John Andrew Smoltz is an American former baseball pitcher. He played 22 seasons in Major League Baseball from 1988 to 2009, all but the last year with the Atlanta Braves. He won the National League Cy Young Award in 1996 after posting a record of 24–8, equaling the most victories by an NL pitcher since 1972. In 2002, he set the NL record with 55 saves and became only the second pitcher in history to record both a 20-win season and a 50-save season. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility in 2015.
About John Smoltz in brief
John Andrew Smoltz is an American former baseball pitcher. He played 22 seasons in Major League Baseball from 1988 to 2009, all but the last year with the Atlanta Braves. He won the National League Cy Young Award in 1996 after posting a record of 24–8, equaling the most victories by an NL pitcher since 1972. In 2002, he set the NL record with 55 saves and became only the second pitcher in history to record both a 20-win season and a 50-save season. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility in 2015. Since retiring as a player, he has served as a color commentator and analyst on television. He threw a four-seam fastball that was clocked as high as 98 miles per hour, a strong, effective slider and an 88–91 mph split-finger fastball that he used as a strikeout pitch. He also used a curveball and change-up on occasion, and in 1999, he began experimenting with both a knuckleball and a screwball, though he rarely used either in game situations. In 2016, he learned to throw sliders after seeing a sports psychologist, after he began the 1991 season with a 2–11 record with a 1.2 pace. He began the 1992 season on a 12–2 pace, helping the Braves win a tight NL West race, which continued into the 1991 National League Championship Series. In the deciding game, he faced former Tiger Jack Morris, and shut out both starters, propelling the Braves to their first World Series since moving to Atlanta in 1966. SmoltZ was part of a celebrated trio of starting pitchers, along with Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine, who propelled Atlanta to perennial pennant contention in the 1990s, highlighted by a championship in the 1995 World Series.
He left the Braves after 2008 and split his final season with the Boston Red Sox and St. Louis Cardinals. He is the only pitcher in major league history to recordboth 200 wins and 150 saves, and the record for the most career games pitched for the Braves since the club’s move to Atlanta since 1966. He holds the Braves franchise record for career strikeouts, and he also held the franchise record for career saves from 2004 to 2014. He has been inducted into the Baseball hall of fame in 2015 for his work with the Braves in the late 1990s and early 2000s. His son, Mike, is also a professional baseball player and is a former Major League baseball player who played for the Detroit Tigers and the St. Louis Cardinals in the early 1990s. He had two no-decisions in the 2007 World Series against the Minnesota Twins, and faced his former Tigers hero Jack Morris in the seventh and deciding game of the World Series in 2008. He retired from baseball in 2009 after being named to the NL All-Star team for the second time in his career. He became one of the most prominent pitchers in playoff history, posting a 15–4 record in 41 career postseason games, and was named the Most Valuable Player of the 1992 NL Championship series.
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This page is based on the article John Smoltz published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 29, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
