Kansas City Royals

Date of birth: October 8, 1946 Evansville, IN

Date of death: May 25, 2011 (64)

High School: Arlington Heights High School (IL)

College: Morningside U, Sioux City, IA

Location: On the mound.

First Impression; He is bringin it’. Amazing card.

Career stats: He played 14 seasons all with Kansas City.  He had an impressive 166 – 143 record.  He is still the All Time winningest Royals pitcher, 22 ahead of the next player, Dennis Leonard.  Despite being first in wins, he is only 6^th all time in strikeouts for KC. In 1973, he won 20 games. 

All time stat: He was the winning pitcher in the first game at Kaufmann Stadium in 1973.

Fun fact: He only had one top ten Cy Young finish (he got 1 vote) and he was 5^th in Rookie of the Year voting (he got 1 vote) and was never an All Star.  Probably due to the low strikeouts and for the time relatively high ERA. I spent way too much time on this but he had 88 career complete games, 17 shutouts along with a 44-26 record in non shutout wins and the rare 5 inning tie complete game no-decision. Tally that up to 61-26 in games he started and finished. By way of comparison there were only 29 complete games throw in all of 2025 which was one more than the 28 thrown in 2024. This means in the current era, only 1.17% of games end with the starter completing the game. Over his career 392 games started, he completed 22.4% of his games. I think the horse is dead.

Ever a Future Star?  He was a “Rookie Star” in 1971.

Rookie or final card? No

Hall of Fame? Number retired? He was inducted into the Royals Hall of Fame in 1987.

Final Word: At least Topps can spell.

Links to stories including Splittorff.