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Right. They used a guy named Leo Kiley for a. 20 appearances the entire year, and b. he still averaged more than an inning per appearance. Elliott also lasted one year as a manager and his ideas really weren't pushed forward by anyone else, so calling 1960 the "birthplace" of the LOOGY is more interesting as a source of trivia than pointing to where this trend actually started (and even at that I'd probably point to Bill Henry in '65 as the first "true" LOOGY).
The kinds of LOOGYs we think about today really came into being in the mid to late 80s (although not, as I thought, as a result of the A's, at least not exactly - Tony LaRussa was clearly an innovator in this and he left the LOOGY stamp in two places in '86 - the White Sox team he was fired from in June and the A's who hired him in July - both of which would start to use them going forward). There are individual guys used in LOOGY-ish ways like Ed Vandeberg and individual seasons with guys used like this, but it wasn't the staple of everyone's 'pen until the late 80s at least.
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Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn
You bastard....  |
The Great American Baseball Thrift Book - Like reading the Sporting News from back in the day, only with fake players. REAL LIFE DRAMA THOUGH maybe not
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