While growing up in the 1960s and coming of age during the 1970s, it seemed the collective conscience about various baseball players, not just Hall of Famers, was long-lived and extensive. Ironically, with ESPN and other 24/7 digital sports media coverage, it seems this has diminished. A longtime friend who is a news reporter attributed this phenomena to the fact that in our youth baseball games were far less frequent then today. Local games were usually blacked out, and nationally-televised games were largely confined to NBC’s “Game of the Week” on Saturday. For this reason, we recall with crystal clarity the classic pitching match-ups and memorable confrontations especially in the heat of a flag chase. Competent pitchers who rarely missed their turn in the rotation are equally remembered with the Hall of Famers. Examples of non-Hall of Fame pitchers who were unforgettable include Dodgers Claude Osteen and Phil Regan in their fierce rivalry with the Giants from 1965-66; Jim Lonborg, Cy Young Award winner with the Impossible Dream Red Sox of 1967; Mickey Lolich with the Detroit Tigers in 1968; Jerry Koosman and Tug McGraw with the Miracle Mets of 1969 and 1973; Cy Young Award relief ace Sparky Lyle with the 1977-78 Yankees.
John Tudor was such a pitcher during the 1980s, especially for the St. Louis Cardinals. The Running Red Birds won improbable pennants in 1985 and 1987 edging out the talent-laden New York Mets by three games each of those years to win the NL East, that presaged winning the NLCS against the favored Dodgers in 1985 and the Giants in 1987. In all of those encounters Tudor was at center stage helping his team with exemplary pitching. Yet in the ensuing decades, perhaps because of the deluge of 24/7 coverage, daily games broadcast over multiple channels worldwide versus the “Game of the Week” and so forth, a Tudor-like pitcher can wind up forgotten in the larger, collective baseball consciousness. A pitcher like Tudor, who did not enter the sports media or remain as an MLB pitching coach but retired to a quiet life at home with family, is sometimes easily forgotten because he is off the radar. The following is a tribute.
Pitching with a hot hand
This paper is dedicated to my longtime friend and fellow CFA, Paul J. Kay, who recently died after a courageous battle with cancer. As investment analysts in the 1980s, Paul and I saw picking stocks as analogous to being an MLB pitcher, winning games. We emulated pitchers like John Tudor who offered cool efficiency, professionalism and a seeming knack for getting on a hot streak while competing against the best of his peers. Paul and I wanted to approach our profession with similar intensity.
On the whole, Tudor was a very good, if not excellent pitcher through his 12-year playing career, which spanned 1979 to 1990. Tudor posted a lifetime record of 117-72 for a winning percentage of .619 with a 3.12 ERA with 34.3 WAR, all respectable numbers but nothing unworldly. His greatest success came from 1985 to 1990. With the Cardinals, Tudor was second in Cy Young and eighth in MVP voting in 1985 and was named NL Comeback Player of the Year in 1990. With the Dodgers, Tudor was a World Series Champion in 1988, the reward for helping LA in the final six weeks of its regular season and finishing with the fourth best ERA, 2.32, in the NL.
According to baseball author Mel Freece, only eight of Tudor’s seasons could be considered full due to recurring injuries. In his book, Charmed Circle: Twenty Game Winners in Baseball’s 20th Century, Freece wrote:
From 1982 to 1988 and again in 1990 (his last year), he won at least ten games per season. His only losing mark was in his rookie season at Boston when he was 1-2 in six games. Tudor pitched for the Red Sox through 1983 and was 39-32, not bad for a left hander pitching half of his games in Fenway park. He had one season with Pittsburgh (1984) and was 12-11 with a 3.27 ERA for a team that was last. In the off season he was traded to St. Louis and had his career year as was 21-8, 1.93 ERA and 10 shutouts. In almost any other he would have won the Cy Young Award, but not this time with Gooden in the league. Tudor pitched for St. Louis through mid-1988 and was traded to the Dodgers as they were making a stretch drive. He was out most of 1989 with an elbow problem, but following reconstructive surgery by Dr. Jobe he rejoined St. Louis for his final career and went 12-4 in 1990. Perhaps if Tudor had not suffered a knee injury in 1987 and lost a full season in 1989, he might have stayed around longer and won many more games. His record with St. Louis for slightly less than five seasons was 62-26, with a .705 winning percentage.
