These 9 won 20 games for last-place teams

Twenty-win seasons have long been a standard for successful years by starting pitchers, but they are definitely not created equally. Some are more impressive than others, and some are more thankless than others -- as the men below can attest.

A pitcher has reached 20 wins for a last-place club only nine times, per the Elias Sports Bureau. The phenomenon has yet to occur in the 21st century and, as 20-game winners become rarer in general, it’s one that baseball may not see again. Below, in reverse chronological order, is a quick look at those thankless 20-win campaigns.

Note: The “last-place” designation originally referred to teams that finished at the bottom of their league, but it expanded to clubs that finished last in their respective divisions beginning with the 1969 season.

Roger Clemens, 1997 Blue Jays
Clemens’ record: 21-7 | Blue Jays: 76-86

This might have been the greatest pitching season in Blue Jays history, with Clemens compiling 10.7 WAR, per FanGraphs, and winning his first of two straight American League pitching triple crowns in a Toronto uniform. Clemens racked up nine complete games and three shutouts and led the Majors with 264 innings, but unfortunately, the rest of the Blue Jays didn’t come close to sniffing the postseason (and wouldn’t until 2015).

Phil Niekro, 1979 Braves
Niekro’s record: 21-20 | Braves: 66-94

“Knucksie” pitched for parts of 21 seasons in a Braves uniform, but he somehow ended up starting only two postseason games for Atlanta. That was hardly from lack of effort. Niekro won 268 games for the Braves and reached 20 wins in three seasons.

That includes this 1979 campaign, which saw Niekro top the NL with 21 victories and lead the Majors with 20 losses (which, per Elias, makes him the only pitcher since 1900 to lead his league in both categories) while finishing with a 3.39 ERA. The all-time knuckleballer completed 23 of his 44 starts and gave up more homers than any other big leaguer (41), but he navigated around those long balls to finish sixth in National League Cy Young Award voting. Meanwhile, Niekro’s Braves finished 23 1/2 games out in the NL West.

Nolan Ryan, 1974 Angels
Ryan’s record: 22-16 | Angels: 68-94

No, this was not the year that Ryan set the modern-era, single-season record with 383 strikeouts (that was the year prior), but he was just as dominant for the Halos in 1974, topping the Majors in strikeouts (367, the fourth-highest total since 1900), innings (332 2/3) and, yes, walks (202). This and the '73 campaign were somehow the only two 20-win seasons in Ryan’s incredible 27-year career, and each of them came for sub-.500 Angels clubs.

The 1974 season contained a trio of lasting memories for the Ryan Express. On June 14, Ryan threw a dizzying 235 pitches and struck out 19 Red Sox hitters across 13 innings (and somehow settled for a no-decision). On Sept. 7, Ryan helped usher in the radar-gun era when he had his fastball clocked at 100.8 mph -- a figure long held as the standard for big league speed until triple-digits became normalized in the new millennium. And in his last start of the year, Ryan notched the third of his record seven career no-hitters by shutting down the Twins before a crowd of 10,872.

Steve Carlton, 1972 Phillies
Carlton’s record: 27-10 | Phillies: 59-97

Carlton’s 1972 masterpiece is the most famous example on this list, and perhaps the greatest team-debut season ever. Carlton had freshly arrived to Philadelphia by way of a famous one-for-one trade that sent pitcher Rick Wise to St. Louis (Wise pitched only two seasons for the Cardinals), and he proceeded to dominate despite the subpar team around him, taking home the NL pitching triple crown and Cy Young Award with a 1.97 ERA, 310 strikeouts and 30 complete games.

Carlton’s 11.1 fWAR in 1972 still stands as the second-highest single-season total by any pitcher, trailing only Pedro Martinez’s 1999 masterpiece (11.6) with the Red Sox. Carlton won 15 consecutive decisions between June and late August and, according to Elias, he still owns the modern-era record by earning 45.8% of his team’s total victories that year.

Ned Garver, 1951 Browns
Garver’s record: 20-12; Browns: 52-102

Garver gained recent notoriety as a delightful cold-call guest on the Effectively Wild podcast, and this season naturally came up in that conversation. The 1951 Browns are the only 100-loss team on this list, making Garver’s 20-win season even more noteworthy. But Garver’s effort the year before might have been his most impressive, as he led the AL with a 146 ERA+ while finishing 13-18 for a 96-loss Browns club.

Sloppy Thurston, 1924 White Sox
Thurston’s record: 20-14 | White Sox: 66-87

Thurston’s actual first name was “Hollis,” but many believe he was ironically named “Sloppy” because he was always well groomed. The screwball pitcher somehow made his way to 20 wins while also allowing the most hits (330), home runs (17) and earned runs (123) in the AL, at one point winning 10 straight decisions for a mediocre, post Black Sox-scandal squad. Thurston was capable of both dominance and ignominy. He became only the second AL pitcher to record an immaculate inning in 1923, but he is also one of only nine pitchers since 1900 to give up six homers in a single outing.

Howard Ehmke, 1923 Red Sox
Ehmke’s record: 20-17 | Red Sox: 61-91

Ehmke is probably most famous for making A’s manager Connie Mack look like a genius when he struck out 13 Cubs as Mack’s surprise starter in Game 1 of the 1929 World Series. Ehmke was perceived as a washed-up arm by then, but he was a workhorse ace-type in the first half of the decade, including when he won 20 of his 39 starts for a terrible Red Sox club still reeling from the deal that sent Babe Ruth to the Yankees. In fact, this was the only 20-win season for Ehmke, who finished his career with an even 166-166 record.

Scott Perry, 1918 Athletics
Perry’s record: 20-19 | A’s: 52-76

It’s hard to pitch much better with fewer rewards than Perry’s 1918 campaign, when he lost a Major League-high 19 games despite recording a 1.98 ERA across a Major League-high 332 1/3 innings (which included an MLB-high 30 complete games). Perry became so frustrated by the woeful A’s behind him that he quit the team to become a tailor in August 1919, only returning to manager Connie Mack’s club after he saw Babe Ruth’s six-digit transfer to the Yankees and realizing that ballplayers -- no matter who they played for -- still made more money.

Noodles Hahn, 1901 Reds
Hahn’s record: 22-19 | Reds: 52-87

Hahn was one heck of a trooper, completing 41 of his 42 starts and hurling 375 1/3 innings for a Reds club that was in the cellar by mid-June. They were quality innings, too. Hahn’s 2.71 ERA was about a run-and-a-half better than anyone else in the Cincinnati rotation, helping him to account for 42% of the club’s total victories.