What Happened to Emil Yde?

I don’t know who Dan Haren is, so I’m just going to go ahead and see which baseball players died on this date in history.

Even when morose, the author is hopelessly earnest.

Among the name-heavy, stat-light players are Walter “Footie” Ockey, and the indomitable Dick Luebke. But another great [unpronounceable] name stands out: Emil Yde.

Rookie sensation turned hipster.

Yde led the league in Shut-Outs in 1924, his rookie, when he posted a 2.83 ERA. Then, a precipitous drop in effectiveness led him to spending the entire 1928 season in the minors. A last shot at the majors in 1929 with the Tigers — 86.2 innings of 5.30 ERA ball — failed. He also pitched 280(!) minor league innings that year, and an additional 692 minor league innings from 1930-1933 before calling it quits for whatever reason at age 33.

Emil’s rookie-year success might be and early example of BABIP luck, as our FanGraphs stats show that he accumulated a .253 BABIP compared to a .290 league mark. He also stranded 72% of runners compared to a league average of 66.2%. (His subsequent minor league stats weren’t consistently horrible.)

There have always been one-year wonders, I suppose. So many have faded to obscurity. If I could blog about all of them I would. What happened to Emil Yde after he quit baseball? The Internets don’t seem to know, so neither do I.

But one thing is for certain…