In an era defined by flame-throwing bullpen arms and thorough optimization of starters and relievers alike, complete games have quickly become quite rare.
As the Chicago Cubs enter play on Saturday with a three-game losing streak, the baseball fan in me is still having a tough time thinking about their loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks on Tuesday evening in Phoenix.
Trade deadline acquisition Clay Holmes was absolutely nails, pitching seven shutout innings while surrendering just two hits and two walks on 93 pitches as the Cubs held a 4-0 lead.
Though perhaps it had something to do with Holmes returning from a leg injury within the past month, Cubs manager Craig Counsell did what he has done in every single game so far this season – remove his starting pitcher prior to the eighth inning.
What ensued was a brutal collapse for the Cubs. Closer Daniel Palencia, who had recently returned from the injured list, quickly allowed three runs before Jacob Webb yielded a walk-off home run to Ryan Waldschmidt in the ninth inning, sparking the current three-game slide for the Cubs.
While I wasn’t thrilled with Counsell’s decision, I found myself mostly upset at the current state of the sport – where it is an expectation to have a heavy reliance on data and a recent precedent that starters should be removed at or near 100 pitches – regardless of how the game is going.
The result has been a leaguewide plummeting of complete games over the course of the past 15 years, removing a notion starting pitchers followed for generations that their job was to attempt to finish the game – only being removed when they were no longer effective.
Though I don’t advocate for a full return to the era of starters throwing 300 innings a year and also accept that the game is in a totally different place, complete games remain a nostalgic relic of baseball’s past that still appear in today’s game every once in a while.
That once in a while happened to occur just two evenings later just outside Atlanta, where future Hall of Famer Chris Sale stymied the Los Angeles Dodgers in a 109-pitch complete game shutout that the Braves needed every bit of, winning the game 1-0.
Sale, who debuted back in 2010 and is now in his 16th MLB season, is certainly the exception and not the rule. At 37 years old and post-Tommy John surgery, Sale continues to offer merit towards the Randy Johnson comparisons thrown his direction over the years, with the lefty likely to finish second in this year’s NL Cy Young Award voting.
While the complete game was the 17th of Sale’s career, it was his first since undergoing Tommy John surgery in 2020, with his most recent complete game before Thursday coming on June 5, 2019 against the Kansas City Royals as a member of the Boston Red Sox.
It’s been since 2023 that a pitcher has thrown at least three complete games in a season, with Jordan Lyles and Sandy Alcantara accomplishing the feat then. Alcantara is also the most recent pitcher to record at least five complete games in a season, going the distance six times in his NL Cy Young Award-winning campaign in 2022.
Six complete games serves as the high water mark going back 15 years, with James Shields’ 2011 campaign still standing out as an extreme outlier today. Shields went the distance in a third of his 33 starts, tossing 11 complete games and four shutouts with a 2.82 ERA for the Tampa Bay Rays, playing an instrumental role in their run to the AL Wild Card spot.
Although Shields’ 2011 season feels impossible today, it wasn’t too long before then that at least one pitcher reaching double digits in complete games in a season was a normal occurrence.
Including Shields’ 11 CG season, here’s a look at the last five pitchers to toss at least 10 complete games in a single season, alongside their season stats and awards:
1. James Shields, 2011 Tampa Bay Rays – 11 complete games: All-Star, 3rd in AL Cy Young Award voting, 16th in AL MVP voting
5.8 WAR, 16-12, 2.82 ERA, 4 shutouts, 249.1 innings pitched, 65 BB, 225 K, 134 ERA+, 3.42 FIP, 1.043 WHIP
2. CC Sabathia, 2008 Cleveland Indians/Milwaukee Brewers – 10 complete games: 5th in NL Cy Young Award voting, 6th in NL MVP voting
6.7 WAR, 17-10, 2.70 ERA, 5 shutouts, 253 innings pitched, 59 BB, 251 K, 156 ERA+, 2.91 FIP, 1.115 WHIP
3. Randy Johson, 1999 Arizona Diamondbacks – 12 complete games: All-Star, NL Cy Young Award, 15th in NL MVP voting
9.1 WAR, 17-9, 2.48 ERA, 2 shutouts, 271.2 innings pitched, 70 BB, 364 K, 184 ERA+, 2.76 FIP, 1.020 WHIP
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