According to Rory Costello, who wrote Tudor’s entry in the Society for American Baseball Research’s “Biography Project,” Tudor’s effectiveness is also reflected in opponents’ on-base percentage of .299 versus the major league average of .324 and having allowed home runs at a rate of one for every 11.5 innings pitched. “Tudor’s style was surgical,” Costello wrote. “He worked fast, changed speeds beautifully, moved the ball around, and had very good control.” Tudor wasn’t known as a power pitcher. In the book You’re Missin’ a Great Game, Tudor’s manager Whitey Herzog noted, “Nobody ever did more with less than my favorite cranky [New Englander], John Tudor. John won me 64 ballgames and only lost 27 [actually 62-26] between 1985 and 1990, a record that still leaves me shaking my head, considering the stuff he had. Well, when you can’t crack eighty-five on the radar gun, maybe a foul mood and a chip on your shoulder are just the right ticket. They sure didn’t hurt John.”
Comparable pitchers
To put Tudor’s career in historic perspective, here is how he compares to three pitchers Baseball-Reference.com notes as having close Similarity Scores:
Pitcher (Seasons)
W/L
Win %
ERA
WHIP
Pitcher WAR
Post-Season
John Tudor (12)
117/72
.619
3.12
1.198
34.3
5/4 W/L
3.41 ERA
Gary Nolan (10)
110/70
.611
3.08
1.145
25.7
2/2 W/L 3.34 ERA
Sal Maglie (10)
119/62
.657
3.15
1.125
34.5
1/2 W/L 3.41 ERA
Preacher Roe (12)
127/84
.602
3.43
1.259
35.1
2/1 W/L 2.54 ERA
[On a side note, yours truly authored a research piece on Maglie.]
Nolan, Maglie and Roe can be characterized as competent and effective, if not excellent. Like Tudor, each is inextricably associated with the eras in which they played. Moreover, each contributed significantly to the dominant teams of said eras: Nolan with the 1970s Cincinnati Reds, Maglie with the New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers of the 1950s, and Roe with the 1940s-50s Dodgers. Of these three pitchers, Maglie and Roe are regarded as “unforgettable” not only for their very good performances, but also in part because of the teams they played for and the era that was immortalized by Roger Kahn in his book, The Era, 1947-1957. Nolan, while obviously being a competent and efficient pitcher, is less remembered because his Cincinnati Reds (aka The Big Red Machine) were noted more for their hitting, slugging, fielding and running prowess versus their pitching. Much has also been written about the 1970s and the Reds, but any attention to their pitching focuses on the collective efforts of the entire starting staff rather than any single pitcher plus a very strong bullpen anchored by relievers Rawley Eastwick, Clay Carroll and Pedro Borbon.
A very memorable season, classic pitching duels and afterward
1985 was Tudor’s career year. His record of 21-8, 1.93 ERA and 0.938 WHIP plus the 10 shutouts and 14 complete games helped propel the Cardinals to the NL Pennant and to the seventh game of the World Series. Only New York Mets pitcher Dwight Gooden, in the midst of his career year that season kept Tudor from winning the Cy Young Award, leading the league in ERA and wins. Gooden was also the strikeout king while Tudor finished sixth.
For Tudor, 1985 was a most interesting year because of the way the wins and losses unfolded. Through May, he was 1-7 with a 3.37 ERA. In his book Season Ticket, Roger Angell wrote that during this difficult stretch Tudor’s high school batterymate, Dave Bettencourt, noted a minor flaw in Tudor’s delivery. Tudor ostensibly took Bettencourt’s information, made the adjustment and went 20-1 the rest of the way with a 1.37 ERA. Ten of those victories were shutouts.
