A Thread For Starting Pitchers That Are Doing Really Well

good job

Renteria really sucks.

Ryan Dempster has been shockingly effective in his two starts. 13 IP, 4 hits, 4 BB, 2R (1 ER), 10 K. Kudos.

not really shocked cuz dempster showed #3-type stuff in relief last year, mixing in a lot of above avg pitches but nothing super-special; having him in the bp was kind of confounding to me. havent seen him yet this year but my guess is that he'll be a quality starter

Yeah the shock is from years of mis-having him as a closer.

edgar "i stretch a lot in the batters box" renteria provided half their offense!

Kyle Lo(h)se deserves a place here

Cain just dingered.

And has 6 no-hit innings.

it is now 6.2 3-hit innings.

can add Looper to the list of ex-closers doing wtf well as a starter.

LEE YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO SAY ANYTHING WHICH IS THE POINT OF THE THREAD HINT HINT

Off-topic but on-topic in the "taking thread title literally" sense: SCOTT OLSEN (!?!?!?)

Not surprising: Jair Mothjerrfjuckjing Jurrjens. What is surprising, though, is his 7.46 K/9.

Yeah, after yesterday's start I grabbed him in the fantasy league. He looked good in an "I don't give a fuck about ANY of these chumps" way.

Ponson wtf.

every year there's always one or two dudes like this guy was in '00:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/s/smithch07.shtml

joe saunders

scott olson, tho he got rocked last night

Jon Lester is pitching really well so far today.

: D

Man I sure picked the right meaningless Royals game to go to. Never thought I'd see a no-hitter.

well they are often worse pitched than some one or two hit games.

well, you know, it takes a tremendous amount of luck to achieve a one or two hitter.

they are often worse pitched than three or four hitters.

haha, fuck you :)

(METS HAVE DONE FINE W/OUT ONE IN 46 YEARS)

best pitched game i ever saw live was when pedro struck out 15 and lost. to tampa. completely wtf.

excuse me, retrosheet.org tells me he struck out 17 and lost.

PITCHING
Tampa Bay Devil Rays         IP     H   R  ER  BB  SO  HR

Trachsel W(2-2)               9     3   0   0   3  11   0
Boston Red Sox               IP     H   R  ER  BB  SO  HR

P. Martinez L(5-1)            9     6   1   1   1  17   0

but Trachsel pitched better! HE GAVE UP HALF AS MANY HITS!

anyone see WGN rerun the 9th of Jim Maloney's no hitter vs the Cubs in '65, a few weeks ago during a rain delay? The guy walked TEN and threw something like 190 pitches!

Back when the game was played by MEN

pretty sure while w/ montreal pedro threw 9 perfect innings & ended up losing

that's not too impressive, a lot of bad luck involved there.

xp to Andy: MEN whose arms were dead at 31!

so what? all the hitters were either boozed up or hungover. EVEN PLAYING FIELD.

xp to Andy: MEN whose arms were dead at 31!

-- Dr Morbius, Tuesday, May 20, 2008 4:17 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

Back then, you didn't know whether you'd HAVE your throwing arm the next day -- lost to the combine out on the back forty, or combat, or what have you. You just threw like hell, left everything out there on the mound.

I once left my watch out on the mound, but that was not on purpose.

daniel cabrera, the consecutive reigning AL walks champion, pitched his third game WITHOUT issuing a walk this season last night. his three-peat is in peril as he has now tumbled out of the top ten on the heels of his 8th straight quality start.

Following Daver's stinging rebukes, I'd like to known if it's now OK to say that Lester pitched a NH.

Dana Eveland is pitching very nicely.

http://static.flickr.com/72/175995087_edd1f77f57_o.jpg

i saw andrew miller strike out 9 the other night, but i originally thought it was 13 or so, so i couldn't even imagine seeing 17

joe saunders is 8-1 w/ a 2.31 era right now

JUSTIN DUCHSCHERER

n/m

Cueto through five

Last Play: G. Blanco reached on bunt single to third

>:O

BRETTY MYERS OH MY THRU 6

Oh well

Greg Maddux still has it. He's perfect so far . . .

