BASEBALL'S 2016 PRE-INTEGRATION ERA COMMITTEE BALLOT: ARE THERE ANY HALL OF FAMERS LEFT?

Pre-Integration Era Hall of Fame Starting Pitchers: Live Ball

The two pitchers under consideration by the Pre-Integration Era Committee, Wes Ferrell and Bucky Walters, challenge conventional thinking about the value of pitchers. Specifically, Walters and especially Ferrell helped their cause with their hitting—Walters came up to the big leagues as a third baseman while Ferrell is considered the best-hitting pitcher of all time. Is this an aspect to a pitcher's career that merits serious consideration for the Hall of Fame?

In terms of value as expressed by Wins Above Replacement, the answer is yes because, as we will see below, both pitchers' offensive value contribute significantly to their overall value. Thus, the perception of what a pitcher contributes to helping his team win a game not only changes but prompts the question whether a pitcher should contribute more than what he does on the mound. Moreover, for the purposes of the Hall of Fame, do we need to revise perceptions of who is considered to be a Hall of Fame-caliber pitcher?

In the Expansion Era, that last question is academic for the American League—with the advent of the designated hitter, the pitcher almost never hit in the regular season until 1998, when interleague play began, and AL pitchers playing in a National League park had to bat for themselves. But even with four decades of the DH, the perception of the DH is that of an "incomplete" player, one whose contribution is limited to offensive value only, while that value, based exclusively on hitting (with marginal value for baserunning), is often expected to be greater than a fielding-position player as the designated hitter "only" bats—witness the struggles Edgar Martinez, one of the finest hitters of his or any other era, has had on the Hall of Fame ballot (even though Martinez did log a fair amount of time at third base).

The plight of the DH combined with the consideration of these two good-hitting pitchers forces us to look at the other side of the coin: Should pitchers be evaluated for more than "just" their pitching ability? At least those whose careers, such as Ferrell's and Walters's, occurred primarily before the DH era? Or is the pitcher's primary—or even exclusive—value his ability to pitch effectively, with any other value a non-essential bonus? To put it as a hypothetical, if Wes Ferrell gives up two runs in the top of an inning but hits a three-run home run in the bottom of the inning, is that equivalent to his preventing the two runs from scoring in the first place while then striking out with two runners on base?

Given the tradition-bound approach the Hall has taken toward designated hitters (and toward relief pitchers), it is unlikely that thinking about starting pitchers will change appreciably any time soon, particularly as there haven't been that many good-hitting pitchers who have also been outstanding pitchers. Of course, there was this Ruth guy who might have also been one of the best southpaw pitchers you've never heard about, although the Babe's pitching career and his outfield career—the one that netted him a lifetime .342 batting average and 714 dingers—did not have that much overlap. And while we consider Walter Johnson to be one of the greatest pitchers of all time, the Big Train posted a career .235/.274/.342 slash line with 24 home runs while in 1925, at the age of 37, he batted an astounding .433 in 107 plate appearances (rounding out the slash line are a .455 on-base percentage and a .577 slugging percentage).

Let's start by looking at the overall value produced by Wes Ferrell and Bucky Walters. Here are the twelve Hall of Fame starting pitchers associated with the Pre-Integration Era whose careers overlapped significantly with Ferrell, whose career began in 1927, and with Walters, whose career began in 1931. This table ranks them by bWAR, with other qualitative statistics, including fWAR, listed alongside it.