In the same book, Angell cited Cardinal teammate and reliever Bill Campbell as a primary source who explained that Tudor had learned to change speeds more effectively while benefiting from a very good, if not superior supporting cast as well as a big ballpark. Campbell said the following for Angell’s book:
There’s no secret to it. He’s learned to how pitch. He didn’t do all that bad with Red Sox or the Pirates, but you’re not going to come out looking very good with teams like that, because you can only do so much. Here we’ve got these rabbits in the outfield, a great big ballpark, and some guys who are going to turn the D.P. It’s amazing what the double play will do for a pitcher. When he doesn’t get it, he knows he should be out of the inning but he’s not, and when that happens over and over again it adds up – it’s another sort of year. The big difference might that John changes speeds more than he used – that’s maturity in a pitcher. He’s got a good enough fastball, with a tail on it, and doesn’t mind coming inside – any left-hander who’s pitched at Fenway has to be willing to throw inside – but when you can move the ball around the way John does, the changeup becomes a big pitch for you. He change looks like a fastball, but it moves away, and you can see what that does to the hitters. They’re leaning, they’re a mile out in front.
There are two classic, if not defining pitching duels involving John Tudor during his stellar 1985 season. Both were against the New York Mets in the heat of a September pennant chase. The first game Tudor was matched against Dwight Gooden, and the second against Ron Darling. Tudor earned a win in the first game and a no-decision in the second. The Tudor/Gooden duel is rated by Statistical Meanderings.com (which utilizes algorithms and statistical methods based on the work of Bill James) as the #1 game among all games pitched between the years 1918-2010. Here is how StatisticalMeanderings.com lays out this classic duel:
1. John Tudor (Cardinals) @ Dwight Gooden (Mets)
9/11/1985. Cardinals 1-0. 10 innings. Duel Score = 85.7
John Tudor: 10.0 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 2 BB, 7 SO
Dwight Gooden: 9.0 IP, 5 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 3 BB, 7 SO
The next highest or second best pitching duel according to StatisticalMeanderings.com is the 1963 16-inning contest between Hall of Famers Warren Spahn and Juan Marichal.
2. Warren Spahn (Braves) @ Juan Marichal (Giants)
7/2/1963. Giants 1-0. 16 innings. Duel Score = 85.4
Warren Spahn: 15.1 IP, 9 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 1 BB, 2 SO
Juan Marichal: 16.0 IP, 8 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 4 BB, 10 SO
Angell characterized the first game listed above as “two rows of zeroes up in lights” and then shared his personal notes:
“ Wed., Sept. 11: Dwight vs. John Tudor: 9-inn. Double-zip standoff before 52,616. Terrif. strain. Doc great, but pickle-puss Tudor no slouch: slider, change, sneaky FB, in-out, up-down. 3 hitter. Best LH in NL. (Typical ex-Red Sock: so-so at Fens., Superman now. Go figure.) Mgr. Davey J. yanks Doc after 9 (young arm, long career ahead, etc.), & Card slugger Cedeno takes Orosco deep in 10th. Winning blow. Cards-Mets tied for No. 1. (Davey after Nobel Peace Prize or what?) “
To put Angell’s personal notes in context, he has stated in his published works that he is both a Mets and Red Sox fan, and has admitted to always writing about baseball from a fan perspective, as well as being a student of the game. The latter is evident in his earlier excerpt from his conversation with Cardinal reliever Bill Campbell about Tudor’s pitching style.
Later that same month Tudor pitched 10 innings of shutout ball (getting a no-decision) against the Mets’ Ron Darling but this time the Mets won by beating the Cardinals’ bullpen in the 11th inning. Angell wrote:
Down by a bare three (games), the Mets moved along to St. Louis for their last crucial series – the games we had been thinking about all summer. Misfortune kept me at home at the last moment, and I had to make do with televised glimpses of the Tuesday classic: Tudor once again, Tudor prim-faced and imperturbable, Tudor the perfectionist, but this time opposed by Rod Darling, who pitched the game of his professional life. They were both gone after ten scoreless frames, and then Strawberry won the thing with one stroke – a humungous, crowd-stilling bases-empty home run in the eleventh that bounced off the digital clock at the top of right center-field scoreboard.