Ladies and Gentlemen, Bitter Cubsfan

I guess it's all part of what they call . . . gowring up.

hehe perrin ain't bad either, just joshin'

I might send in an "Ask Bill" about this, but I suspect he'll either beg off (because of his time with the Red Sox, I find he's more reluctant to criticize guys like Roberts who've been around the game for a long time--one of the things I like less about him now) or even agree with the decision.

I'm in this FB group, "Third Base Saloon," where there's a poll up on taking out Kershaw...13-1 against right now! We're all going to get together later and find some clouds to yell at.

you're pretty passionate about this clemenza! haha

honest q: what's the most pitches a starting pitcher has thrown so far in a game this year?

just wondering if starting pitchers are going 100+ already.

looks like scherzer threw 96 yesterday

My guess is Kershaw today, almost certainly.

I totally understand all the arguments against. It's just...I see baseball becoming less and less popular all the time, and I do wonder if there's connection between the two. I became a fan in the '70s primarily because of the players and all the wondrous things they did. Willie Stargell hit 40 HR and 40 doubles? Is that even possible? Etc., etc.

If you feel strongly that 20 more pitches would have potentially done long-term damage to Kershaw, then of course it's an easy decision. I just personally don't believe that.

It was actually today Scherzer threw 96.

Here's where I'd differentiate...He only gave up one run, but 96 pitches over 5 innings is a lot; he had eight baserunners (5 hits/3 BB), so he wasn't exactly sailing. In that case--and just based on the boxscore--I'd say they left him out there too long, pushing him to 5.0 IP so he could get the win.

Any time something bad happens to the Dodgers we should cherish it

Don't know a thing about this publication, but worth it for the headline:

https://defector.com/kershaw-perfect-game-prison/

Maybe someone with Play Index can verify this, but Kershaw's Game Score of 90 today has the be the highest ever for 7 innings.

Defector is Deadspin

The Real Deadspin

By Game Score, Clayton Kershaw just threw the greatest seven-inning start ever.

Kershaw, 4/13/22: 90
Sale, 8/16/15: 88
Woodruff, 9/11/20: 87
Cole, 9/24/19: 87

— Joe Sheehan (@joe_sheehan) April 13, 2022

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/imperfect-circumstances-foiled-clayton-kershaws-perfect-game/

jaffe:

The Dodgers couldn’t have asked for much more from Clayton Kershaw than what he gave them in his first start of the 2022 season, and so they didn’t. Faced with the unenviable choice of letting the future Hall of Famer push himself into the red in pursuit of a perfect game — under frigid conditions in Minnesota, no less — or take a more prudent course with a 34-year-old hurler whose last regular-season appearance placed his future in doubt, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts went against all sentimentality. He pulled Kershaw after seven spotless innings and 80 pitches, a move that the pitcher later called “the right choice,” and the Dodgers settled for a combined one-hitter and a 7-0 victory at Target Field.

...Under normal circumstances, given his 80-pitch count, Kershaw would have been in the clear to chase after the 24th perfect game in major league history and the first since the Mariners’ Félix Hernández’s August 15, 2012 masterpiece against the Rays. Kershaw had already notched a no-hitter against the Rockies at Dodger Stadium on June 18, 2014, missing out on a perfect game only due to a Hanley Ramirez throwing error. These were not normal circumstances, however, and not just because the first-pitch temperature at Target Field was 38 degrees, with 18 mph winds and a wind chill factor of 28 degrees.

Kershaw has landed on the injured list in each of the last five seasons, averaging just 25 starts and 157 innings in the non-pandemic years and topping out at 28 starts and 178.1 innings while navigating a variety of back, shoulder, and elbow ailments. When he’s been available, he’s generally been excellent, making three All-Star teams, each in years accompanied by Cy Young support; in 2017, he won his fifth ERA title, topped 200 strikeouts for the seventh time, and placed second in the Cy Young voting behind Max Scherzer. Last year, despite an ERA that ballooned to a career-high 3.55 due to his late-season woes, he produced a 16.7% swinging strike rate, the highest in the majors among pitchers with at least 100 innings. During all of those starts and stops, he’s helped the Dodgers to three pennants and, in 2020, their long-elusive championship.

