Addie Joss: Was He the Greatest Pitcher of the Deadball Era?

Image credits: Baseball Fever

Since you are reading this story on this site, you are probably a fan of baseball history, familiar with the stories of the great pitchers of the Deadball Era like Christy Mathewson, Walter Johnson and Ed Walsh.

But you may not be familiar with another pitcher who might have been the greatest of them all.

I say might have been because we cannot know. He died at the age of 31 after only eight complete seasons with the Cleveland Broncos of the American League.

His name was Adrian “Addie” Joss. A native of Wisconsin, he was built to be a pitcher: tall and lean – 6 foot 3, 185 pounds, with long arms and large hands. He had an even temperament, ejected only once along with the manager, Clark Griffith, when he threw his glove while arguing over a call at home plate. 

And he was smart. During his playing career, he wrote a popular baseball column and covered several World Series. He was also an amateur inventor.

Joss began his working life as a school teacher, and his baseball life playing second base for town teams, before turning to pitching for a minor league team in Toledo, Ohio, where he won 25 games in 1901 and was signed by the Cleveland Broncos of the new American League. (The Broncos became the Naps in 1903.)

Image credits: Ajmazzo

Along the way the right-hander developed the most baffling pitching style in baseball. Winding up, he turned to face second base, his back to the batter, before spinning and firing a fast ball or curve that was almost impossible for the batter to pick up until it was too late.

In his major league debut, Joss shut out the St. Louis Browns on one hit. For the next eight years, his stats border on the unbelievable:

• 155 wins 92 losses

• ERA under 1.89 (second to Ed Walsh's 1.82)

• 260 starts/234 complete games

• 2327 innings pitched/1888 hits/364 walks = a WHIP of under 1 (Mathewson was 1.04)

The closest he came to a World Series was 1908, when the Naps finished a half-game back of the first-place Detroit Tigers.

Hampered by injuries and illness, he was 5-5 in 1910. In the spring of 1911, he suffered a bacterial infection, untreatable at the time, and died. He was 31. That's why we'll never know what might have been.

Waiving its 10-year career requirement, the Hall of Fame inducted Joss in 1978.