Pre-Integration Era Hall of Fame Starting Pitchers and 2016 Starting Pitcher Candidates on the 2016 Pre-Integration Era Ballot, Ranked by bWAR
Pitcher	W-L (S), ERA	bWAR	fWAR	ERA+	ERA–	FIP–
Lyons, Ted	260–230 (25), 3.67	71.5	57.9	118	85	95
Ruffing, Red	273–225 (18), 3.80	70.4	69.7	109	91	96
Hubbell, Carl	253–154 (33), 2.98	67.5	54.9	130	77	89
Feller, Bob	266–162 (22), 3.25	63.6	61.7	122	82	89
Newhouser, Hal	207–150 (26), 3.06	63.0	62.9	130	76	81
Ferrell, Wes	193–128 (13), 4.04	61.6	50.8	116	87	93
Wynn, Early	300–244 (16), 3.54	61.3	67.7	107	94	97
Vance, Dazzy	197–140 (12), 3.24	59.9	59.1	125	81	78
Walters, Bucky	198–160 (4), 3.30	54.2	32.1	116	87	99
Grimes, Burleigh	270–212 (18), 3.53	53.0	58.0	108	94	96
Hoyt, Waite	237–182 (53), 3.59	51.8	46.8	112	89	93
Dean, Dizzy	150–83 (31), 3.02	42.8	42.4	131	77	78
Gomez, Lefty	189–102 (10), 3.34	38.4	30.7	125	79	94
Haines, Jesse	210–158 (11), 3.64	32.6	32.4	109	91	98

Ranked by bWAR, and using the threshold of 60 wins, Ferrell merits serious discussion as a Hall of Fame pitcher while Walters lands on the bubble for discussion. However, fWAR tells a different story—Ferrell falls down to the low end of the bubble while Walters falls out of the discussion. Moreover, some of these pitchers already in the Hall of Fame look to be suspect, as has been mentioned previously.

Those twelve Hall of Fame pitchers along with Ferrell and Walters are ranked by JAWS in the table below along with their ratings for the Hall of Fame Monitor and the Hall of Fame Standards. Also included are the JAWS statistics for all pitchers in the Hall of Fame.

2016 Pre-Integration Era Starting Pitcher Candidates, Qualitative Comparisons to Hall of Fame Starting Pitchers (Ranked by JAWS)
Pitcher	No. of Years	From	To	bWAR	WAR7	JAWS	JAWS Rank	HoF Mon. (≈100)	HoF Std. (≈50)
Ave of 62 HoF P	NA	NA	NA	73.9	50.3	62.1	NA	NA	NA
Ferrell, Wes	15	1927	1941	61.6	55.0	58.3	39	75	22
Feller, Bob	18	1936	1956	63.6	51.8	57.7	40	180	51
Newhouser, Hal	17	1939	1955	63.0	52.4	57.7	41	140	34
Hubbell, Carl	16	1928	1943	67.5	47.3	57.4	44	174	51
Lyons, Ted	21	1923	1946	71.5	40.9	56.2	48	65	30
Ruffing, Red	22	1924	1947	70.4	41.3	55.8	50	130	38
Vance, Dazzy	16	1915	1935	59.9	49.2	54.6	56	89	35
Wynn, Early	23	1939	1963	61.3	38.6	50.0	70	141	44
Walters, Bucky	19	1931	1950	54.2	43.0	48.6	77	104	27
Grimes, Burleigh	19	1916	1934	53.0	40.9	47.0	90	115	38
Hoyt, Waite	21	1918	1938	51.8	34.0	42.9	120	94	32
Dean, Dizzy	12	1930	1947	44.9	42.8	43.9	112	112	33
Gomez, Lefty	14	1930	1943	38.4	35.6	37.0	178	128	34
Haines, Jesse	19	1918	1937	32.6	21.9	27.3	300	64	27

Ranked by JAWS, Wes Ferrell nudges ahead of celebrated Hall of Fame pitchers Bob Feller, Hal Newhouser, and Carl Hubbell. But as JAWS, a derivative of bWAR, also incorporates a pitcher's offensive and defensive value, let's break down that valuation to its component form to better assess these pitchers' specific value.

The following table lists the twelve Hall of Fame pitchers along with Ferrell, and Walters by a ranking of their pitching bWAR while also showing their batting bWAR (which also includes their defensive bWAR) as well as pitching and batting fWAR and other qualitative statistics.

