If I told you that one of the greatest relief seasons in baseball history was pitched by a 26 year old right-hander who couldn’t have broken a pane of glass with his fastball and whose only big-league experience up to that point was a failed cup of coffee four years earlier in 1982, you would call me insane. But that was the story of Mark Eichhorn, a pitcher who would go on to feature in Toronto’s two championship teams after being re-acquired from the Angels in mid-1992. He was an unsung hero during both the frustrating period of the late eighties, and the golden years of the early nineties.
Eichhorn went into 1986 having not seen major league action since a brief audition with Toronto in 1982. That had been a seven game stint where he had been belted around to the tune of a 5.45 ERA and a .758 OPS against. He spent the next three years in the minors without so much as a sniff of the majors. He did make the team out of spring training in 1986 though as a middle reliever. (His seven games in 1982 were all starts) The Blue Jays were coming off the drive of ‘85 and expectations were exceptionally high. The bullpen that had been a longstanding weakness proved a strength in 1985. But in 1986, only Tom Henke was able to replicate the form of 1985. The rest of the bullpen started slowly and never truly recovered, with Dennis Lamp slumping and being traded and other relievers combining to post a negative WAR by the end of what was an overall disappointment of a season. The one glaring exception, Mark Eichhorn.
Eichhorn started strong as a submarining middle reliever and never looked back, quickly establishing himself as the most dependable bridge between the starters and the closer Henke. As a result of the Jays simply lacking much bullpen depth in 1986, Eichhorn shouldered a workload that would simply be unfathomable for a reliever in 2023. He would make 69 appearances which is fairly normal even now, but the vast majority of these were multi-inning stints for a grand total of 157 innings, 98 of which were after the all-star break. He would pick up 14 wins by the time the season was all said and done, more than most starters in the league and good enough to tie for the team lead. This was against just 6 losses and with 166 strikeouts and even 10 saves of his own as Henke’s lieutenant.
These numbers are impressive on their own but a close look at how Eichhorn established himself in 1986 reveals perhaps one of the greatest seasons not only by a Blue Jay, but simply ever. The surface stats are impressive enough. His ERA was a minuscule 1.72 and WHIP a stunning 0.955, but looking at the underlying numbers makes for an even more impressive tale. Hitters hit just .192 against Eichhorn and slugged just .288 and for a pitcher who operated in the 70’s velocity wise, he boasted a rather impressive 27.1% strikeout rate. It gets better though. 85.7% of baserunners never saw the promised land with him on the mound that year. His 5.0% WPA (win probability added) was more than double his next best for the remainder of his career and just 0.1% lower than what Dennis Eckersley put up in his absurd 1990 campaign. His 7.3 WAR is also among the highest ever recorded by a reliever. Even allowing for the fact that he pitched far more innings than a reliever would today and that WAR is generally not the best metric to compare relievers to, say starters, this figure is simply incredible. To top it off, he also fielded flawlessly that year, handling every chance successfully.
In the end, Eichhorn finished 6th in the Cy Young voting and 3rd in the Rookie Of The Year voting. I would argue he was short changed to some degree, especially in the ROTY voting. Jose Canseco, who ultimately won the award, had an impressive campaign to be sure, but his 3.3 WAR is not even half of Eichhorn's figure and only Wally Joyner besides Canseco had a WAR of even 3.0. If 1986 was 2026, Eichhorn wins this ward maybe even unanimously, but in 1986, notions such as WAR and WPA were not in the collective baseball consciousness. Regarding the Cy Young award, it is less clear cut. Both Roger Clemens and Teddy Higuera won 20 games and had a WAR over 8.0 and Clemens (the eventual winner) did have a 5.8% WPA versus the 5.0% of Eichhorn. However, Eichhorn was (by advanced metrics) superior to Mike Witt, Dave Righetti and Jack Morris who all finished above him in the voting. He certainly deserved more than the 2 out of 140 points he got in the final voting.
Mark Eichhorn never came close to replicating his magical 1986 campaign. However, he remained a serviceable reliever who played a quiet but important role in securing two world championships later on in his career and even putting up 13 saves for the Angels in 1990. Shoulder problems would force his retirement after a brief comeback in 1996. He would finish 48-43 with an ERA of exactly 3.00 and a career WAR of 19.1 which is rather impressive for a middle reliever. For one year though, Mark Eichhorn killed them softly, and almost forty years later, we are understanding just how good he was during one of the greatest rookie campaigns ever.
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