The following is a list of annual leaders insaves inMajor League Baseball (MLB), with separate lists for theAmerican League and theNational League. The list includes several professional leagues and associations that were never part of MLB.
Inbaseball, asave is credited to apitcher who finishes a game for the winning team under prescribed circumstances. Most commonly arelief pitcher ("reliever") earns a save by entering in the ninth inning of a game in which his team is winning by three or fewer runs and finishing the game by pitching one inning without losing the lead.[1] The statistic was created byJerome Holtzman in 1959 to "measure the effectiveness of relief pitchers" and was adopted as an MLB official statistic in 1969.[2][3] The save has been retroactively measured for pitchers before that date.
MLB recognizes the player or players in each league[a] with the most saves each season. In retrospect, the five saves byJack Manning meant he led theNational League in its inaugural year, whileBill Hoffer was theAmerican League's first saves champion with three.[4]Mordecai Brown was the first pitcher to record at least 10 saves in a season.Dan Quisenberry,Bruce Sutter,Firpo Marberry, andEd Walsh are the only pitchers to lead the league in saves five times (though Marberry and Walsh did so before 1969). Sutter is also tied withHarry Wright, Dan Quisenberry andCraig Kimbrel for the most consecutive seasons leading the league in saves with four.
American Association[edit]
| National Association[edit]
Union Association[edit]
Player's League[edit]
Federal League[edit]
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