#167 1981 Earned Run Average Leaders
If looks could strike you out… then the piercing look in Nolan Ryan’s eyes here would certainly do it. Steve McCatty looks moody, a bit sad, & deep in thought. Their caps spell “Has”.
Both hurlers faced fierce competition for the ERA titles in 1981. Seriously, just look at the back of this card. Every single pitcher that qualified for the top 10 in each league, were all below 3.00. That hasn’t happened again in the 30 years since.
Future Hall of Famer Nolan Ryan led the way among them all, with a super slim 1.69 ERA, which still stands as the 2nd best post-1968 ERA. This was the first time Nolan led the league in the category.
Now wait you say – “the Astrodome was an extremely good park for pitchers!” and you’d be right. It was especially good to Nolan in the strike-shortened 1981 season, helpin’ him to home ERA of just 1.11. Despite that though, he still had an awesome 2.14 ERA on the road, so he still would’ve won the NL ERA title if he pitched only on the road.
Yeah, that’s how hot he was.
Over in the junior circuit, it was a lot more interesting. It was a lot more controversial. It was a lot more stupid. The rules at the time, stated that you must round off to the nearest whole inning when calculating ERA, which is stupid ’cause it really is erroneous. I don’t care what SI claimed.
So at first, Baltimore’s Sammy Stewart won the title. A couple days later, it was still being reported that McCatty came in 2nd. After a review of the rules, the Scoring Committee then stripped Sammy and gave the title to Steve because the rule actually removed part of an inning from Sammy and added part of an inning to Steve.
As if that wasn’t insane enough, it makes the situation crazier when you find out that a similar “by the rule” situation happened twice before, decades earlier. What happened then? Well they did the smart thing — “they ignored the rule, and did what common sense told them was right“.
So Steve McCatty appears on this card when he didn’t really have the lowest ERA in the AL among qualified pitchers. Fortunately you won’t see this insanity anymore. Retrosheet, Baseball-Reference, Fangraphs, or MLB.com each accurately show Sammy and Steve’s real ERA for 1981.
