{"id":471643,"date":"2026-02-13T04:22:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T04:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/471643\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T04:22:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T04:22:08","slug":"elroy-face-passes-away-mlb-trade-rumors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/471643\/","title":{"rendered":"Elroy Face Passes Away – MLB Trade Rumors"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Pirates announced this evening that former All-Star reliever\u00a0Elroy Face<\/a> has passed away at 97. He pitched parts of 16 seasons in the big leagues, all but the final of which came in Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is with heavy hearts and deep sadness that we mourn the passing of Pirates Hall of Famer Elroy Face, a beloved member of the Pirates family,\u201d chairman Bob Nutting said in a statement. \u201cI was fortunate to get to know Elroy personally, and I will always be proud that we had the chance to honor him with his induction into the Pirates Hall of Fame. Elroy was a pioneer of the modern relief pitcher \u2014 the \u2018Baron of the Bullpen\u2019 \u2014 and he played a critical role in our 1960 World Series championship, leading the league in appearances and recording three saves against the Yankees. Our thoughts are with his three children \u2014 Michelle, Valerie and Elroy Jr. \u2014 and his sister Jacqueline.\u201d<\/p>\n

An upstate New York native, Face began his career in the Phillies organization in 1949. The 5\u20198\u2033 righty, a sidearmer whose specialty was the forkball, emerged as a favorite of Hall of Fame executive Branch Rickey, who acquired him when he was Dodgers\u2019 GM over the 1950-51 offseason. Rickey took the same position with the Pirates the following year and added Face during the 1952-53 winter, at which point the pitcher was in Double-A.<\/p>\n

Face pitched poorly as a rookie and was sent back to Double-A for the \u201954 season. He returned to the majors the following year, working in a swing role before making a full-time bullpen conversion by 1956. Face would lead the majors with 68 appearances that season, tossing 135 1\/3 innings of 3.52 ERA ball. The Pirates used him mostly at the back of games at a time when many teams didn\u2019t have set closers. Face led the National League in games finished in four of five seasons between 1958-62.<\/p>\n

The save statistic didn\u2019t come into use until 1969. Face was retroactively credited as the NL saves leader in three of those seasons, including MLB high marks in 1958 (20) and \u201962 (28). He posted a sub-3.00 earned run average in four of those years, including a career-low 1.88 mark over 91 innings during the \u201962 campaign.<\/p>\n

Even if saves weren\u2019t around at the time, Face\u2019s accomplishments were appreciated during his career. He appeared on MVP ballots each season between 1958-60. He was an All-Star every year between 1959-61 and technically was selected to six All-Star Games, as MLB had both a midseason and postseason All-Star Game for a brief stretch during Face\u2019s peak.<\/p>\n

The 1960 season is etched into baseball history. Face tossed 114 2\/3 innings of 2.90 ERA ball with 61 games finished for a 95-59-1 team that won the pennant. The respective best regular season teams in each league went to the World Series in those days. Pittsburgh went up against a Yankees club that had Mickey Mantle<\/a>,\u00a0Roger Maris<\/a> and\u00a0Whitey Ford<\/a> in their primes.<\/p>\n

The Pirates would go on to win one of the most iconic series in league history. Face got the save in each of their first three victories: Games 1, 4, and 5. He pitched the sixth through eighth innings of Game 7. That wasn\u2019t his sharpest outing, as he gave up a go-ahead home run to\u00a0Yogi Berra<\/a>, but Pittsburgh would come back to take the lead in the bottom of the eighth. After the Yankees tied it in the top of the ninth,\u00a0Bill Mazeroski<\/a> connected on what remains the only Game 7 walk-off home run in history.<\/p>\n

That World Series was the only time that Face would pitch in the postseason, but he remained in Pittsburgh for most of the 60s. He added four sub-3.00 ERA seasons well into his 30s and had brief stops in Detroit and with the Expos to finish his career.<\/p>\n

The Pirates have been around for more than 140 seasons. Face remains the franchise\u2019s all-time leader in pitching appearances (802), games finished (547) and saves (186). He pitched nearly 1400 innings with a 3.48 ERA and recorded 877 strikeouts. Face topped 100 wins \u2014 including an astounding 18-1 record out of the bullpen in 1959 \u2014 and came up just shy of 200 saves overall, as he added five more during his final season in Montreal. Face was inducted into the Pirates Hall of Fame three years ago. MLBTR sends condolences to his family, friends and loved ones.<\/p>\n

Jason Mackey of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette<\/a> first reported the news.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Pirates announced this evening that former All-Star reliever\u00a0Elroy Face has passed away at 97. He pitched parts…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":471644,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,82],"class_list":["post-471643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=471643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471643\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/471644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}