The Sensational ’60s

Sandy Koufax had the top three pitching seasons in the major leagues in the 1960s.

Frank Robinson's Triple Crown season in 1966, in his first season after being traded from Cincinnati to Baltimore, topped all major league hitters in the 1960s.

By Phil Ellenbecker

  I’m continuing my “study” of the top seasons and players of the decade in Major League Baseball by taking a look at the 1960s.

  The “study” consisted of pulling out a Macmillan Baseball Encyclopedia and looking over the listing of league leaders in several categories for each year. The top five were listed in some instances, the top four in others – don’t ask me how that line was drawn. The major categories almost all included the top five. In a couple instances just the top three were listed. Sometimes less than two. I think a large number of players tied had something to do with less than four, and space limitations came into play. I gave five points for the top ranking, four for second and so on down. Where just four were listed, it went 5-4-3-2. If there was a tie, I divided the total number of points between the rankings by the number of players who were tied. Example: Three players tied for second – 4+3+2=9 divided by 3=3 points for each player.

  The categories: hitting -- batting average, total bases, hits, runs, slugging average, RBIs, walks, doubles, homers, steals, homer-percentage, triples; pitching  – winning percentage, saves, hits/nine innings/, strikeouts/nine innings, ERA, strikeouts, shutouts, innings pitched, wins, complete games, walks/nine innings, games pitched.

  What I came up with I think gives a fairly representative presentation of the top players and seasons. There are enough categories included to give a balance between the counting stats that reward durability and reliability and the rate stats that address pure performance. Offense takes in power, speed, batting eye and contact; pitching -- power, control, durability and dominance (i.e., shutouts). Mind you, the numbers, other than the rankings I assigned, don’t matter here, just how the players ranked in comparison with their peers. Which I think is the best way to rate players, how they rate relative to others. The 52 homers Willie Mays hit in 1965 to lead the National League don’t matter any more than the 32 Tony Conigliaro hit, also in ’65, to lead the AL; they were simply the best over their peers in that particular year in that particular category.

