San Francisco Giants: Top 30 players of all-time

NY/SF Giants best players all-time: No. 25-Tim Keefe

33.3 WAR

I mentioned Tim Keefe at No. 26 as Mickey Welch’s teammate for winning 44 games in one season, and boy did he have a career.

Nicknamed “Smiling Tim”, Keefe was one fo the best pitchers of the 19th century before being inducted to the Hall of Fame in 1964.

As a pitcher, he was a two-time National League Wins leader (1886, 1888), three-time NL ERA leader (1880, 1885, 1888), and the NL strikeout leader in 1888 as well.

He additionally recorded an MLB record 0.86 ERA in a single season in 1880, which happened to be his very first season in baseball as a part of the Troy Trojans.

Finishing with a career strikeout total of 2,562 you may have believed he was just a pitcher, but he was an athlete.

In fact, he actually won the Triple Crown in 1888 when he set a bunch of those records as a pitcher. There’s no way someone could do that now with all of the information a player has to consume on a daily basis.

After his playing career, Keefe was a coach for the Harvard baseball team before working as an umpire in over 200 major league games.