Known as one of the most effective closers of the early 2000’s, Keith Foulke first emerged as a top-line reliever with the Chicago White Sox in 1999.
In keeping up with the daily transactions across MLB through the first two months of the season, I was personally a little surprised to see just how many relief pitchers are journeymen with sporadic stops in the big leagues over the course of the past 15 years or so.
Of course, non-closer relievers are the most overlooked players in The Show by a good margin – they’re often the last players to fill out a roster, aren’t known to sign for top-dollar deals and serve a role that every team across the league is often in need of.
Seeing the long journeyman careers of current veteran relievers such as Matt Bowman and Luis Garcia had me thinking of the relievers of yesteryear and who the most notable bullpen arms were during my days of getting into baseball as a kid.
Perhaps one of the more recognizable arms from that era is right-handed reliever Keith Foulke, who is known by many as one of the game’s elite closers in the early 2000’s – particularly Beas the closer of the curse-breaking 2004 Boston Red Sox.
Before becoming a lockdown closer, Foulke had established himself as the premier non-closer relief arm in baseball – putting up an absolutely stellar season in 1999 that had convinced Jerry Manuel and the Chicago White Sox to move Foulke to the closer role.
Prior to 1999, Foulke was viewed as a high-potential arm with limited results. Initially a San Francisco Giants farmhand, Foulke debuted with the club in 1997 before being a component of the infamous “White Flag trade” that sent the reliever and a package of prospects to Chicago in exchange for Wilson Alvarez, Danny Darwin and Roberto Hernandez.
Foulke put up a solid, but unremarkable campaign in 1998, posting a 3-2 record and 4.13 ERA across 65.1 innings of work in 54 games – totaling 20 walks and 57 strikeouts.
The step taken forward in 1999 for a middling White Sox team was truly remarkable.
Foulke concluded the 1999 campaign with an unheard of 4.5 WAR, compiling a 2.22 ERA in 105.1 innings in 67 games, emerging as the rare pure reliever to toss more than 100 innings in a season. The durability came with unmatched effectiveness, as Foulke walked just 21 batters compared to 123 strikeouts – good for an astronomical 222 ERA+ and a miniscule 0.883 WHIP.
Foulke’s effectiveness showed few traditional weak spots, posting nearly identical splits between home/away while righties and lefties struggled against the reliever around equally as much. Righties fared slightly better against Foulke, yet still only managed just a .569 OPS, compared to the lowly .541 OPS put up by left-handed hitters.
The one split where a noticeable difference does emerge is between Foulke’s first and second half performances – with the reliever clearly finding a different gear after the All-Star break. Though solid with a 3.04 ERA over 53.1 innings in 33 first-half games, Foulke became just about unhittable towards the end of the season.
Making his way into 34 games after the Midsummer Classic, the then-26-year-old righty managed a 1.38 ERA over his final 52 innings of work, amassing 65 strikeouts opposed to just nine walks, making for a video game-like 0.731 WHIP.
What also makes Foulke’s performances jump off the page is just how terrifying the average offense was at the turn of the century. The 1999 season saw a total of 45,327 hits – the most in a full single-season since the 1994-95 players’ strike, while the year’s 24,691 runs only trail 2000 when it comes to total offensive output.
In addition, Foulke was positioned in the very hitter-friendly AL Central which included the then-Cleveland Indians, who became the first and only team ever to score at least 1,000 runs in a season in 1999. Against Cleveland, Foulke allowed just two earned runs in eight innings of work with two walks and 10 strikeouts.
Though unquestionably a limited sample size, even one of the greatest lineups in the sport’s history had a disproportionate amount of trouble when tasked with facing Foulke in 1999.
When it comes to the 75-86 White Sox, Foulke was tied as the team’s third-most valuable player according to bWAR, tying with starter Mike Sirotka as the team’s most valuable pitcher. The difference? Sirotka took 103.2 more innings to reach his 4.5 WAR than it took Foulke.
The two were both overshadowed in WAR by Chris Singleton and Magglio Ordóñez, the latter of whom posted a 5.8 WAR season in a breakout campaign that saw the right-hander mash 67 extra-base hits with a .301 batting average and .858 OPS.
Foulke’s consistency throughout the year is what undoubtedly gave him the opportunity to eventually close some games – ultimately putting up nine saves in a year where fellow White Flag trade acquisition Bob Howry picked up the bulk of the work, totaling 28 saves.
While sporadically converting on a save opportunity here and there, Foulke never fully took the role away from Howry, instead remaining in his unique role as a multi-inning set-up man with the ability to finish off a game when needed.
Though it comes as no surprise as Foulke was a monstrous innings eater out of the bullpen, but the right-hander truly did deliver the White Sox the most that they could possibly get out of his outings.
In over half of his 67 appearances, Foulke recorded four outs or more – while only pitching less than inning on a single occasion across the entire season – a one-out hold recorded against the Pittsburgh Pirates on June 6.
Even in a landscape with changed rules today that requires that relievers face at least three batters, this type of durability and level of trust in a non-closer is simply unheard of in 2026 – and it certainly wasn’t all that common in 1999 either.
Still, it was clear to many around baseball that the best reliever on the White Sox was not the guy that was closing games – with Foulke repeatedly demonstrating his high-leverage bona fides throughout the season.
In 94 opponent at-bats with runners in scoring position, Foulke allowed just 15 hits and seven walks – making for an NL pitcher-like slash line of .160/.233/.234/.467 in situations where hitters were in need of a breakthrough knock. With the bases loaded, hitters were just 1-for-10 with a walk against the right-hander.
Foulke’s performance, while certainly overlooked today, wasn’t a complete afterthought in 1999. The 26-year-old tied for a 10th-place finish in AL Cy Young Award voting in a year where Pedro Martinez compiled one of the greatest single-season pitching campaigns the game will ever see.
From that point on, Foulke’s unique multi-inning set-up role was scratched in favor of him taking over the closer role – which he did the following season for a White Sox team that ultimately won 95 games and the AL Central.
Entering the 2000 campaign with just 13 career saves, Foulke would go on to record 177 saves over the next six seasons, split between the White Sox, Oakland Athletics and Boston Red Sox. Foulke led the junior circuit in saves in 2003, serving as the second and final time the reliever received Cy Young Award votes – finishing seventh in consideration for the honor on top of an All-Star apperance and 15th place finish in AL MVP voting.
After an ineffective 2005 season as the closer for the Red Sox, Foulke returned to a regular relief role with the team in 2006. Though Foulke signed in Cleveland for the 2007 season, the reliever abruptly retired just before the start of spring training – forgoing a battle for the closer role with fellow veteran Joe Borowski.
Foulke ultimately came out of retirement to pitch one more season with the Oakland Athletics in 2008, posting a 4.06 ERA across 31 appearances and 31 innings to go with 13 walks, 23 strikeouts and one save.
In a sport where each team tries to figure out a unique mix of roles and arms to compile the ideal bullpen, Foulke took on a large portion of the burden himself for the 1999 White Sox – and while the team was certainly forgettable, Foulke’s season-long performance was the start of an excellent stint as one of the game’s elite closers.
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