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.

"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

40 year old wainwright, practically dead from old age, threw 7.2 hitless tonight, then went through 9 on 3 hits and 1 run. game's still going, tied 1-1 with the brewers in the 10th

Aaron Nola throw a complete game tonight and gave up 1 run but got the loss.

has wainwright yet disavowed his pledge to retire?

as far as i know, he has never said he'd retire! it was kind of an assumption. a one-year deal, molina's last year, he's turning and "his body is changing", he has hair in places where he did not have hair before. but afaik he never pledged retirement. i very much expect him to pitch next year and look forward to it. did not expect him to turn into bob tewksbury at the end of his career but i love it

and, if it's not clear, i am a total jackass for openly wishing for him to retire 3-5 years ago. i thought he was done, i was totally wrong. all hail the christian god

tampa's drew rasmussen is perfect through six on 54 pitches (!)

but he has only thrown more than six once this year

perfect through eight, 78 pitches

only gone to a three-ball count twice, both in the second inning

79 pitches now through 8 innings--that's amazing.

it's been...ten years since the last perfect game?

They're talking about it on the Jays' broadcast right now; Buck Martinez, one of the two announcers, was in the lineup when Len Barker threw his PG against Toronto in '81.

well fuck

well there it goes

did not know rays had these alternate uniforms with a fish on the cap and a ms paint sun on the jersey

beloved ex-ray brett phillips was in line to be the final batter but oh well

I thought for sure I'd set it up so Odor would break it up.

Lost the perfect game, the no-hitter, the Maddux, the shutout, and the CG in about two minutes.

"not if Jorge Mateo has anything to say about it"