Sunday, October 23, 2022

EXPANDED LEAGUE LEADERS: 1977 A.L. FIREMEN

On the blog today, we move on to the American League’s top three “firemen” of the 1976 season, celebrated on a 1977 “expanded league leader” card:
 
 
We begin with a reliever who had a couple of outstanding seasons in the mid-70’s, Bill Campbell, aka “Soup”, who paced the league with his 37 points.
Campbell’s 1976 season was incredible, as he would appear in a league-leading 78 games for the Minnesota Twins while posting a record of 17-5, with 20 saves and a 3.01 earned run average over 167.2 innings, all out of the bullpen.
Those numbers were enough for a seventh place finish in the Cy Young Award and an eighth-place finish in the MVP race, and rightly so!
I’ve always been fascinated by relievers who posted incredible high-inning seasons completely out of the bullpen, and Campbells 1976 season ranks high up there.
In second place with 33 points, Hall of Famer Rollie Fingers, who posted a record of 13-11 with 20 saves in his final year with the Oakland A’s, with a brilliant 2.47 ERA over 70 appearances and 134.2 innings of work.
Another workhorse out of the bullpen, it’s no surprise the man’s Big League output would eventually lead to a Hall of Fame induction, at the time a rare occurrence for a dedicated reliever.
In third place with 30 points, a man who I feel should be in the Hall of Fame, Sparky Lyle of the New York Yankees, who led the league with his 23 saves while posting a record of 7-8 with a 2.26 ERA over 103.2 innings for the A.L. champs.
Lyle would follow up his excellent 1976 season with an even better 1977, taking home the A.L. Cy Young Award based on his 13-5 record, with 26 saves and a 2.17 ERA over 72 games and 137 innings of work, helping the Yanks win their first championship since 1962.
I absolutely loved him as a kid, pitching for my Yanks, and was heartbroken when he was sent to the Texas Rangers in part because of the arrival of Rich Gossage, who took over the reliever role for the foreseeable future.
There you have it, the top three “firemen” called upon to put out those late-inning fires, eating up innings and saving games in the American League in 1976.