The Other 1968

1968 belonged to Bob Gibson, and it should have. A 1.12 ERA over 304 innings is the lowest of the live-ball era and probably always will be. But the second best pitching season in baseball that year happened in Cleveland, and almost nobody talks about it.

Luis Tiant went 21-9 with a 1.60 ERA for a team that finished 82-79. He threw nine shutouts, four of them in a row. He struck out 264 in 258 innings, which nobody was doing in 1968. He gave up 5.3 hits per nine. Opposing hitters batted .168 against him, a major league record that stood 32 years until Pedro Martinez broke it in 2000. It was the lowest ERA in the American League since Walter Johnson's 1.49 in 1919.

He got there by rebuilding himself. A shoulder injury had cost him velocity, so he redesigned his delivery into that impossible twist, turning his back to the hitter mid-windup, spending more time looking at second base than at home plate, hiding the ball and his grip and his intentions all at once. On July 3 he struck out 19 Minnesota Twins in a ten-inning game, still the American League record for a game that length.

What he got for it was fifth place in the MVP voting. Denny McLain won 31 games that summer and took the Cy Young and the MVP both. And after the season it was baseball's Rules Committee, not one league, that lowered the mound from 15 inches to 10 and put the strike zone back where it had been before 1963. They did it because of a whole year of scoring that had collapsed to a .237 league average and 339 shutouts. Gibson's 1.12 is the number that got attached to it.

Tiant won another ERA title in 1972 at 1.91 and lost the Cy Young again, this time to Gaylord Perry's 1.92. He finished with 229 wins, four 20-win seasons, and one of the great October runs in Red Sox history. He died on October 8, 2024, at 83. Two months later the Classic Baseball Era Committee voted on an eight-man ballot that included his name. Dave Parker got 14 votes and Dick Allen got 13, and both went to Cooperstown. Luis Tiant got fewer than five.