Qualitative Statistics, Broken Out for Pitching and Batting Value for Pre-Integration Era Hall of Fame Starting Pitchers and Starting Pitcher Candidates on the 2016 Pre-Integration Era Ballot, Ranked by bWAR(P)
Pitcher	bWAR(P)	bWAR(B)	fWAR(P)	fWAR(B)	ERA+	OPS+
Hubbell, Carl	67.8	–0.3	56.5	–1.6	130	18
Lyons, Ted	67.2	4.4	54.6	3.3	118	45
Feller, Bob	65.2	–1.7	62.6	–0.9	122	15
Vance, Dazzy	62.5	–2.6	61.6	–2.5	125	10
Newhouser, Hal	60.4	2.6	60.7	2.2	130	36
Ruffing, Red	55.4	15.0	56.1	13.6	109	81
Hoyt, Waite	53.3	–1.5	48.9	–2.1	112	20
Wynn, Early	51.6	9.7	58.6	9.1	107	54
Ferrell, Wes	48.8	12.8	38.6	12.2	116	100
Grimes, Burleigh	46.9	6.1	52.3	5.7	108	58
Walters, Bucky	46.4	7.8	36.8	–2.3	116	69
Gomez, Lefty	43.1	–4.6	34.6	–3.9	125	–7
Dean, Dizzy	42.7	2.2	40.9	1.5	131	43
Haines, Jesse	35.7	–3.1	36.2	–3.8	109	12

bWAR(P): Wins Above Replacement based on the pitcher's pitching record, as calculated by Baseball Reference.

bWAR(B): Wins Above Replacement based on the pitcher's batting record, as calculated by Baseball Reference. Note: This value also incorporates Wins Above Replacement based on the pitcher's defensive record.

fWAR(P): Wins Above Replacement based on the pitcher's pitching record, as calculated by FanGraphs.

fWAR(B): Wins Above Replacement based on the pitcher's batting record, as calculated by FanGraphs.

Now let's rank those same pitchers using their bWAR(B), or their Wins Above Replacement using their offensive (and fielding) value.

Qualitative Statistics, Broken Out for Pitching and Batting Value for Pre-Integration Era Hall of Fame Starting Pitchers and Starting Pitcher Candidates on the 2016 Pre-Integration Era Ballot, Ranked by bWAR(B)
Pitcher	bWAR(P)	bWAR(B)	fWAR(P)	fWAR(B)	ERA+	OPS+
Ruffing, Red	55.4	15.0	56.1	13.6	109	81
Ferrell, Wes	48.8	12.8	38.6	12.2	116	100
Wynn, Early	51.6	9.7	58.6	9.1	107	54
Walters, Bucky	46.4	7.8	36.8	–2.3	116	69
Grimes, Burleigh	46.9	6.1	52.3	5.7	108	58
Lyons, Ted	67.2	4.4	54.6	3.3	118	45
Newhouser, Hal	60.4	2.6	60.7	2.2	130	36
Dean, Dizzy	42.7	2.2	40.9	1.5	131	43
Hubbell, Carl	67.8	–0.3	56.5	–1.6	130	18
Hoyt, Waite	53.3	–1.5	48.9	–2.1	112	20
Feller, Bob	65.2	–1.7	62.6	–0.9	122	15
Vance, Dazzy	62.5	–2.6	61.6	–2.5	125	10
Haines, Jesse	35.7	–3.1	36.2	–3.8	109	12
Gomez, Lefty	43.1	–4.6	34.6	–3.9	125	–7

Considered solely as an offensive force, both Ferrell and Walters rise to the top of the list, although had we used offensive value from FanGraphs' version of WAR, Walters plunges to the bottom of the list. Also helped substantially by bWAR(B) is Red Ruffing, whose overall WAR places him in the near-elite category (and there is less than one win's worth of value between the Baseball Reference and the FanGraphs version of WAR).

Continuing our examination of the offensive worth of the pitchers in this sample, the following table lists the pitchers' representative offensive statistics including slash line, hits, home runs, runs scored, runs batted in, and sacrifice hits (bunts), ranked by on-base percentage.

