Great Starting Pitchers With 1 Career Save

A while back, I looked at some pitchers who had thrown shutouts

despite spending most of their career in relief. In this post, we’ll consider the inverse: great starting pitchers who nonetheless recorded a single save.

Below is a list of the 6 pitchers with at least 40 career WAR and exactly 1 career save. A couple are still active, so while it seems rather unlikely that either will ever get another save, they could still drop off the list.

As you can see, there are special circumstances behind each save. Four of the players recorded non-traditional 3-inning saves; Seaver and Saberhagen got their saves in the second games of doubleheaders; and Tanana’s save came in the 14th inning. In all 6 cases, these players were likely used because the regular relievers were tired.

What’s cool about this list is that there were no weak performances in this bunch. Combined, the 6 pitchers went 13.1 shutout innings, gave up just 4 hits and 1 walk, and struck out 15. They may have been slumming it a bit in relief, but they didn’t lessen their effort.

Probably the most unexpected player on the list is Seaver, who made just 9 relief appearances in his long and ridiculously awesome career. Those 9 relief appearances were spread out, too; only once did he make more than 1 in a season: 2 in 1985, his next-to-last year. He pitched out of the bullpen exactly once in each of his first 5 seasons, each time finishing a game. His lone save almost didn’t happen, either. Fellow young starter Jerry Koosman

had entered that game in the 9th inning. But Koosman hit the first batter and left immediately after, either due to an injury or being ejected (though there’s no mention of an ejection in the box score). Seaver came on and quickly got 3 outs to end the game.

Before Roy Halladay

became Roy Halladay, he was a promising if inconsistent pitcher who bounced between the bullpen and the rotation. In 1999, his second year (and first full year), he started 18 games and relieved 18 games, including his lone save. He mostly worked as a starter the next season, but struggled immensely (to the tune of a 10.64 ERA in 67.2 IP) before finally showing signs of becoming the Halladay we know and fear in 2001.

The stories of David Cone

and Bret Saberhagen are similar to Halladay’s. Their saves were 3-inning jobs that came early in their careers, before they had established themselves as starters. But each had a spectacular year in the season following the save, with Saberhagen winning the Cy Young and Cone finishing 3rd. Both pitchers may have fallen just short of having Hall of Fame credentials, but their careers were still excellent.

All of the pitchers but Frank Tanana

got their save early in their careers. For Tanana, his save came in the midst of a brief relegation to the bullpen after a rough stretch of starts. This was his only time in the bullpen that season, and one of only a couple such periods in the ‘pen in his career. The save was a weird one–just one out–but it was at the end of a 14-inning affair, so I’m sure his manager was grasping at bullpen straws. This was during Tanana’s 18th and worst season, when he had just turned 37. He’d rebound to have a pretty good year in 1991, though, and pitched until 1993.

Santana seems like the only unsurprising player on the list. After all, he did spend much of his early career in relief. However, by the time Santana recorded his only save, he had already had some noteworthy success as a starter. In fact, the save came in his first relief appearance of that season after 8 starts. In the middle 6 of those starts, Santana gave up 7 total runs and struck out 45 in 35 innings. But he was still inconsistent–his last start before the save was a disaster–and he spent the rest of 2002 bouncing between the bullpen and the rotation. Santana wouldn’t enter the rotation for good until July of the next season.

After Halladay and Santana, the next-best active pitchers with exactly 1 save are Zack Greinke

(24.3 WAR) and Jon Garland (22.9 WAR). Greinke’s save came in 2007, a year in which he pitched mostly out of the bullpen. He hasn’t pitched in relief since August of that year. Garland’s save came in 2001, his second year, and was in one of his last relief appearances (to date). He pitched 3 more games in relief right after his save, but has since started in 301 of his 303 games.