The Top 16 franchise-making trades in Atlanta Braves history
By Fred Owens
2. Exploiting the Yankees
1951 – LEW BURDETTE / NEW YORK YANKEES
In August 1951, the New York Yankees wanted Johnny Sain. In return, they sent Lew Burdette and $50,000 ($492,484 today) to the Milwaukee Braves.
Past his prime and with a balky shoulder, Sain became a reliever. Six years later, Burdette reminded the Yankees they’d made a mistake.
After a slow, league-average 1952 MLB season on a bad team, Burdette began a streak of nine consecutive double-digit win seasons, averaging 17 wins a year and a 3.43 ERA worth a total of 25.5 rWAR (26.3 fWAR).
A superb 1956 saw Burdette win 19 games and the NL ERA title (2.70, 125 ERA+), but the pinnacle of his career came during the 1957 World Series against a Yankees team that won the AL by eight games. Their lineup led the league in runs, hits, triples, average, slugging and OPS, but it had no answer for Burdette.
He threw three complete games – the last on two-days rest – winning Game 2 4-2, then shutting out the powerhouse Yankees in Game 5 (1-0) and Game 7 (5-0). In doing so, Burdette became the first pitcher since Christy Mathewson to fire two shutouts in a World Series and the first in 37 years to pitch three complete games and win all three.
Burdette continued his dominance in 1958 – 20-10 and a 2.91 ERA in 275 1/3 IP – but found the Yankees harder to handle in the World Series, winning only one of the three starts; the victory came as a result of another complete game.
He won 21 and tossed 289.2 innings, including 20 complete games in 1959, and came on top when he faced the Pittsburgh Pirates’ Harvey Haddix in that epic 13-inning contest.
While everyone knows about Haddix’s feat, few realize that Burdette pitched the full 13 innings for the Braves, walking none and scattering 12 hits in a complete-game shutout.
Burdette missed his own perfecto in 1960 when he hit Philadelphia Phillies outfielder Tony Gonzalez in the fifth inning. The next batter hit into a double play, and no one else reached base, as he beat the Phillies, 1-0: Still getting credit for throwing a no-hitter.
Burdette’s 1.9 BB/9 rate places him No. 59 among all pitchers, fifth among pitchers with 3,000 IP in the live-ball era behind Robin Roberts (1.73), Greg Maddux (1.80) Carl Hubbell and Juan Marichal (1.82); and second among Braves pitchers with 2,500 innings.
He’s also No. 4 in that group for complete games and shutouts – Kid Nichols, Warren Spahn and Phil Niekro – and sixth in games started, innings pitched and HR/9 (0.86).
Burdette retired in 1967 and acted as Braves pitching coach in 1972. His bio quotes an unsourced clipping in his file at Cooperstown.
"“They’ve always been my club. Everything good happened when I was with the Braves. They’ve been my life."
Lew died in 2007, at the age of 80.
Next: The best deal the franchise ever made happened because the man they wanted as manager insisted that they purchase the contract of a pitcher on his current team, a 19-year-old right-hander everyone called ‘Kid.’