Has there ever been a major league team that not recorded a save in a year of baseball?

Answer 1

IDK, but players that pitched in 1908 have been credited with saves see E. Plank's stats....

Answer 2

The save became an official stat in 1969, but saves have been awarded retroactively by reviewing the box scores back to the early part of the 20th century.

I knew the 1987 Red Sox had only 16 saves -- didn't think that was the record, though, so I checked a few other really bad teams, figuring that a team with very few wins would typically have very few saves as well.

1962 Mets - 10 saves
1952 Pirates - 8 saves
1930 Phillies - 7 saves
1935 Braves - 5 saves

Pretty low; since the save became official, the 1979 Blue Jays (11) hold the record, but these olde-tyme teams beat that (shorter schedule helped).

Reaching way, way back, and this is only one example, the 1881 Troy Trojans' entire pitching staff was Tim Keefe and Mickey Welch, both HOFers, both of whom pitched complete games in every start (Keefe 45, Welch 40), so a save situation never arose. Ah, those were the days.

Answer 3

Um duh, saves didn't come into play until the late 70s, so basicially every team before those years never had one