To keep things sane, we had to restrict this list to the live-ball era. Apologies to Old Hoss Radbourn who had 59 wins and 441 strikeouts in the year 1888.
Wilbur Wood was a knuckleballer who appears on this list mostly because he threw lots of innings.
Hal Newhouser's best three year stretch came when most of the good hitters were serving in WWII. He was ineligible for military service due to a leaky heart valve.
I was able to get most of them because of the clues (team, position, year). I'm a pretty big baseball fan though, and some of these guys were beyond me. Never even heard of Wilbur Wood. Only vaguely recall Hal Newhouser. I know that Jimmie Foxx and Lefty Grove were great players, but I didn't know (and probably won't remember) their teams and positions, so the clues were no help. I got everyone else. Some were more obvious than others.
I love the history of the game, so got 24/25, only missing Newhouser. Probably only got Wilbur Wood because he played during the era when I grew up, and I had his baseball card one year.
The WAR calculations for pitchers are...interesting. Very surprised not to see Sandy Koufax, Clayton Kershaw, and Greg Maddux here. Each of them had (and one of them is having) all-time great runs of at least three seasons.
Sandy Koufax pitched during a time when low ERA's were routine, so even though his stats were great there were lots of other great pitchers as well. Maddux probably would have made the list if not for the player's strike in 1994. Modern pitchers like Kershaw will have trouble making the list because of limited innings.
Hector, that's a substantial misunderstanding of the WAR metric. Has almost nothing to do with the particular team's bench quality or success when that player is not playing. It compares the player to all other players in the game at the position at the time to determine a replacement level and measure each player against that level.
Wilbur Wood. One of the best in White Sox history. From 1971-73:
139 starts, 1070 innings, 70-50, 63 complete games, 19 shutouts. In 1972, he went 24-17 with 376.2 innings and 20 shutouts, with a 2.99 FIP (fielding independent pitching). For reference, R.A. Dickey's 2012 Cy Young season compared to Wood's 1972: https://stathead.com/baseball/player-comparison.cgi?request=1&sum=0&player_id1=woodwi01&p1yrfrom=1972&p1yrto=1973&player_id3=dicker.01&p3yrfrom=2012&p3yrto=2013&type=p
139 starts, 1070 innings, 70-50, 63 complete games, 19 shutouts. In 1972, he went 24-17 with 376.2 innings and 20 shutouts, with a 2.99 FIP (fielding independent pitching). For reference, R.A. Dickey's 2012 Cy Young season compared to Wood's 1972: https://stathead.com/baseball/player-comparison.cgi?request=1&sum=0&player_id1=woodwi01&p1yrfrom=1972&p1yrto=1973&player_id3=dicker.01&p3yrfrom=2012&p3yrto=2013&type=p