Yovani Gallardo’s 1-0 complete game with a run scored
Posted by Andy on April 13, 2011
Reader Josh pointed out a cool feat by Yovani Gallardo. He pitched a complete game shutout earlier this season that his team won 1-0 while he scored the only run of the game.
Looking up such games in the PI is difficult, but I found a way to limit the search and sort through manually.
Jason Hammel scored the only run in a 1 -0 win in 2010, but he pitched "only" 8 innings.
Gallardo himself also scored the only run of a 1-0 win in 2009 but he also pitched "only" 8 innings.
Other pitchers to score the lone run of a 1-0 game:
Odalis Perez in 2008 with 7.1 IP
Woody Williams in 2004 with 7 IP
Odalis Perez in 2002 with 8 IP
Chris Hammond in 1991 with 6 IP
Pete Harnisch in 1991 with 9 IP (complete game!)
That's as far back as I'll go. So there you have it--Gallardo is the first guy to do it while pitching a CG in 20 seasons since Harnisch in 1991.
On a side note about odd baseball statistics, who would have expected to see Odalis Perez show up here twice?
April 13th, 2011 at 8:54 am
Odalis Perez (in 2002) and Gallardo (2009) both drove themselves in with a home run.
However, there is nothing to substantiate the rumor that they also both coached first base, sold hot dogs and led the crowd in singing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame".
April 13th, 2011 at 9:13 am
I remember the 2009 game; Gallardo had just come off a season-killing injury in 2008 plus the Brewers had Trevor Hoffman. He hit a homerun and pitched 8 shutout innings.
What is that, 0.98 WAR on the day?
April 13th, 2011 at 10:21 am
Wood & Gallardo make sense on this list, as Wood was at one time an excellent starter, as Gallardo is now, and they can both hit.
April 13th, 2011 at 10:22 am
@1 -- No, they didn't coach first base. They coached third, and more importantly, they warned their star not to slide head-first into home.
April 13th, 2011 at 10:36 am
Completely off topic, but I thought you guys would appreciate...
My fiance (who is fairly sports savy as a former softball and soccer player) was watching Mike&Mike with I while they were debating the Josh Hamilton play. The debate was focused on multiple things, including whether Hamilton would have been right to override his coach, whether or not he should have slid head first, and whether he should have gone at all. She asked what I thought and I talked about how this type of analysis always suffers from hindsight bias. More importantly, no body was positing the potential gain versus the risk. I gave her a brief explanation of WPA and said that figuring out the likelihood of success (something that could likely only be approximated) and then figuring out the WPA of going versus staying, one could get a reasonable approximation of whether going was the right decision, leaving aside the injury risk (not that it is insignifigant, but moreso because I wouldn't know how to begin to calculate it). She paused for a moment and said, "What's this thing called? Winning Percentage?" "Winning Percentage Added (though I may be mistaken and it is actually probablity but that is neither here nor there)," I said. "That makes a lot of sense. Why don't they know that?" "Because it is relegated to my nerd blogs, apparently." "That's even dumber," she concluded.
So, long story short, my fiance, who does know sports but knows nothing of advanced analytics outside of the fact that I am interested in them, immediately understood the purpose and function of WPA. Yet the media in general can't seem to. I thought you all would appreciate that.
April 13th, 2011 at 10:42 am
@2
That was against the Pirates. I liken that to Jeff Weaver of the Mariners having a crappy season a few years ago with a 10.00+ ERA then allowing just 4 hits in a shutout win against the Pirates
@5
Probably the media is like me and not impressed with crazy stats made up by a kooky Bill James
April 13th, 2011 at 10:42 am
Bob Gibson had nine 1-0 shutout wins. But the only time he scored (or drove in) the lone run in a 1-0 win was a game he didn't pitch in. On August 18, 1960, Gibson pinch-ran for the catcher at first base, was bunted up to second, took third on a fly out to center, and scored on an infield error.
Gibson appeared as a pinch-runner 13 times in 1960 and 55 times in his career, scoring 14 runs.
April 13th, 2011 at 10:48 am
BSK -- Your fiancee has the advantage of not having been nurtured on false information about the game. It's harder to learn something that goes against your preconceptions than it is to learn the same thing from a blank slate.
Anyway, I'd love to hear her reactions to other leverage situations that are widely misunderstood by baseball "insiders."
April 13th, 2011 at 11:01 am
As much as I understand why you only went back to 1991, I'd love to know if this happened "regularly" during the lower scoring 70's & 80's.
April 13th, 2011 at 11:02 am
Wes Ferrell threw 17 shutouts, including a pair of 1-0 games. But he never scored or drove in all the runs in a shutout. Still, he had a few notable games, including these two:
7/31/1935: Ferrell drove in all 6 runs in a 6-4 CG win, going 3 for 4 with 2 HRs.
8/22/1934: Ferrell hit a pair of solo HRs in a 3-2, 10-inning win, including the game winner with 2 out in the bottom of the 10th.
April 13th, 2011 at 11:09 am
Devon, when I get a chance I'll take it back a bit further.
BSK, that's interesting. I have had similar experiences with friends. One asked me about the thing ESPN now shows in its gamecasts for games, i.e. the odds of one team winning, and how they calculate that. (It is of course based entirely on WP charts).
I think the thing that keeps the masses from understanding or appreciating WPA is that it often seems not to apply in a given situation, i.e. it doesn't differentiate if it's Albert Pujols at the plate or the pitcher, and therefore a single number doesn't make sense to fans.
