Arms, Arms For the Poor?

Quick fact of the day: the 1915 Philadelphia Athletics used a staggering (and record-setting) twenty-four different starting pitchers in a 154-game season. Unsurprisingly, the team stank (43-109!). Of course, this was the first season after Connie Mack sold off most of the good players on his contending squads, blaming rising salaries; the next season the team would go 36-117, good for a .235 winning percentage. Not many middle infielders from that era can say they had a higher batting average than their team's winning percentage, but the A's had two: 41-year-old Nap Lajoie at second (.246) and Whitey Witt at short (.245). Anyway, enough prattling about the horrific 1916 squad: back to the 1915 pitchers.

The Shuffling Twenty-Four
(1915 AL ERA: 2.93 - stats reflect player's time on the Athletics' roster.)

• Weldon Wyckoff (43 G, 34 GS, 10-22, 3.52 ERA)
• Rube Bressler* (32 G, 20 GS, 4-17, 5.20 ERA)
• Later went on to be a pretty good left fielder for the Reds in the 1920's.
• Joe Bush (25 G, 18 GS, 5-15, 4.14 ERA)
• Tom Knowlson (18 G, 9 GS, 4-6, 3.49 ERA)
• 20 years old in his only MLB season.
• Bud Davis (18 G, 2 GS, 0-2, 4.05 ERA)
• 19 years old in his only season.
• Bob Shawkey (17 G, 13 GS, 6-6, 4.05 ERA)
• Traded to the Yankees for $3,500 during the season, he went on to pitch well in pinstripes, finishing with a 196-150 career record.
  
• Tom Sheehan (15 G, 13 GS, 4-9, 4.15 ERA)
  
• Herb Pennock* (11 G, 8 GS, 3-6, 5.32 ERA)
• Selected off waivers by the Red Sox, Pennock now is enshrined in an obscure museum in a nondescript New York town.
  
• Jack Nabors (10 G, 7 GS, 0-5, 5.50 ERA)
• Old man of the staff at 27, Nabors would be given more of a chance in 1916, going 1-20 with a 3.47 ERA. His Baseball-Reference.com sponsor says it all: "There are bad pitchers, and there are unlucky pitchers, and then there are men who were neither: they were just cursed to pitch on horrendous Philadelphia teams, the poor souls."
• Cap Crowell (10 G, 8 GS, 2-6, 5.47 ERA)
  
• Dana Fillingim (8 G, 4 GS, 0-5, 3.43 ERA)
• Bruno Haas* (6 G, 2 GS, 0-1, 11.93 ERA)
• Boon Haas never made it back to the majors.
  
• Harry Eccles* (5 G, 1 GS, 0-1, 4.71 ERA)
• Five career games was enough for him to be saddled with the nickname "Bugs."
  
• Bill Morrisette (4 G, 1 GS, 2-0, 1.35 ERA)
• Morrisette had the most wins with no losses on the team.
  
• Walter Ancker (4 G, 1 GS, 0-0, 3.57 ERA)
• Out of baseball at the age of 22 after the season.
  
• Chick Davies* (4 G, 2 GS, 1-2, 8.80 ERA)
• Things got so bad reserve outfielder Davies had to start some games. Oddly, he appeared again in the big leagues with the Giants as a reliever ten years later.
  
• Jack Richardson (3 G, 3 GS, 0-1, 2.63 ERA)
  
• Harry Weaver (2 G, 2 GS, 0-2, 3.00 ERA)
  
• Joe Sherman (2 G, 1 GS, 1-0, 2.40 ERA)
• Though the 24-year-old Sherman was done in the majors after the season, he lived until the age of 97.
  
• Carl Ray* (2 G, 1 GS, 0-1, 4.91 ERA)
  
• Tink Turner (1 G, 1 GS, 0-1, 22.50 ERA)
• ...and thus he faded into baseball obscurity.
  
• Elmer Myers (1 G, 1 GS, 1-0, 0.00 ERA)
• What a game! He had 12 strikeouts to go with his five walks and two hits allowed.
  
• Bill Meehan (1 G, 1 GS, 0-1, 11.25 ERA)
• Like Turner, he was done after the game.
  
• Bob Cone (1 G, 1 GS, 0-0, 40.50 ERA)
• Cone didn't even last an inning in his only career game, but at least his teammates came back to give him a no-decision.

There were only three pitchers on the staff who didn't start any games (not really a surprise given the time period, but still).

• Jack Harper - appeared in three games during April, finished two, and never pitched in the bigs again. He was 21.
• Squiz Pullion* - the curiously nicknamed Cecil Pullion pitched in two games within a week during August before his career was over.
• Bob Pepper - five innings of effectively wild (4 BB and 1 HBP) one-run relief on July 23 gave him a career 1.80 ERA.

The staff totals: 154 GS (two ties/rainouts/suspended games?), 43-109, 4.23 ERA (last in the league). They tied the sixth-place Browns for fewest shutouts with 6 and managed to walk 2.3 more batters per game than the rest of the league (5.4 to 3.1). The team's ERA+ (ratio of the league to the team) was a sad 68. For some sort of perspective, Jason Jennings (6.45 ERA in the NL) and Robinson Tejeda (6.61 ERA in the AL) had a 68 ERA+ in 2007. The 1915 A's pitching staff was truly a sad-sack staff.

The 1916 squad used fewer starters despite their worse record - only fourteen different pitchers took the mound to start the game for the team. Of those, six weren't on the team the previous year, so over two seasons, the Athletics used thirty different starting pitchers. Crazy days in Philly, I guess.

* - left-handed