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Changing Pirates History Part Two: Frank Barrett

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A month ago today, I found a discrepancy in the stats for Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Harry Gardner. He was credited with three extra runs and two less outs during his only game in 1912, a game that happened to be his last career game. Today, while writing the bio for Frank Barrett, a pitcher for the 1950 Pirates, I came across more stats that didn’t line up right.

Barrett pitched five September games for the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1950, his only season with the team and his last season in the majors. He pitched a total of 4.1 innings, allowing three runs, two were earned, leaving his with a 4.15 ERA. At least that is what the record books have said for a long time(credit to Sam Goodman for checking a 1976 encyclopedia to confirm this fact).

His actual stats can be found in the October 1,1950 Pittsburgh Press and they show 3.2 innings with one earned run, which translates to a 2.45 ERA during his brief Pirates career. His game-by-game stats can be found on baseball-reference.com here(note the earned runs and IP in each game, which are correct). The Pirates finished their season on October 1st with a doubleheader against the Reds, and Barrett didn’t pitch in either game. He actually didn’t pitch after September 15th. An interesting side note to his first two outings, he threw just one pitch in each of them, retiring the only batter he faced both times.

Sometime between the end of the 1950 season and the printing of the 1976 baseball encyclopedia, someone added on two outs and one earned run to the record of Frank Barrett, an odd combo of numbers, since he didn’t have an outing that matches up to those numbers. Numerous times in the past, records have been changed due to record keepers in the past, adding the stats from the same game twice. A famous example of that would be Ty Cobb, who was credited with two extra hits, something that wasn’t uncovered until after Pete Rose broke his record. If you didn’t know that already, Eric Show actually wasn’t the pitcher to give up Rose’s record-breaking hit. That dubious distinction goes to Reggie Patterson of the Cubs, three days earlier.

With the new numbers in mind, not only does Barrett’s Pirates ERA drop 1.70, his career mark of 3.51 should be corrected to 3.48(84 ER in 217IP).

John Dreker
John Dreker
John started working at Pirates Prospects in 2009, but his connection to the Pittsburgh Pirates started exactly 100 years earlier when Dots Miller debuted for the 1909 World Series champions. John was born in Kearny, NJ, two blocks from the house where Dots Miller grew up. From that hometown hero connection came a love of Pirates history, as well as the sport of baseball. When he didn't make it as a lefty pitcher with an 80+ MPH fastball and a slider that needed work, John turned to covering the game, eventually focusing in on the prospects side, where his interest was pushed by the big league team being below .500 for so long. John has covered the minors in some form since the 2002 season, and leads the draft and international coverage on Pirates Prospects. He writes daily on Pittsburgh Baseball History, when he's not covering the entire system daily throughout the entire year on Pirates Prospects.

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