To put Tudor’s 1985 season into perspective, Tom Boswell wrote in The Heart of the Order (page 298): “On June 1st of that year, his career record was 52-50. Thereafter, until the final game of the World Series, he was 23-2.” In sum, it was a year where excellence provided the foundation for success. However, this success proved fleeting, not only due to the aforementioned injuries that Tudor suffered, but to the inherent difficulty and random nature of the game itself. As inferred earlier, Tudor was knocked out early in the 7th game of the World Series. Angell wrote:
The last night’s doings – the disastrous 11-0 humiliation of the National League champions – should be passed over quickly. I grieved for John Tudor, who could not throw his off-speed pitch over the plate on this particular day, and quickly let us see how cruelly unprotected a fine-tune control pitcher becomes when so handicapped. He left in the middle of the third, after walking two successive batters, to force in a run – his earliest departure from a game all year.
Later success
In 1987, though hampered by injury, Tudor helped the Cardinals win the NL Pennant by recording a winning record of 10-2, but with a 3.84 ERA – nearly twice that of his 1985 ERA. In the NLCS versus the Giants, Tudor showed flashes of his 1985 magic by recording a 1-1 record that including 7.1 innings of shutout ball in Game 6, a 1-0 victory. Tudor was 1-1 in the World Series loss versus the Twins that went seven games.
The following year, 1988, coming off winter knee surgery and still having a bothersome shoulder, Tudor was just 6-5, but leading the NL in ERA at 2.29 when he was traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers on August 16. During the August 1st – 16th period, the Dodgers were 7-8, and at one point during that stretch saw their 1st place lead shrink to 0.5 games before rebounding to a 3.5 game lead at the time of acquiring Tudor. Having released Don Sutton who had gone 3-6 and having placed Fernando Valenzuela on injured reserve after going just 5-8, the Dodgers were seeking a competent left-hander to strengthen their rotation for a hoped for pennant winning stretch drive. Statistically, Tudor recorded a 4-3 record in nine starts, a 2.41 ERA, 3.2 strikeout-to-walk ratio, but a 1.3 WHIP. This enabled Tudor’s overall, combined season record with St. Louis and LA to be 10-8 with a 2.32 ERA). He was a non-factor in LA’s postseason that culminated with a World Series championship, but his winning record for LA that included 5-quality starts in August and September appeared to have helped the Dodgers eventually win the NL West Division by 7 games.
Dodger pitching ace and 1988 Cy Young Award winner Orel Hershiser wrote in his autobiography Out of the Blue, “Two days later the club traded Pedro Guerrero, our offensive leader for nine seasons, to St. Louis for John Tudor, one of the premier lefties in the league. He would go 2-1 in three starts the rest of the month (August) with a 2.86 ERA.”
In his book, Miracle Men: Hershiser, Gibson and the Improbable 1988 Dodgers, Josh Suchon cited Dodger general manager Fred Claire’s perspective on the timing and importance of strengthening the pitching staff via the late-season acquisition of John Tudor: “ Even though he had his physical problems along the way, [Tudor] was a flat-out big-game pitcher. I just felt it was the right trade for us.”
Despite being a non-factor in the playoffs that year, Tudor acknowledged in a later interview (a media project for a high school student with the YouTube name of “dannygirl616” and the video clip titled “John Tudor Interview,” April 28, 2011) that getting a World Series championship ring with the Dodgers was very satisfying (albeit in a limited role), especially after coming up agonizingly short in 1985 and 1987 with the Cardinals in two 7-game series.
The person behind the numbers: Who is John Tudor?
Given Tudor’s intimidating presence and his streak of success in 1985, it was great fun to learn more about Tudor as a person in terms of his values and how he was regarded by his peers and managers. Aside from the aforementioned interview and some minor league coaching from 1992-96, Tudor has led a quiet after-baseball life. According to the article titled “1988 Dodgers: Where Are They Now?” featured in the August 24, 2013 online edition of the Los Angeles Times, Tudor is a part time high school baseball coach near Boston and community representative for the Red Sox. Bob Ryan, in his article titled “Former Major-League Pitcher Enjoys Life With Intercity League Team” featured in the Boston Globe, July 28, 1991quoted Tudor as saying about life after major league baseball that “I’m just trying to have fun. And I’m trying to stay unnoticed.”