Batting Statistics for 2016 Pre-Integration Era Hall Pitchers and 2016 Pitcher Candidates on the 2016 Pre-Integration Era Ballot, Ranked by On-Base Percentage
Position Player	Slash Line	H	HR	R	RBI	SH
Ferrell, Wes	.280/.351/.446	329	38	175	208	40
Ruffing, Red	.269/.306/.389	521	36	207	273	43
Walters, Bucky	.243/.286/.344	477	23	227	234	64
Grimes, Burleigh	.248/.282/.306	380	2	157	168	76
Wynn, Early	.214/.274/.285	365	17	136	173	52
Lyons, Ted	.233/.270/.285	364	5	162	149	83
Newhouser, Hal	.201/.267/.233	201	2	70	81	72
Dean, Dizzy	.225/.235/.301	161	8	76	76	39
Hoyt, Waite	.198/.223/.235	255	0	96	100	91
Vance, Dazzy	.150/.219/.198	146	7	68	75	55
Feller, Bob	.151/.214/.211	193	8	99	99	100
Hubbell, Carl	.191/.212/.227	246	4	95	101	75
Haines, Jesse	.186/.208/.218	209	3	76	79	59
Gomez, Lefty	.147/.194/.159	133	0	59	58	68

Ruffing's slash line looks like Ichiro Suzuki's over the last few seasons while Ferrell's looks like what Ichiro would like to aspire to now—both lines are hardly what you would expect from a pitcher—while Walters's, Grimes's, and to an extent Wynn's and Lyons's are not too far behind.

And even though the best-hitting pitchers' offensive value can be substantial, is it, when combined with the pitcher's pitching value, enough to push a borderline candidate such as Wes Ferrell or Bucky Walters across the threshold and into the Hall of Fame? To answer that, we need to examine their pitching records.

Wes Ferrell

After cups of coffee with the Cleveland Indians in 1927 and 1928, Wes Ferrell made the club as a full-time player in 1929, his age-21 season, and promptly won 21 games in 43 appearances and 25 starts, with five of those wins in relief; he also saved five games. That marked Ferrell's first 20-win season; he would go on to win at least 20 games for the next three consecutive seasons, totaling six 20-win campaigns in his career, including a career-high 25 wins in 1930 and again in 1935, when he led the American League in that category while pitching for the Boston Red Sox.

That 1935 season saw Ferrell the runner-up to the Detroit Tigers' Hank Greenberg for the AL Most Valuable Player award; Greenberg led the league in home runs (36) and RBI (168) while posting a .328/.411/.628 slash line, although retrospectively Ferrell generated 11.0 in total bWAR against Greenberg's 7.7; 8.4 wins came from Ferrell's pitching, with 2.6 wins produced by his bat—Ferrell posted a gaudy .347/.427/.533 slash line from 52 hits, including 7 home runs, and 21 walks—against only 16 strikeouts—in 179 plate appearances while scoring 25 runs and driving in 32.

Ferrell had finished eighth in MVP voting the previous year, his first in Boston following his trade from Cleveland resulting from a contract dispute, his only other year with a top-ten finish in MVP voting. In 1934, he won "only" 14 games but that was against just five losses for a career-best .737 winning percentage although his 181 innings pitched was the first time since he became a full-time pitcher that his innings count dropped below 200. Ferrell was a workhorse who topped 200 innings pitched twice, including two years with at least 300 innings pitched while falling 3.1 innings short of that plateau in 1930. He led the league in innings pitched in three consecutive years (1935 to 1937), in games started in back-to-back seasons (1935–1936), and in complete games four times.

