Class of: 1953 (Veterans Committee)
Team: Athletics
Key Stats: 212 Wins, 2.46 ERA, 47.4 WAR
Each Hall of Famer’s plaque tells part of that player’s story and is supposed to give someone an idea of why he (or in one case she) was chosen to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. Sometimes, those plaques have references to other Hall of Famers (i.e., Roger Bresnahan mentioning Christy Mathewson) or specific games (i.e., Jack Morris’ plaque mentioning his World Series start) to represent that player’s story and his contribution to the game. When reading Chief Bender’s plaque, one detail always struck me as odd. It mentions that in the 1905 World Series Bender was the only A’s pitcher to win a game. A strange fact to callout for three reasons. First, Bender also lost the deciding game of that World Series 2-0. Second, that was the World Series that Christy Mathewson dominated with three shutouts in his three starts (Games 1, 3 and 5), meaning that Bender’s victory in that Series was little more than a footnote in the annals of time. Finally, Bender also pitched in four other World Series and had three rings to his name. Just odd that they would pick a series that he didn’t win to highlight on his plaque because he was renowned for his clutch pitching (6-4 in the World Series with a 2.44 ERA).
Charles Bender, nicknamed “Chief” due to his Native American ancestry (a name that would take a very long time for him to come to terms with), was a dominant pitcher in the Dead Ball Era. From his debut season in 1903 until 1915, he built a case for the Hall of Fame at a time when pitching ruled the sport. In that span, Bender was worth at least 2.6 WAR each season save for one (ironically, 1905) with ten of those seasons being worth more than 3.0 WAR. After having an ERA roughly league average for his first three seasons (his highest ERA in that span was 3.07. If that’s above league average, how did anyone score runs?), Bender’s big breakthrough year came in 1906 where he put up a 2.01 FIP and a 2.53 ERA in 238 innings with 15 wins. Bender was an early strikeout artist with over 1700 punchouts in his career and striking out at least 85 batters from 1903 until 1914. His K-Rate in that span never dipped below 4.23 (which seems low for today, but was excellent for Bender’s era). At the same time, Bender displayed excellent control. He issued more than 60 walks only twice in that span, during both 1903 and 1905. Bender also did an excellent job of preventing batters from reaching base via the hit with only two seasons where batters hit better than .240 against him and five years of a WHIP below 1.10. By almost every measure, Bender was an extraordinary pitcher.
There were two things that Bender struggled with on the mound; staying healthy and throwing innings. Bender had several injuries during his career (not to mention trouble with drinking) that prevented him from throwing the same amount of innings that a lot of his peers did during the same era. Bender’s career high in innings was only 270 (in his first season, no less), compared to Walter Johnson throwing that many innings 13 times. His injuries eventually caught up to him during his decline years. From 1915-1917, Bender never topped 200 innings and only had an ERA below league average once.
Having initially retired following the 1917 season, Bender became a coach and threw one more inning in the Majors during the 1925 season as part of a gimmick by Eddie Collins, so we’ll only look at how he ranked in his career until 1917. In his career, he ranked 7th in WAR, 6th in wins, 4th in K-Rate and 8th in FIP-. It’d be a hard stretch to claim that Bender was the absolute best during the bulk of his career, since that coincided with Christy Mathewson and Walter Johnson among others. His lack of innings also hurts him to a degree, as he couldn’t start enough games to get the high win totals that many of his Hall of Fame peers were able to achieve. However, when he was on the mound, he could compete with the best of them and that’s what makes him a Hall of Famer.
Bender had to wait for a long time to get the call to induction. And, on one hand it’s not too hard to see why, as he only threw about 3000 innings in his career and his peak, while great, wasn’t quite on the Sandy Koufax level of great peaks. However, when he did pitch, he was one of the top pitchers in the game, keeping runs off the board and batters off the bases. He deserved his induction and it’s unfortunate that he didn’t live to see that day as he died a couple of months before the ceremonies. Charles Bender was a great pitcher and a key member of the first AL dynasty. A consistently dominating force that fully belongs among the other greats in the game.
Baseball From the Outside 