Though he’s shed that particular burden, Kershaw brought additional baggage to Wednesday’s start. In his last regular season appearance, on October 1, 2021, he had retired just five of 10 Brewers over the course of 42 pitches before leaving the mound due to discomfort in his left forearm. That abortive outing was his fourth start after a 10-week absence due to his forearm inflammation. The early departure ruled him out for the 2021 postseason, depriving him of a chance to help the Dodgers defend their title and sending him into free agency for the first time with a great deal of uncertainty about whether he’d return, not only to Los Angeles but to baseball at all.

Kershaw underwent a platelet-rich plasma injection into his left flexor tendon in early October, didn’t begin throwing again until January, and didn’t re-sign with the Dodgers until March 11. On the day after the lockout ended, he agreed to a one-year, $17 million deal with incentives that could take him to $22 million. He made only three Cactus League starts, then followed with a five-inning, 75-pitch simulated game on April 7, the day before the Dodgers opened their season against the Rockies in Colorado.

That confluence of circumstances made completing the perfect game too tall an order, but that probably would have been the case for any pitcher given the hasty run-up to the season. Through Tuesday, no starter had pitched more than seven innings in a single game, only five out of 150 had gone more than six innings, and only six had topped 90 pitches. As the game returned from a commercial break at the top of the seventh, the SportsNet Los Angeles feed showed Kershaw and Roberts conversing in the Dodgers’ dugout. The subject of their discussion was no mystery. Via The Athletic’s Fabian Ardaya:

Dave Roberts said Clayton Kershaw asked him to go back out for the seventh inning after he completed the sixth at 69 pitches. Told him then he wanted to finish at around 80, 85 pitches (he'd been built up to 75). "(He's) earned the right to have a conversation," Roberts said.

— Fabian Ardaya (@FabianArdaya) April 13, 2022

I think most of that is already known to anyone who wanted him to stay in--it's basically a risk vs. reward question, and how great a risk you think is involved. Based on the efficiency of his first 80 pitches (I think he went to a 3-ball count four times), I believe the risk is being overstated by take-him-out advocates.

I think the best point in that piece is made by David Cone (later on, not excerpted above):

"The problem for managers is that you have to make the decision after the seventh inning, because if you allow him to go out and pitch the eighth inning, then you can’t stop it. If he’s perfect after eight, he’s only three outs away and he might be over a hundred pitches, then you have a real quandary."

but how do you ask a pitcher who has already requested to come out of the game at around 80-85 pitches to stay in and try to complete the game instead? maybe i'm misreading that Ardaya quote (it's kind of ambiguously worded), but isn't that Kershaw telling Roberts that he wanted to finish at 80 or 85 pitches? i'm just imagining Roberts hearing that, knowing his injury history, and then telling him "no, Kershaw. you go out there and keep pitching until you are something less than perfect. because when i look into your eyes right now, that's all i can see. perfection. now get out there!" *baseball slap on butt encouragement*

lol

"Dammit Clayton – I deeply respect you as a human being. Someday I'm gonna make you Mrs. Dave Roberts. Listen, you go back out there and give it all you got. Show me hoe perfect you can be. All right?"

"tonight i want you to make the greater Los Angeles area perfect. just for one night."

When Kershaw said he wanted to finish at 80 or 85 pitches, I'm going to take a wild guess that he wasn't factoring in "And that includes the possibility that I'll be working on a perfect game where I haven't had to push myself even once yet."

Here, to me, is a much more reasonable way to look at this (from, who else, Posnanski's column today--"The Johan Santana Game"):

“A lot of people blame the no-hitter on being the end of my career,” Santana would say. “But I don’t look at it that way. Because your career can end in one pitch in the beginning of your career or 10 years later or 20 years later.”

And I think that’s right. The risk is always there. And so is the opportunity. I believe Dave Roberts made the right choice with Kershaw because I believe it’s what Kershaw wants — he’s a team player from K to W, and he wants to protect that elbow and pitch all season and make another run at the World Series. Pulling him after seven innings might give him a better chance of doing that. I think we can respect that choice.

I believe Johan Santana wanted something else. He wanted history, and he was willing to risk the rest to make it happen. There’s certainly nothing wrong with that choice either.