In the course of doing research for this article, it appeared Tudor commanded respect from his peers, managers, and sports media. Peter Gammons, in his article “How Long Can It Last?” featured in Sports Illustrated, May 21, 1990 included these observations:
From Mike Schmidt:
What makes Tudor so tough is that first you see the ball in his hand, then, you lose it in his uniform. And his delivery is exactly the same on every pitch. I don’t know how he can have such a perfect fastball delivery and throw the ball 25 miles an hour slower. How many times a game do you see a batter swing at what he thinks is a fastball away, only to be halfway into the swing and realize that it’s a changeup that’s not due to arrive for a few more minutes?
From Whitey Herzog:
He didn’t want any right-handed batters turning on his curveball, so he had a unique strategy. He never showed ’em one. That’s right; in five years with the Cardinals, John Tudor never threw his curveball to a right-handed batter. That’s 2,000-some hitters at least. If you don’t play ball for a living, you might not understand how crazy that is.
Mike DeCourcy in his article “Tudor Wins 19th for Cards” published in the Pittsburgh Press, September 17, 1985, quoted MLB manager Chuck Tanner as describing Tudor as a very smart pitcher: “Puts a little on, takes a little off, throws the fastball when you’re expecting something different and it looks like it’s 95 miles per hour. He’s a very smart pitcher.”
Joe Henderson, writer for Baseball Digest took note of Tudor’s seriousness of purpose, intensity and competitive manner. In 1986, for his article titled “John Tudor: The Man and His Image” Henderson wrote, “He [Tudor] was also combative, curt, and bluntly honest; when he considered a question stupid, he said so.”
This also carried over into his tenure with the Dodgers after having joined the team in a late-season trade in 1988 and was observed by Los Angeles Times reporter Ross Newhan. Tudor told Newhan shortly after his arrival, “I’m only concerned about doing my job. I try to be as honest as I can, though that’s where I’ve gotten in trouble in the past.”
Tudor showed profound self-awareness on the help he received from others in his quest to master his craft and achieve success. Of his 1985 hot streak and the advice received from Dave Bettencourt, his former batterymate, Tudor told Paul LeBar of the Associated Press, “It was at my ‘gathering’ point where my mechanics were fouled up. It had to do with the way I was releasing the ball. Since that time, everything’s just fallen into place. In fact, I’ve never been in a better groove than I am right now.”
Tudor’s humility, if not realism, was reflected in this sober self-appraisal given to Tom Boswell in The Heart of the Order:
I don’t consider myself a big star. What I did [in 1985] was a reflection of what the ballclub did. It helps you stay on top to think that way. If I can’t throw strikes and let Ozzie Smith and Willie McGee catch ‘em, then I’m beating myself. I may never get to that point again [he said of his 20-1 streak]. My control was as good as it’s ever been, and it just stayed there. Even when I got out of rhythm at the end of one start. The streak just kept going; then when you figured it was time to stop, it just didn’t….When you lose two or three in a row, you doubt yourself. It compounds on you. You just have to hang on until you win, even if it’s by luck, then it starts turning around.
In The Heart of The Order, Tom Boswell likened Tudor to Roger Maris:
Tudor – a rigid, proud man in the Maris mold – found himself a center of national attention. He loathed the experience. Curt with the press and abrupt with the public, he seemed like a man holding on for dear life to maintain his magical form on the field. Many (including me) tended to nag Tudor for gracelessness in the spotlight, and others took off the gloves and ripped him….[In reference to how the passage of time changed the perception of Maris, and how that might occur with Tudor] …. With a quarter-century of perspective, it’s easy to see the injustices – the small-minded asterisks – of another generation. Perhaps – human nature having so many dark unswept corners – it’s difficult to see our own.
Boswell was most perceptive in his expectation that with the passage of a quarter-century, Tudor might be better understood if not appreciated for his contributions to the game. Although no longer in the spotlight, John Tudor is a player worth remembering.