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Whatever happened to Wally Ritchie? @wallyritchie

Posted by Andy
While reading The Greatest 21 Days' post on Wally Ritchie, I noticed that he finished his career with a 123 ERA+ but pitched only 177.2 innings in the majors.

Since 1901, there are 76 retired pitchers with an ERA+ of at least 110 and between 100 and 200 innings pitched. It's a pretty rare feat, because if a pitcher has done that well over his first bunch of innings, his career usually continues beyond that.

Wally Ritchie did something even rarer, though.
Of those 76 pitchers, only 7 never posted a seasonal ERA+ under 113:

Arnold Carter (55/37)
Dave DeBusschere (57/61)
Erasmo Ramirez (22/56)
Erv Lange (55/87)
Jim Nelson (64/53)
Matt Miller (44/95)
Wally Ritchie (80/98)

In parentheses I added each pitcher's career BB/K totals. As you can see, many of these guys walked a lot batters, and that's probably the reason why they didn't get much more of a chance to pitch in the majors. (Well in DeBusschere's case, he was too busy with a Hall of Fame NBA career.)

Ritchie went back to the minors with other teams following his time with the Phillies but never made it back to the majors. At least his career stats will, forever, be pretty damned impressive.

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