On the other hand, Ferrell also led the AL in hits given up three times, in home runs allowed once, and in walks once. While he had seven seasons of 100 or more strikeouts, with a season-high of 143 in 1930, he matched that with seven seasons of 100 or more walks, coincidentally all the same years in which he struck out at least 100 batters. For his career, Ferrell issued 1040 walks against only 985 strikeouts, and combined with 2845 hits surrendered in 2623 innings pitched, it is no surprise that his lifetime WHIP (walks plus hits per innings pitched) is a lofty 1.481. Again not surprisingly, all those baserunners led to many opponents' scoring chances—with an earned run average of 4.04, Wes Ferrell would be the first pitcher in the Hall of Fame with an ERA over 4.00 should he be elected. What is surprising, though, is that Ferrell didn't surrender as many home-run balls as might be expected, although he did serve up a league-leading 25 gophers in 1937, a season that saw him post his highest ERA (4.90) and games lost (19) since becoming a starter. Still, with his low strikeout totals and high walk totals, Ferrell holds a 4.23 FIP (fielding-independent pitching, which factors the Three True Outcome statistics—walks, strikeouts, home runs—controlled by the pitcher).

Yet Ferrell won 193 games against 128 losses for an excellent .601 winning percentage, posting four 20-win seasons in Cleveland and two in Boston. As I have noted previously, wins are not a reliable measurement of a pitcher's effectiveness, let alone for measuring his Hall of Fame legacy, as they are too much of a team-dependent statistic. For example, during his ten-year peak, from 1929 to 1938, Ferrell received an average of 5.7 runs in support from his teammates—and he can include himself as a hitter in that mix—while the league average was 4.9 runs. Ferrell notched 49 "cheap wins," or wins in starts that were not quality starts (defined as pitching at least 6 innings while allowing three or fewer earned runs), which account for a quarter of his overall wins, not surprising for a pitcher for whom just over half of his 323 starts were quality starts.

Ferrell did have a Hall of Fame kind of day on April 29, 1931, when he not only pitched a no-hitter against the visiting St. Louis Browns but helped his cause at the plate by belting a home run and a double that drove in four runs in the Indians' 9–0 victory. Ferrell walked three Browns while Indians shortstop Bill Hunnefield committed three errors, but Ferrell did strike out eight batters—on the other hand, this is a Browns team that lost 91 games in a 154-game schedule in 1931; however, in fairness, Ferrell did have to face Browns' left fielder Goose Goslin, who was still in his prime in 1931 while on his way to the Hall of Fame (he was a veterans committee pick in 1968); Ferrell walked Goslin once but retired him in his other three plate appearances. Another Hall of Famer Ferrell faced that day was his own brother, catcher Rick Ferrell, who was later inducted into the Hall of Fame by the veterans committee in 1984—although Rick Ferrell is one of the more dubious inductees.

Ferrell's pitching and batting feat was matched, if not eclipsed, 40 years later when Rick Wise of the Philadelphia Phillies no-hit the Cincinnati Reds on June 23, 1971. Wise went one batter over the minimum with a sixth-inning walk to Dave Concepcion while he struck out three Reds including marquee hitters George Foster and Lee May; that Reds team, an early Big Red Machine under Hall of Fame manager Sparky Anderson, included future Hall of Famers Johnny Bench and Tony Perez, as well as all-time hits leader Pete Rose, whose woes with the Hall of Fame are so well-known that they have been spoofed in a recent television commercial for Skechers shoes. However, the 1971 Cincinnati Reds finished fourth in the National League West Division, two games below .500. Meanwhile, Wise, who did pitch his no-hitter in Cincinnati, may have eclipsed Wes Ferrell by hitting two home runs, driving in three of the four Phillies' runs; however, Wise was ultimately a league-average pitcher (a career 101 ERA+) who was one-and-done on his only Hall of Fame ballot appearance in 1988.

As we have seen, Wes Ferrell, in terms of overall value as defined by bWAR and its derivative JAWS, merits legitimate discussion for the Hall of Fame, although, as we have also seen, the component parts of that overall value, pitching and batting, combine to put Ferrell into the discussion. Simply as a pitcher, Ferrell barely makes it onto the bubble with a 48.8 bWAR for pitching value—while FanGraphs calculates him at a solid ten wins below that. Ferrell did have six seasons of 20 or more wins as he approached 200 wins for his career, but as noted above, wins are not an indication of how effective is a pitcher but rather how effective is his team. If Ferrell gives up four runs a game, as his ERA indicates, but his team scores five runs to support him—and Ferrell could very well have contributed to that run support—is he still an effective pitcher?

