Rod Beck
Posted by Andy on June 24, 2007
Some very sad news today about the passing of Rod Beck. I never heard or read a single bad thing about him, and he was certainly much too young to pass away. My heart goes out to all people struggling with substance abuse or addiction issues.
In celebration of Rod Beck's life, here are a few tidbits about his career:
Most times striking out an individual player, taken from his PI Event Finder page for strikeouts:
| Ken Caminiti | 7 |
| Delino DeShields | 7 |
| Marquis Grissom | 7 |
| Terry Pendleton | 7 |
From his splits page, we can learn that in his career, he limited opposing batters to a .243 BA, .292 OBP, and a .391 SLG, which are some pretty impressive numbers. But he was really money in the clutch. For example, with RISP and 2 outs, those numbers fall to .195 / .286 / .313.
Beck's career apex was 1993 to 1998, and he led all of baseball in saves for that period:
Games Link to Individual Games +-----------------+-----+-------------------------+ Rod Beck 232 Ind. Games Randy Myers 216 Ind. Games John Wetteland 215 Ind. Games Trevor Hoffman 188 Ind. Games Roberto Hernandez 179 Ind. Games Jeff Montgomery 177 Ind. Games John Franco 171 Ind. Games Rick Aguilera 153 Ind. Games Dennis Eckersley 151 Ind. Games Robb Nen 148 Ind. Games
For those for of us who never knew Mr. Beck personally, let's at least remember him as this much: one of the dominant closers of the 1990s.
June 24th, 2007 at 10:02 pm
That's really sad news. Always loved watching him pitch and you could tell the concentration he gave for each throw. Thanks for putting up those stats too. I would have thought Hoffman would have lead.
June 25th, 2007 at 12:37 pm
The guy was absolutely unhittable when he first came up. Using PI, I found that since 1901, there have been only a dozen pitchers who have managed two separate seasons with a WHIP under 0.90 and at least 75 IP. Except for Beck, the youngest to have achieved two such seasons was Eric Gagne, who managed it by age 27. Beck was 24 and had already racked up two seasons of a WHIP less than .9 over 75+ IP.
Here are all the pitchers (according to the PI Pitching Season Finder)who have managed two such seasons in their careers (no one has ever had three):
Starters: Cy Young, Christy Mathewson, Three-Finger Brown, Sandy Koufax, Greg Maddux, Ed Walsh, Babe Adams
Relievers: Billy Wagner, Eric Gagne, Rod Beck, Keith Foulke, Hoyt Wilhelm