Bruce Sutter

Bruce Sutter

Howard Bruce Sutter ( /ˈsuːtər/; born January 8, 1953) is a former Major League Baseball right-handed relief pitcher. He was arguably the first pitcher to make effective use of the splitter.

One of the sport's dominant relievers in the late 1970s and early 1980s, he became the only pitcher to lead the National League in saves five times (1979–1982, 1984), and retired with exactly 300 saves – at the time, the third highest total in history, behind Rollie Fingers (341) and Rich "Goose" Gossage (302), and an NL record until broken by Lee Smith in 1993; Sutter had set the NL record in 1982 with his 194th save, surpassing the mark held by Roy Face. In his first nine seasons, only Kent Tekulve made more appearances, and he saved 133 of the Chicago Cubs' 379 wins between 1976 and 1980. In 1979, Sutter won the NL's Cy Young Award as the league's top pitcher. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown in 2006.