever's.
However, Koufax finished his career well short of Hall of Fame numbers. He had 165 wins, almost half of what Don Sutton ended up with.
The lefty had just six Cooperstown-worthy seasons.
But those seasons were so bright, he couldn't be kept out of the hall.
And, while Quisenberry's career was never put in it's proper place because of the stigma of being a reliever, his dominant run of seven seasons is well worth a plaque.
If you still don't think so, consider this last fact:
Quisenberry had five seasons in which he finished in the top five in Cy Young award voting. Rivera also has five such seasons. Koufax, who also played just 12 seasons, had four.