Happy Birthday to Hall of Famer Rich “Goose” Gossage, one of the game’s greatest relief pitchers. His professional career took place from 1972-1994, with nine teams. The prime years of his career were with the New York Yankees and San Diego Padres.
Career Statistics/Accolades:
124-107 W-L, 3.01 ERA, 1,809.1 IP, 1.232 WHIP, 310 SV, 1,502 SO
- 9x All-Star
- 1978 World Series Champion
- 1978 A.L. Rolaids Relief Man Award
Gossage was one of few pitchers who could get by with one dominant pitch, his fastball. Gossage, along with the other top relievers in his era, was known as Firemen, relief pitchers who entered the game when a lead was in jeopardy, usually with men on base, regardless of the inning, and would very often pitch two or three innings while finishing the game. Over his career, Gossage pitched over 130 innings as a relief pitcher three times. In his first year as a Closer, Gossage recorded at least ten outs 17 times. Career-wise, Gossage had more two-inning saves than one-inning saves.
Gossage is not better than Mariano Rivera, but I will say that Gossage was asked and pitched more than one inning as a closer. While in Rivera time, he usually just came in for the 9th inning. In my all-time 25-man roster, I have five relief pitchers, and Gossage is on it along with Bruce Sutter, Rollie Fingers, Trevor Hoffman, and Mariano Rivera.
References:
- Rich Gossage Career Statistics via Baseball-Reference: https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/g/gossari01.shtml
- Goose Gossage via Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goose_Gossage#
MLB Past & Present 