Top 10 pitching seasons

1. Sandy Koufax, 1965, 44

2. Sandy Koufax, 1963, 39 1/2

3 (tie).  Sandy  Koufax, 1966, and Bob Gibson, 1968, 38

5. Juan Marichal, 1966, 34

6. Dean Chance, 1964, 32 1/2

7. Luis Tiant, 1968, 31

8. Denny McLain, 1968, 30

9. Sam McDowell, 1965, 29 1/2

10. Jim Kaat, 1965, 28

Top 10 batting seasons

1, Frank Robinson, 1966, 45

2. Carl Yastrzemski, 1967, 40 1/2

3. Hank Aaron, 1963, 41

4 Frank Robinson, 1962, 35 1/2

5. Reggie Jackson, 1969, 32

6 Willie Mays, 1962, 31 1/2

7. Hank Aaron, 1961, 30 1/2

8. Willie Mays, 1965, 30

9 (tie). Mickey Mantle, 1961, and Harmon Killebrew, 1967, 29 ½

 Among my admittedly nonauthoritative observations and conclusions:
n  Boy, does Bill DeWitt look bad. DeWitt was the Cincinnati Reds general manager who traded Frank Robinson for, essentially, Milt Pappas in between the 1965 and 1966 seasons, sensing Robby was headed downhill, “an old 30” as he termed it. All  Robinson did in 1966 was win the American League Triple Crown. He also led the league in slugging average, runs scored, homer percentage and total bases, was second in hits, and third in walks and doubles. That all added up to 45 points under this system, the highest total in the two decades I’ve surveyed so far.
n  It took another AL Triple Crown the next year, by Carl Yastrzemski, for the second-highest total of the decade. The only other back-to-back years for Triple Crowns were 1934 (Lou Gehrig in the AL) and 1933 (Jimmie Foxx in the AL, Chuck Klein in the NL).
n  Robinson pops up again in the No. 4 spot with his 1961 season in Cincinnati.
n  Figuring out the best season for Mr. Consistency and former all-time (some say current) homer champ Hank Aaron is a tough chore.  But 1963, when he tallied 41 points for the No. 3 spot on this list, may be the one. Aaron, 1961, also had the seventh-best season . Robinson, Aaron and Willie Mays (sixth, 1962, and eighth, 1965) had the multiple seasons on this list with two apiece.
n  By looking at the best pitching and hitting seasons, it’s little wonder the National League went 11-1 in All-Star games in the decade (two games apiece for the pension fund in 1960 and 1961). Dominant players make for All-Star dominance.  NL pitchers had the top five seasons, followed by five from the AL. Six of the top 10 batting seasons came from the NL.
n  Not surprisingly, Sandy Koufax dominated the pitching lists as surely as he dominated National League hitters during ’60s, putting together perhaps the best consecutive  six-season stretch on the mound in history – good enough to get him into the  Hall of Fame despite a career that came to an end at the age of 30 because of elbow problems. Koufax had the top three seasons in this survey with 44 points in  1965, followed by 39½ in 1963 and 38 in 1966, tied with Bob Gibson’s 1968. Those seasons dwarfed the top ’50s mark of 31 by Robin Roberts. Juan Marichal was fifth with 34 in 1966. It took Dean Chance’s 32 1/2 in 1964, good for sixth, for an AL pitcher to land a spot in the top 10.
n  I was somewhat surprised to see Reggie Jackson’s 1969, with 32, emerge as the fifth-best hitting season of the decade. Reggie was in just his second full season in the majors. That was the first year I started following baseball and I remember him being on a Babe Ruth homer pace early in the season before leveling off to 47.
n  Sudden Sam McDowell, ninth among pitchers at 29½ in 1965, is an example of a pitcher not having to pile up big win totals to rank high. McDowell was fourth in wins that year with a 17-11 record, but was first in ERA, strikeouts, strikeouts per nine innings and least hits per nine innings, and second in innings pitched and complete games (tied). He was a workhorse, and efficient with that workload, and it paid off in points. McDowell was a 20-game winner only once in his career.
n  Getting away from the Top 10, I’m wondering how many players in history have broken in the way Tony Oliva did. He led the AL standings his rookie season and finished second then third the next two seasons. He won the batting title his first two seasons. Alas, continuous injuries and surgeries probably kept him from a sure berth in the Hall of Fame.
n  As seemed to be the case from time to time, players’ top seasons came immediately before or after the seasons they’re known for. In Roger Maris’ case, his best year was 1960 – 27 points. In 1961, when Maris with 61 homers broke Ruth’s record, he finished third with 25½.
n  And has also seemed to be the case, seasons looked on as primo and even historic didn’t rate No. 1 in this survey. Denny McLain, going 31-6 in 1968, became the first 30-game winner since Dizzy Dean in 1934. But Luis Tiant beat him out that year, 31-30.
n  The year 1967 in NL pitching was notable for how little dominance there was. Cy  Young winner Mike McCormick and Jim Bunning tied for No. 1 with 12 apiece. Three other hurlers with 10 or 11 filled out the top five. This is somewhat ironic since the year before and after included three of the top five pitching seasons. But Koufax was gone in ’67, Gibson’s season was cut short by a fractured bone in his right leg courtesy a line drive off the bat of Roberto Clemente (although he came back to win three games in the World Series), and Marichal also struggled with injuries.
n  Chicago reliever Eddie Fisher finished third in the AL in 1965 despite relievers  usually filling only two of the 12 pitching categories. How did this happen? Well, besides finishing first in games pitched and second in saves, he also was second in ERA and hits per nine innings, and fourth in winning percentage with a 15-7 mark. And how did Fisher manage starter-like numbers to rank so high? Well, he pitched 165 innings, three more than the qualifying number of innings. That’s in 82 games, none of them starts. Obviously, way before the day of the one-inning closer.
n  Camilio Pascual, although he didn’t crack the pitching top 10, deserves mention for leading the AL in three straight years, 1961-63, tying with Ralph Terry in 1962. That made it No. 1 in four of five seasons for Pascual, who also led in 1959. McLain was the other multiple league leader among AL pitchers in the decade with back-to-back No. 1s in 1968 and ’69.

Willie Mays had four straight National League-leading seasons in the 1960s, including two seasons among the top 10 for the decade in the major leagues.

Camilio Pascual led American League pitchers in three straight seasons in the early 1960s and four of five seasons extending back to 1959.

n  Speaking of league leaders, Mickey Mantle, by topping the AL lists in 1960 and ’61 (tied with Maris in ’60) made it six No. 1s in seven seasons, with Harvey Kuehnn’s 1959 interrupting that stretch. This gives some strength to the argument that has been advanced by some, including Bill James, that Mantle was the better ballplayer than Mays in their primes. While Mantle, who broke in the same year as Mays (1951), led the AL in six seasons during the ‘50s and ‘60s, Mays led the NL five times.
n   But Mays truly shined in the ’60s with four straight league-leading seasons while Mantle faded away.
n  Such was the reputation Mantle had built up that he won  the MVP award in 1962, despite missing 39 games and hitting 30 homers and 89 RBIs, not quite up to his high standards of the past few years. His five points rated 11^th in the AL, led by Harmon Killebrew’s 24. Mantle had finished second in MVP voting in ’60 and ’61.
n  Yastrzemski joined Mantle as multiple AL league leaders in the ’60s with two seasons. He topped the league in 1963, when he won the first of his three batting titles and also led in hits and doubles.
n  Joining Mays as multiple league leaders among NL batters were Aaron with three, in 1960, ’63 and ’67 (tied with Mays in ’60) and Willie McCovey in 1968 (tied with Pete Rose) and ’69.