Then there was that guy name Koufax. In a five year span:
He led the league in ERA. His ERA combined for those 5 years was 1.95.
Led the league in 4 of the 5 years in strike outs. The one year he didn't lead was a year where he missed a significant amount of the second half of the season with an injury that would not allow him to pitch.
He pitched a no hitter in four consecutive years including a perfect game. In the perfect game he struck out 7 of the last 9 and the last 6 in a row. In fact not counting the four no-hitters he threw he pitched in 9 other games where he held the other team hitless through six innings. Three times in his career in games that he pitched he struck out the side on nine pitches.
He won the Cy Young three times by an unanimous vote and the pitchers "Triple Crown" three times. (In those days only one Cy Young Award was given for the "best pitcher" in the majors, not one in each league.)
When he retired at the age 30 having just won 27 games, (29 complete games) with a 1.73 ERA he became at that time the first pitcher in Major League history to retire having averaged more than one strikeout per inning pitched.
When he set the then Major League record for strikeouts, (18) in a nine inning game against the Giants he faced guys like Mays, McCovey and Cepeda. After three innings pitched he had only three strikeouts. That means of the next 18 men he retired he struck out 15 of them.
The man was as a pitcher in a league of his own. In the decade of the pitcher, (the sixties), he was the pitcher of the decade.