April 13th, 2011 at 11:10 am
BTW, about the Hamilton play:
In the discussions I've heard so far about the wisdom (or not) of trying to score on that pop-up, many people are assuming an absurdly high degree of risk for a baserunner on a tag play at the plate.
If you contemplate the same situation in the abstract, before the play, from a risk-reward angle, are you really giving a moment's thought to the possibility that your big, fast, experienced runner will get badly hurt in a home-plate collision?
April 13th, 2011 at 11:17 am
We have less than half of Walter Johnson's game logs. In the games we have, he never scored or drove in all his team's runs in a shutout. He did once (at least) drive in his team's only runs in a 2-1 win, but that came as a pinch-hitter in the 9th inning (against HOFer Herb Pennock).
April 13th, 2011 at 11:34 am
(Checking backwards from Andy's cutoff date....)
4/27/1989: Greg Maddux of the Cubs won his first game after an 0-3 start. Maddux shut out the Dodgers on 5 hits, and in the 5th inning, he singled off Orel Hershiser and scored the game's only run on a triple by Gary Varsho.
9/6/1988: Jose DeLeon of the Cardinals hooked up with Montreal's Dennis Martinez in a classic pitcher's duel. Each went the distance on 3 hits, but DeLeon got the better of both ends. He had 2 of the 3 hits off Martinez, including a double with 2 down in the 3rd that set up the game's lone run. DeLeon had 12 Ks and just 1 walk, for a game score of 92.
April 13th, 2011 at 12:23 pm
There were none of the targeted type of game in 1987, '86, '85 or '84.
The following was not a shutout by the scoring pitcher, but still kind of interesting:
On 8/26/1986, Vida Blue allowed 1 hit in 9 scoreless innings against Montreal, but the Giants also could not score against Dennis Martinez. Scott Garrelts pitched the last 3 innings, and wound up scoring the game's only run in the bottom of the 12th.
April 13th, 2011 at 12:46 pm
@9, 14, 15: I checked back all the way and found the following distribution (scanned by eye, so it may not be perfect):
2010's 1
2000's 0
1990's 1
1980's 5
1970's 9
1960's 15
1950's 10
1940's 14
1930's 13
1920's 5
Four people did it twice: Phil Niekro (4 months apart in 1969), Early Wynn (a year apart in 1958-59), Johnny Humphries (2 weeks apart in 1943!) and Harry Gumbert (4 months apart in 1940).
Three other pitchers scored all of their teams runs while pitching a CG shutout, all in 2-0 games: Larry Dierker (1976), Jim Nash (1968) and Sid Hudson (1941).
April 13th, 2011 at 1:38 pm
Andy-
I touched on that point, simply noting, "It's not perfect, because it doesn't care who the player is, but it gives a general idea of how teams have fared in this situation. It also doesn't account for defense." She still got it. Or she was just humoring me.
To JA's point about the risk of injury, by the logic people are applying, people would slowly walk around the field at all times. There are few instances where a single run is worth a star player for 6-8 weeks. The idea that Hamilton was risking 2 months of his season for 1 run is nonsense. Every play carries with it the risk of injury. Obviously, some have a greater risk than others and some provide more value than others. But to say that he shouldn't have done it because he MIGHT get hurt... well, haven't guys gotten hurt stepping out of the dugout? I guess we should discourage that, too. Ya know, unless it's the 9th.
April 13th, 2011 at 2:25 pm
Gallardo's HR effort in 2009 came only a few weeks after hitting the ONLY homerun Randy Johnson ever gave up to a pitcher.
April 13th, 2011 at 8:23 pm
David Vincent recently posted to SABR-L a list of all 1-0 games in which the 1 was the pitcher's home run:
Harry McCormick 07/26/1879 SYR NL off Tommy Bond BSN
Tom Hughes 08/03/1906 WAS AL off Fred Glade SLA
Gene Packard 09/29/1915 KC FL off Dave Davenport STL
Red Ruffing 08/13/1932 NYA AL off Tommy Thomas WAS
Spud Chandler 05/21/1938 NYA AL off Thornton Lee CHA
Early Wynn 05/01/1959 CHA AL off Tom Brewer BOS
Milt Pappas 04/18/1962 BAL AL off Bill Stafford NYA
Johnny Klippstein 08/06/1962 CIN NL off Don McMahon HOU
Jim Bunning 05/05/1965 PHI NL off Warren Spahn NYN
Juan Pizarro 09/16/1971 CHN NL off Tom Seaver NYN
Bob Welch 06/17/1983 LAN NL off Mario Soto CIN
Odalis Perez 08/28/2002 LAN NL off Rick Helling ARI
Yovani Gallardo 04/29/2009 MIL NL off Ian Snell PIT
April 13th, 2011 at 11:38 pm
Gerry, thanks for the list!
The HR by Odalis Perez was -- yes! -- the only one of his career, in 391 PAs.
McCormick's HR was also his only one, in 431 career PAs.
Welch hit 2 HRs in 668 PAs. The shutout on this list was a 6-hitter, but 2 weeks before that he had a 1-hitter in another 1-0 win. (Welch had 3 career 1-hit shutouts, including a near-perfect game on 5/29/1980; he allowed one baserunner, a single by Larvell Blanks, who was immediately erased on a GDP.)