Baseball Reference Blog

We all are well aware that pitching complete games has become much rarer than it used to be. I was reminded of this again during an excellent interview with Denny McLain recently conducted by Dale Arnold and Michael Holley on WEEI in Boston (audio available here.) For example, in his 31-win season, McLain started 41 games and finished 23 of them.

These days, when a pitcher throws back-to-back CGs, it's big news. That point can be brought home by the following search's using the PIT Pitching Streak finder.

First, most consecutive complete games pitched in the last 10 full season (1997-2006):

                  StreakStart  Streak End Games   W   L   GS  CG SHO  GF  SV   IP     H    R   ER   BB   SO   HR   ERA  HBP  WP  BK Teams

+-----------------+-----------+-----------+-----+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 Curt Schilling     1999-05-07  1999-05-29     5    4   1   5   5   1   0   0   44.2   39   13   11    7   32   4   2.22   2   0   0 PHI

 Roy Halladay       2003-09-01  2003-09-17     4    4   0   4   4   2   0   0   37     18    2    1    4   25   0   0.24   1   0   0 TOR
 Paul Byrd          2002-07-13  2002-07-29     4    3   1   4   4   1   0   0   35     24    7    7    2   16   2   1.80   1   2   0 KCR
 Carlos Perez       1998-09-02  1998-09-20     4    4   0   4   4   2   0   0   36     22    3    3    8   28   2   0.75   0   1   0 LAD

Remember when 38pitches threw 5 straight CGs? Neither do most other people, since the Phillies were back to being terrible then.

And now, let's look at the same streak, but in the decade of the 60's (1960-1969)

                   StreakStart  Streak End Games   W   L   GS  CG SHO  GF  SV   IP     H    R   ER   BB   SO   HR   ERA  HBP  WP  BK Teams

+-----------------+-----------+-----------+-----+------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 Juan Marichal      1968-05-24  1968-08-01    16   14   2  16  16   4   0   0  149    113   28   23   19   95   7   1.39   1   1   1 SFG

 Bob Gibson         1968-05-28  1968-07-30    13   12   1  13  13   8   0   0  116     67    9    9   17   96   3   0.70   4   1   0 STL Bob Gibson         1969-04-30  1969-06-29    12    9   3  12  12   3   0   0  107     81   25   24   31   97   6   2.02   1   1   1 STL

 Phil Niekro        1968-09-13  1969-05-07    10    8   2  10  10   3   0   0   88     65   18   15   15   59   4   1.53   3   6   0 ATL
 Juan Marichal      1967-04-25  1967-06-03    10    9   1  10  10   2   0   0   90     66   15   11   11   80   6   1.10   0   0   0 SFG
 Warren Spahn       1961-07-30  1961-09-10    10   10   0  10  10   2   0   0   91     73   12   10   19   46   2   0.99   0   1   0 MLN

Holy cow. Can you image a guy throwing 16, 13 or even 10 straight CGs these days? Me neither. But who knows--we might see complete games become more popular again one day.

Related posts:

Consecutive complete games

Complete games for Mets

Consecutive Complete Games

Felix Hernandez has Three Consecutive “Complete” Games

Consecutive Starts Without a Complete Game