Top 25 MLB pitching seasons of all time

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NEW YORK – 1886. A group of National League champion New York Giants are featured in this 1886 woodcut. Included are Jim O’Rourke, Buck Ewing, Tim Keefe and Mickey Welch. (Photo by Mark Rucker/Transcendental Graphics/Getty Images) /

17. Tim Keefe, 1880

The Numbers: 6-6, 0.86 ERA (MLB record), 12 complete games, 293 ERA+

Baseball was different in the 1880s. Pitchers finished what they started and there were no gawdarned participation trophies. Baseball-Reference, which is a very fine website, informs me that in 1880 there was a Major League Baseball team named the Troy Trojans in the National League. For the Trojans, Tim Keefe had one of the best seasons ever by a professional pitcher.

Keefe began the 1880 season pitching for Albany in the National Association. When that team disbanded in the middle of the year, he latched on with Troy and was their only pitcher for the remainder of the season. He completed all 12 games he started and allowed only 10 earned runs in 105 innings for the lowest single-season ERA in baseball history. Suffice to say, this record will never be broken. The game has come a long way, but that takes nothing away from how good Keefe was in 1880.

Some of the numbers that Keefe put up in the 1880s are impossible to comprehend when viewing them next to today’s pitcher statistics. He threw 619 innings in 1883 and had over 300 wins by his age-33 season. Keefe was regarded as one of the sharpest pitching minds of his time, and threw one of the best changeups in professional baseball. He finished his career in 1893 with 342 victories and is in the Hall of Fame. Keefe won 19 consecutive games in 1888, a record that still stands along with his ERA record.

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