Pittsburgh Pirates Players Who You Didn’t Know Hold All-Time Records

These three former Pittsburgh Pirates relief pitchers hold all-time records that you may not have known about

Baseball fans all know who holds the home run record. It’s Barry Bonds, whether you like him or not. Pete Rose has the most hits in MLB history, Rickey Henderson has the most steals of all-time, Mariano Rivera has the most saves of all-time, and Cy Young has both the most wins and losses for a pitcher in baseball history. 

But the Pittsburgh Pirates and their former players hold multiple records you probably didn’t know about. These aren’t the big, headline attention seeking ones, like the most hits, homers, or saves, but these former Pirates still broke records that still stand today.

Roy Face

Pitcher wins and losses will always rely on so many factors that they’ll never be a good way to accurately analyze how good/bad a pitcher did. However, because so many factors play into a pitcher receiving a W or L on their record sheet, you can get a lot of weird records, such as what Roy Face accomplished in 1959.

Roy Face was what you might consider the Bucs’ first closing pitcher. He was the first Pirates pitcher to record 10+ saves in a season. 1959 was his sixth big league season and his first all-star selection. Face pitched 93.1 innings, all out of the bullpen (57 total appearances). Face owned a strong 2.70 ERA (143 ERA+/70 ERA-), 2.60 FIP (69 FIP-), and 1.24 WHIP. His 18.1% strikeout rate, along with a 6.6% walk rate, and 0.48 HR/9 were all well above the league averages of the time.

However, Face somehow ran into 18 wins while only receiving a single loss. It is the most wins a reliever has ever recorded without starting a game in one season. The next closest is John Hiller, who took home 17 wins for the 1974 Detroit Tigers. Hiller worked 150 innings in just 59 games, recording 3+ innings on 18 different occasions. However, he also took 14 losses.

Even though he blew nine saves, he only took one L during the season. At one point, Face had 17 straight wins with no losses to his name. Four of Face’s blown saves still resulted in a win on his part. Face just happened to pitch at the very right moment in 1959. After that, he eclipsed double-digit wins as a reliever just once over the ten seasons that followed 1959.

This could be the easiest or hardest record to break, depending on your opinion. It could be extremely easy because skill is out of the question. The pitcher doesn’t need to be good, and they could even blow the lead. Four of Face’s wins in 1959 were also blown saves. Only one of his nine blown saves ended in a loss. However, they have to be in the right place at the right time, 19 times. They must be pitching when their team takes the lead, and to do that 19 times requires perfect timing, which really is completely out of the pitcher’s hands. In essence, any pitcher could break this at any time. They just need to be really lucky.

Kent Tekulve

Kent Tekulve is arguably the best relief pitcher in the Pirates’ history. A dozen Teke’s of his 16 big league seasons were in black and gold, consistently being an absolute workhorse out of the bullpen. Tekulve, primarily a closing pitcher during his time in Pittsburgh, set an all-time record: the most innings pitched without making a single start.

Tekulve’s whopping 1436.2 innings pitched as a reliever. The all-time saves leader, and arguably the first person who comes to mind when you think of a relief pitcher, Mariano Rivera, including the 19 starts he made at the very start of his career, pitched 1283.2 innings across 19 seasons.

Tekulve wasn’t just a workhorse either, he was also extremely effective. He pitched to a 2.85 ERA (132 ERA+), 3.26 FIP, and 1.25 WHIP. Tekulve’s 13% strikeout rate was low, even for the era, but he had a respectable 8.2% walk rate and a 0.39 HR/9 rate. Tekulve led the league in games pitched on four separate occasions and pitched 100+ innings seven times.

Including his career innings count, Teke almost has another record to his name, that being the most games pitched in one year. Tekulve pitched in 91 games in 1979, and pitching to a 2.75 ERA (142 ERA+), 3.24 FIP, and 1.18 WHIP. Only Mike Marshall in 1974, who pitched in 106 games, outpaces Tekulve’s highest single-season mark.

It’s unlikely Tekulve’s record is broken. Relievers aren’t used in the same manner they were when Tekulve pitched. Even long relievers never get to 100 innings in a season without making a start. The current active leader in innings pitched without making a start is David Robertson, who is still over 600 innings short of Tekulve’s all-time total. The only way that it would be plausible to break his record was if a bulk man who came in after an opener pitched in that role for most, if not all of their career.