So, for Ferrell, it boils down to batting, as even FanGraphs tags him with more than 12 wins above a replacement player for his hitting prowess. And for the 16 members of the Pre-Integration Era, they need to decide whether the novelty of Ferrell's being one of the greatest-hitting pitchers of all time combined with his decent though hardly exceptional pitching record is sufficient to put him into the Hall of Fame.

What would be fascinating is to know what the two pitchers on the committee, Bert Blyleven and Phil Niekro, think about Wes Ferrell as a pitcher and especially as a hitter. In 514 plate appearances, Blyleven collected 59 hits, all but seven of those singles (he hit seven doubles), for a .131/.144/.146 slash line, although to be fair Blyleven actually hit in only six of his 22 seasons, three with the Minnesota Twins just before the designated hitter rule was implemented, and three during his brief stint in the National League with the Pittsburgh Pirates. Niekro, however, may not have that excuse—his hitting took place exclusively in the National League with the Atlanta Braves, with whom he played for 21 of his 24-year career. (Niekro's stint in the AL, which occurred over the course of four seasons, was in the DH era; he never came to the plate as an American League pitcher.) Niekro posted a .169/.183/.211 career slash line, collecting 260 hits in 1707 plate appearances with 42 doubles, one triple, and seven home runs, including two homers in 1968, a stellar year for pitching—think Denny McLain and especially Bob Gibson—that saw the pitching mound lowered to its current 10-inch height the next season to facilitate offense. Would Blyleven and Niekro be more impressed by Wes Ferrell's batting prowess as a pitcher? Or perhaps even less impressed, possibly with a touch of jealousy?

In any event, Wes Ferrell is an anomaly—not exceptional purely as a pitcher and not exceptional enough as a batter beyond the novelty of being a pitcher who hit so well. If anything, considering Ferrell prompts two realizations. One underscores how the Hall of Fame has traditionally evaluated legacy in conventional terms, meaning that it considers roles as they have been evaluated historically. The other realization is a contemporary concept, and that is the need to regard Wins Above Replacement judiciously and within the context of a player's overall performance record.

Yes, Wes Ferrell is unusual enough, with talent both as a pitcher and as a hitter, to be considered for the Hall of Fame, and modern metrics, specifically WAR, suggest that the combined value of those talents puts him into the conversation as one of the greatest baseball players of all time. He is certainly one of the rarest in that regard, although not necessarily unique—Red Ruffing, whose career coincided with Ferrell's, was also a great-hitting pitcher, and his career was contemporaneous with Ferrell's. Ruffing also had a longer career than did Ferrell, enabling Ruffing to compile a conspicuous 70.4 bWAR (55.4 as a pitcher and 15.0 as a hitter) along with 273 career wins, with all but 42 of those coming with the dynastic New York Yankees of the 1930s, with whom Ruffing earned six World Series rings while posting a 7–2 postseason win-loss record with a 2.63 ERA. By contrast, Ferrell never made the postseason.

Yet Ruffing's career 3.80 ERA is the highest earned run average of any pitcher in the Hall of Fame—but Ferrell's 4.04 would eclipse that as he became the first Hall of Fame pitcher with an ERA over 4.00. Is that a boundary too rooted in convention to cross? Both Ferrell and Ruffing did play in a very high-offense era—but so did all the other Hall of Fame pitchers from this era that we have examined, and even Bucky Walters, to whom we will turn shortly, posted a career ERA seven-tenths of a run better than Ferrell's while winning about the same amount of games.

