#15 Dean Chance, RH SP
The single greatest season by a pitcher in an Angels uniform was the 1964 Cy Young Award winning campaign of Dean Chance. They only awarded one Cy Young between the two leagues and L.A. Dodger Sandy Koufax had to take a back seat to L.A. Angel Dean Chance that time. The numbers of 64 do not lie - 20-9 with a 1.65 ERA. How bad an offense does a team need to allow 9 losses to pitcher with 1.65 ERA? That is the story of many an Angel hurler over the years, though.
Chance's 1.65 ERA in 1964 is the all time single season Angels record.
The 11 shutouts he threw that year are a team record for one season
His 20 wins in 1964 are tied for 5th
the .690 Win% is 7th
his 1964 WHIP of 1.006 is 2nd
his 6.27 H/9 is 6th
278.3 IP is 8th in an Angels single season
Not only is his Adjusted ERA+ of 200 in 1964 the best single season mark, it is 40 points better than Chuck Finley's 160 ERA+ of 1990, the next best mark in Halo history.
Chance's career marks in 5 full seasons (along with a cup of coffee in 1961) dot the Angel list of pitching feats:
122 ERA+ as an Angel second only to reliever Troy Percival
5,120 batters faced - 8th all time (ahead of Jarrod Washburn, behind Kirk McCaskill)
21 shutouts, 3rd all time, behind Tanana and Ryan
48 complete games, 6th all time
168 games started, 10th all time
857 Ks - 6th most by an Angel pitcher
K/9 of 6.24 stands as 10th best all-time
H/9 of 7.67 - 5th best of the franchise
WHIP of 1.226 is 7th best
.529 W/L% is 10th best in team history, just behind Nolan Ryan's .533 - you think some bats would have helped these guys?
Recently departed Jarrod Washburn's 75th and final Angel victory put him into 8th all-time, passing Dean's 74 Halo victories
Dean Chance's ERA as an Angel was 2.83 - 0.05 behind all-time team ERA champ Andy Messersmith, but Chance pitched over 250 more innings than did Andy. While our Top 40 voters did not have Messersmith from which to choose (he was #61 on our countdown, perhaps a too-harsh assessment of Andy's five seasons as an Angel) and compare to Chance, the voting varied wildly for Dean, with Matt Welch (of The Warblog) picking him #10 All-Time Angel and Halosheaven Panther cupie picking Chance #1 All-time. I know the cupe was not born until after Dean Chance was traded away to Minnesota after the 1966 season, and I think Welch was learning to pronounce "BALL" during Dean's Cy Young season (for the record, your Rev here was born the day before loss #9), but these guys read the history books, follow the team and can smell a good curveball even when it was thrown during Barry Goldwater's presidential campaign.