Philly Front Office

One of the best trades in Phillies history is when the Tigers traded Jim Bunning to Philadelphia for Don Demeter and Jack Hamilton. At 32 years old, Bunning would pitch the best stretch of baseball of his career over the next 4 seasons including a runner up Cy Young performance, 30 WAR, and his perfect game. The Pirates wanted them some of THAT! So, on December 15th, 1967 the Pirates sent Don Money and Woodie Fryman to the Phillies for the ace. It did NOT work out…

Monday, June 29 at 6:40p – Aaron Nola v Braxton Ashcraft (R)
Tuesday, June 30 at 6:40p – Cristopher Sanchez v Bubba Chandler (R)
Wednesday, July 1 at 6:40p -Zack Wheeler v Paul Skenes (R)
Thursday, July 2 at12:35p – Alan Rangel v Jared Jones (R)

Citizen’s Bank Park – Philadelphia, PA

In 1967, Jim Bunning was legitimately the best pitcher in baseball. Sandy Koufax, unanimous winner of 3 of the last 4 Cy Young awards¹ had retired and Bob Gibson missed 1/3 of the season due to injury (before his monster 1968), which left room for Bunning to toss a league leading 302 innings with 253 Ks and a 2.29 ERA, good for 7.8 WAR. Despite inferior numbers across the board, the Giants’ Mike McCormick won the award going away. Despite being 35, there was no indication that Bunning was about to lose a step.

Best Trades in Phillies History

The year started out with some bumps but fine enough through mid-May when his ERA was sitting at 2.43. Then things got bumpy. During a 3 start stretch in May, Bunning gave up 13 earned runs in just 12 innings. A few more bad but not terrible starts caused the Pirates to rethink their strategy with the older pitcher. He started skipping starts in June and by the end of the summer was even seeing time as a reliever. On the season, strikeouts were way down, his ERA was up (still sub-4, but this was before they lowered the pitching mound), and it was pretty clear his days as an ace were behind him. Bunning went from leading baseball in everything in 1967 to a -1.5 WAR for the 1968 season.

Meanwhile, pitcher Woody Fryman had a solid debut for the Phillies that season, beating Bunning in literally every statistical category. Don Money, besides having a great name, ended up playing 4 solid years in Philadelphia after a cup of coffee in 1968. All in all, a good trade in theory for Pittsburgh but terrible in practice.

1969 was a little better for the future Hall of Famer, but the Pirates were done with him. Midseason, Bunning was traded to the Dodgers for essentially a bag of balls and cash. LA released him at the end of the season allowing him to come back to Philadelphia for two final seasons before retiring.

Bunning was voted into the Hall of Fame by the Veteran’s Committee in 1996 as a member of the Phillies.²

Stats: Baseball Reference

Photo: baseballscribe.com

1. 1967 was the first year MLB gave out the award to each league. From 1956 to 1966, there was only a single Cy Young winner. ↩︎
2. I try not to get political but I always found it weird that Bunning became a Republican Senator despite being very influential in the advancement of the Player’s Union in baseball. Those two positions seem to be on opposite sides of the political aisle. ↩︎