All of this deliberation on my part masks (or not) a conflict. On the one hand, Wes Ferrell is singular enough and qualitatively distinctive enough to be that unusual Hall of Famer whose presence may force a re-examination of conventional expectations of a Hall of Famer; that in turn may enhance consideration for non-traditional, role-emphatic positions such as designated hitters and relief pitchers, which, like it or not, are now part of the game and have been for some time, and thus deserve serious evaluation with respect to legacy.

On the other hand, would that be rewarding Ferrell for excelling at the secondary aspect of his position and not necessarily at the primary aspect, which is to be an elite pitcher? Put another way, and to use the hoary example of the "big game," would you hand the ball to Dazzy Vance or Ted Lyons or even Bucky Walters—let alone Bob Feller, Carl Hubbell, or Hal Newhouser—to win that game, or would you hand it to Wes Ferrell, hoping that he may pitch well enough and could possibly provide some offense?

I would not. Wes Ferrell is a distinctive ballplayer, even an exotic one, but he is not a Hall of Famer.

Bucky Walters

Continuing with our trend of good-hitting pitchers, Bucky Walters actually came up to the Majors as a substitute infielder, third base and a little second base, for the Boston Braves in 1931 and didn't even pitch his first big-league game until 1934, when he was a mid-season purchase by the Philadelphia Phillies. (In the interim, he had played in 1933 and the start of 1934 for Boston's cross-town American League counterpart, the Red Sox, from whom Philadelphia purchased him.)

With the Phillies, Walters became a full-time pitcher although he still played in the field occasionally; in his career, he logged 184 games at third base with another 16 at second and a half-dozen in the outfield. The Phillies were a dismal team during the time Walters toiled for them, with the 89 losses they posted in 1935 representing the best season they had, and Walters didn't help his own cause as he struggled with his control, issuing more walks than strikeouts during his tenure in Philadelphia while more or less keeping a .500 winning percentage amidst his team's haplessness, and although he led the Majors in losses in 1936 with 21, against 11 wins, he also managed to be in a seven-way tie for the most shutouts, four, in the National League, pitching one of those at home—no small feat in the hitters' paradise called the Baker Bowl that the Phillies called home.

But when he was traded in mid-1938 to the Cincinnati Reds, Walters, who had begun the season in Philadelphia with a 4–8 win-loss record and a 5.23 ERA, albeit with nine complete games in 12 starts including one shutout, came into his own. He finished the season with an 11–6 record and a 3.69 ERA for the Reds, adding 11 more complete games and two more shutouts, and then blossomed the following year.

In 1939, Bucky Walters won the pitching Triple Crown when he led the NL in wins (27), earned run average (2.29), and strikeouts (137; tied with Claude Passeau); Walters also led the league in innings pitched (319.0), games started (36), and complete games (31) while, retrospectively, also being tops in ERA+ (170) and WHIP (1.125). It was a milestone season for Walters, who handily won the NL's Most Valuable Player award, and retrospective analysis reaffirms this: The MVP runner-up, the St. Louis Cardinals' first baseman Johnny Mize, had another monster year and generated a 7.9 bWAR, but Walters's bWAR overall was 9.8, and "only" 8.2 of that was based on his pitching prowess: At the plate, Walters posted a .325/.357/.433 slash line with 39 hits in 131 plate appearances, smacking eight doubles, one triple, and one home run in the process, while scoring and driving in 16 runs each; all that was good for a 1.6 bWAR at the plate.

Walters led the Reds to the NL pennant, although Cincinnati got swept by the New York Yankees in the World Series, with Walters going the distance for a Game Two loss as the Yankees shut out the Reds, while in Game Four he came on in relief in the top of the eighth inning with the Reds up 4–2; he threw a clean slate that frame but in the next frame he allowed two runs, one unearned, as the Yankees tied the game. Then he gave up three runs, two unearned, in the tenth, leading to the final 7–4 score and the Yankees' World Series victory, as the Reds' sloppy play—one error in the ninth and three in the tenth—bit Walters.

