Monday, April 05, 2010

They don't make 'em like they used to.


An obit ran in the New York Times today for former Orioles pitcher Mike Cuellar. Obviously his career was before my time. This sentence impressed me:
Cuellar had a 24-8 record in 1970, when he led A.L. pitchers in victories, complete games (21) and winning percentage (.750) and pitched the Orioles to a World Series championship with a Game 5 victory against the Cincinnati Reds.
It's that bolded part that caught my eye. Nowadays, that's unheard of. Wikipedia says the last pitcher to pitch 20 complete games in a season was Fernando Valenzuela in 1986. Of course, it's nowhere near the top-100 list for complete games in a single season, but the latest season on that list is 1892 and to break into it, you'd have to pitch 51 games in a single season.

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