Lost my connection there...

So he's supporting Roberts, and taking it, on faith, that what Kershaw is saying publicly is what he actually wanted. But he's also aware of the hidden cost--what was lost--and saying that going the other route is perfectly acceptable.

(Two guys on the radio this morning thought that Kershaw was put into an impossible spot simply by being consulted. If he says "Yeah, I'd like to stay in," he'll get grief for pursuing selfish goals. I don't agree with that on balance--I'd rather he be in on the decision--but I don't think their conclusion is wrong either.)

Last thing I really want to say on this: once again, I totally understand taking him out. What I hate, though, is someone dispassionately making all the obvious arguments as to why you take him out without ever acknowledging the other side, the historic opportunity that was lost (and just saying something like "perfect games are cool, of course" doesn't really get at that).

I did send in a "Hey Bill" (one of three Kershaw-related questions he posted today):

Bill -- Would you have pulled Kershaw today? Or is that a pointless question unless you have as much first-hand information about the situation as Dave Roberts?

I'm pretty sure you once wrote--maybe more than once--that pitch-count in the abstract is meaningless, the important thing is how many pitches are thrown after a pitcher is tired. Seeing as Kershaw was seemingly sailing through the game, and had a six-run lead, my instinct is that he hadn't reached that point yet...but I know it's early in a season that had a late start to spring training.
Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: 4/15/2022
No, I didn't write that, although I remember that somebody did...I read it somewhere. I don't know the right or wrong of it. The chance that he would have finished the Perfect Game is about 10%. Is a 10% chance of a perfect game a big enough thing to risk an injury that might devastate his season? It isn't JUST the pitch count; you're talking about an older pitcher, and a very early-season game after a shortened spring training. Not saying that he SHOULD have come out; I would just urge you to present the problem fully, rather than with a slant.

I indicated above that I thought there'd be a good chance he'd agree with the decision--he comes pretty close to doing that.

A couple of minor things...I might not have presented the problem fully fully, but of the three points he makes--older pitcher, early, short spring training--I did acknowledge two of them. And I'm positive he once wrote that about pitch count. He does that now and again with reader e-mail, say he either doesn't remember writing something somebody quotes--understandable--or say it's something he never wrote. Trying to dig up something is virtually impossible: the Historical Abstracts are indexed, but the yearly Abstracts, and the yearly Baseball Books, aren't.

Not sure this thread has a purpose anymore, but Ohtani through 5/60 pitches.

12 Ks through 5.1

Aaaand it’s over.

So much for that...And I was even trying to set realistic goals, hoping they'd pull him after 6 with the highest six-inning Game Score ever.

I was waiting for the 6th before saying anything.

Not a bad idea--I won't post here anymore unless someone heads out for the 8th.

Hahaa

I'm down there on Thursday--think we've lucked out and should get Manoah.

Especially good if you’re in the 500s. Dude is massive!

Oops--that was supposed to go in the Jays thread...Anyway, we've got pretty good seats in short right-field.

nestor cortes through 6

Nasty Nestor thru 6 (74 pitches)

lol xp

jon gray was matching him for a bit and then he gave up a hit and immediately got injured again

And he carried it through the seventh
But he died along the way
Someone else took over
Just like yesterday

Someone else honked over
Just like boboday

Orioles rookie Kyle Bradish has pitched 7 complete, 11 strikeouts and hasn't walked anybody. Only runs he allowed were on a weird inside-the-park HR that Mullins kicked in the outfield.

some called it weird; i called it fate

verlander's through 7 with no hits btw

Reid Detmers completes the no-hitter for the Angels, throwing 106 pitches and surrendering one walk

Man I didn't expect that Bradish's gem was going to be at best the third-best start in the American League tonight

Yeah, Jfc!

I was only half-following online, but I think the Jays' Kikuchi had no-hit the Yankees through five innings last night...wasted again.

Mikolas broken up on the last out and 129th pitch

A thread for spoilers who are doing well

Wow. That is the ONE cardinals game I’ve missed watching this year. Including spring training.

cristian javier is through seven in the bronx but has thrown 115 pitches

& neris + pressley complete it

now for the bombers to lose their next 15 games