In 1940, Walters captured two-thirds of the pitching Triple Crown by leading the NL in wins (22) and ERA (2.48) while placing fifth in strikeouts (115), which netted him third-place in MVP voting. His Reds teammate Frank McCormick, also on this Pre-Integration Era ballot, won the award; as noted in our discussion about McCormick, the Cardinals' Johnny Mize was the most valuable player in the NL that season as determined retrospectively by WAR (although long before the statistic was invented observers had been critical of the selection), as Mize's value is calculated at 7.4 wins against McCormick's 5.7, though Walters is a worthy candidate with a 6.7 bWAR, with 6.4 wins derived from his pitching.

McCormick and Walters led the Reds to another NL pennant and the World Series, this time against the Detroit Tigers—and this time the Reds prevailed in a seven-game series. In Game Two, Walters tossed a three-hitter to lead the Reds to a 5–3 victory that evened the Series, although he allowed four bases on balls, including two to lead off the game, both of which came around to score, while a leadoff walk in the top of the sixth led to the third Tigers run. On the other side of the ledger, Walters doubled and scored in the bottom of the fourth inning. Then, with the Reds facing elimination in Game Six, Walters hurled a 4–0 shutout at the Tigers, scattering five hits while overcoming two walks and two Reds' errors as he drove in one run on a fielder's choice and another on a solo home run. That long fly gave him two hits, both extra-base, in seven World Series at-bats; during the regular season, Walters's plate performance had fallen off considerably from the previous season as he posted a .205/.231/.256 slash line, although he did plate 18 runs, his season-high as a full-time pitcher—as a position player, he had driven in 56 runs in 1934, split between the Red Sox and the Phillies.

Walters had another fine season in 1941, posting a 19–15 win-loss record with a 2.83 ERA as he led the NL in complete games (27) and innings pitched (302.0), the third consecutive year in which he led the league in each category; however, he slumped at the plate with a .189/.239/.245 line. For the next two seasons, Walters was a .500 pitcher, his ERA swelling in 1943 to 3.54 as he issued 109 walks against only 80 strikeouts, but he regrouped impressively in 1944 as he led the NL in wins (23) against only eight losses while lowering his ERA more than a run to 2.40 despite walking 10 more batters (87) than he struck out. He finished fifth in MVP voting, the third and last time he finished within the top five, while his batting performance continued its steady climb: Walters generated a .280/.330/.318 line, his .280 batting average the runner-up for his career best.

But as Walters entered his age-36 season in 1945, he was in decline; he finished his career as a .500 starting pitcher, taking over the Reds' helm as a player-manager in the middle of the 1948 season and as manager-only through 1949; Walters's managing record is an undistinguished 81–123 during this period as just barely kept the Reds ahead of the Chicago Cubs for the NL cellar. In 1950, he returned with the Boston Braves for one game in which he pitched four innings in relief, giving up five hits, two walks, and two earned runs, before retiring.

Bucky Walters's move to Philadelphia made his career: In a seven-year peak from 1938 (which includes its start with Red Sox) to 1944, he averaged 19 wins per season against 12 losses while posting a 2.87 ERA, a 126 ERA+, and a 4.5 bWAR with an average of 25 complete games and four shutouts each year. As a hitter, pitching exclusively except for playing center field for one inning in 1942, Walters generated a .244/.286/.327 slash line, good for a 71 OPS+, while averaging five doubles, one home run, 12 runs scored, and 13 RBI each season.

A six-time All-Star and the National League's Most Valuable Player in 1939, when he won the pitching Triple Crown, Bucky Walters was a fine pitcher, one who could hit and who had an excellent seven-year peak. But apart from that stellar 1939 season, nothing about Walters's career suggests that he is an elite pitcher, or, unlike in the case of Wes Ferrell, that his hitting prowess was exceptional enough to warrant a second look. Indeed, given the dramatic disparity between how Baseball Reference and FanGraphs values his offensive contribution, Walters's exploits at the plate are perhaps a nominal factor in his overall evaluation. Bucky Walters is not a Hall of Fame pitcher.