My First Cards

Leading up to 1982, Len Barker was on the fast track to stardom. He led the American League in strikeouts the previous 2 seasons, made his first All-Star appearance, and threw a perfect game. At just 25 with a lot of baseball ahead of him, he was a rising star.

Len started the new season very hot, going 8-3 with a 2.49 ERA through June 14, when he shutout the powerful Detroit Tigers. He stood 2nd in the AL in strikeouts, and 1 victory shy of the majors lead while sporting the 7th best ERA.

In 12 of his first 13 starts, he gave up just 3 runs or less. In 11 of those first 13, he also went at least 7 1/3 IP. He was rock solid, just as the Indians needed from him after the teams #1 pitcher Bert Blyleven went down for the season with an arm injury.

His 14th start was pretty good too, when he left the game in a 4-4 tie after the 10th. His ERA was still a slim 2.59 after the game,

It seems he was being overworked though, as he didn’t even make it through the 3rd inning of his next start. He gave up 8 runs against the Yankees in just 2 2/3 IP.

His season seemed to fall apart from there, as he struggled to find the consistency he made look easy earlier in the year. Including that awful Yankees game, he’d end up allowing 4+ runs in a game, 8 different times. If we split his season after his 14th start, his pitching numbers look like this—

From that, we can see exactly what his problem was. Even though he was striking out more batters and walking less, the batters were generally hitting him better after June 20.

He was allowing more hits per 9 innings, and many of those hits were HR’s (note the huge increase in HR/9). This is almost the sole cause of the near-100 point increase in the SLG allowed. Extra HR’s will always hurt the ERA, but most of these home runs came with runners on base. Ouch.

Interestingly, this last half of ’82 was also the epitome of the rest of Len’s career afterwards. The once young and promising pitcher was suddenly a 4.90 ERA pitcher allowing .90 HR/9 from June 25, 1982 through the rest of his career.

The culprit might’ve been a bone spur that finally began to wear him down. When Len was traded to the Braves in ’83, Joe Torre commented that he knew of Len’s pitching problems, “It’s a bone spur, he’s pitched with it since high school. It’s no problem. At times he’ll need an extra day of rest.”

Len himself talked about it during the beginning of the ’82 season, “I’ve had a bone spur the size of a dime on my elbow the last six years … It flares up every once in a while, rubs against the bone a little bit”. He goes on to mention that it began to bug him during the April 16 game against the Royals and that he should’ve taken himself out of the game but didn’t.

Eventually, Len would get the spur removed and he pitched worse than ever, but we’re left to wonder just how good he might’ve become if he’d had it removed sooner. Would he have learned to pitch differently? Would he have thrown more no hitters? Continued to lead the AL in strikeouts? Won a Cy Young? Helped win a World Series? Whatever the case, Len will always be remembered for pitching his heart out & being one of the games best even if only for a brief time. And hey, he’s probably the only guy with a bone spur who ever threw a perfect game. How cool is that?