I’m skipping to Luis Tiant because the 2025 Classic Baseball Era Non-Players Committee announce their decision tomorrow at 7:30 Eastern time.
Luis Tiant played 19 seasons in the MLB. He had a 229-172 record, a 3.30 ERA in 573 games, 484 starts (187 complete games) and a 65.6 bWAR. His 2416 strikeouts put him 48th on the all-time list. And he is 44th on the pitchers’ bWAR leaderboard. He’s also 21st in career complete games.
He played for Cleveland, the Twins, the Red Sox, the Yankees, the Pirates and the Angels.
Luis made three All-Star teams, got Cy Young votes three times (finishing fourth, fifth and sixth), and MVP votes four times (finishing as high as fifth). He led the AL in ERA twice (1.60 in 1968 and 1.91 in 1972.
He had bWAR values above 5.0 six times, the highest being 8.5 in 1968. He won 20 games four times and threw over 200 innings in six seasons (he threw 311.1 innings in 1974).
Tiant pitched in the playoff twice. He was part of the Red Sox team that lost to the Reds in the 1975 World Series. He was 3-0 with a 2.85 ERA in 5 appearances, 4 starts.
He had an interesting windup, turning his back to the batter before spinning back around for the pitch:
Tiant was on the BBWAA’s Hall of Fame Ballot 15 times. He topped out at 30.9% of the vote his first time. And he was on the Veteran’s Committee ballow six times.