Great Pitching Duels – Part 1
Posted by Raphy on November 10, 2009
One of the new features that will be available in the upcoming version of the PI will be the ability to search games for multiple matching criteria. This means that we can pick a stat and find the number of times it occurred for both (or one) teams in a game. I thought it might be fun to preview this feature by taking a look at some of the best pitching duels of all time.
For starters here are the games which featured Games Scores of 100 or more by both pitchers:
| Rk | Tm | Opp | Date | #Matching |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | OAK | CAL | 1971-07-09 | 2 |
| 2 | DET | CHW | 1954-08-13 | 2 |
| 3 | NYM | PHI | 1965-10-02 (2) | 2 |
Generated 11/9/2009.
The third game listed was actually the best duel of the three. On October 2, 1965 Chris Short and Rob Gardner went head to head in the second game of a double header. (In game 1, Phillies starter Jim Bunning had recorded a game score of 92 by throwing a 2 hit shutout.) Neither team was able to score that game and it was called after 18 innings of scoreless ball. Both Short and Gardner went 15 and put up these lines:
IP H R ER BB SO HR ERA BF Ct·Sw·Lk GB·FB·LD· ? GmSc C Short 15 9 0 0 3 18 0 2.82 56 49·21· 9 17·13· 2· 5 114 R Gardner 15 5 0 0 2 7 0 3.21 53 49· 6· 5 18·22· 5· 4 112The other 2 games did reach a conclusion, albeit after many, many innings. On August 13, 1954 Al Aber and Jack Harshman exchanged zeros for 15 innings until a Minnie Minoso triple off Aber in the bottom of the 16th drove in the winning run for Chicago. Both pitchers pitched the entire game, giving them the following lines:
IP H R ER BB SO HR ERA BF GB·FB·LD· ? GmScA Aber, L (4-7) 15.1 9 1 1 3 8 0 3.47 57 23·14· 2· 9 101 J Harshman, W (10-6) 16 9 0 0 7 12 0 3.02 65 20·17· 0· 9 109
The last of these games was the also the longest. However, the starters did not last as long. On July 9, 1971 Rudy May and Vida Blue squared off for 11 innings, with neither yielding a run. Blue exited after 11 and May pushed on for another inning. However, both were long gone by the time Angel Mangual drove in the games only run in the bottom of the 20th inning. Here are the lines for the starters:IP H R ER BB SO HR ERA BF Pit-Str Ct·Sw·Lk GB·FB·LD· ? GmSc R May 12 3 0 0 6 13 0 2.86 43 - · · 7·14· 1· 3 103 V Blue 11 7 0 0 0 17 0 1.42 40 - · · 5·11· 3· 7 100
November 10th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
What about the Oeschger-Cadore match-up? 20+ innings each.
November 10th, 2009 at 6:03 pm
Oeschger-Cadore was pre-1954 and so, I presume, invisible to Play Index. Same goes for any number of titanic early 20th century pitchers' duels. But I was surprised not to see the Spahn-Marichal game that people always talk about, the one that went 16 scoreless innings until Mays broke it up with a home run. The date was 2 July 1963.
November 10th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
I was very careful to not call this "Greatest Pitching Duels" because I knew that my definition would not capture all the best games. Even if we search for the sum of both starters game scores, I doubt that we would capture the greatest pitching duels of all time. Rather, I chose specific criteria and highlighted the results. This only includes games since 1954 and only includes games in which both pitchers registered game scores over 100. The Spahn-Marichal game certainly needs to be included in a list of greatest pitching duels, but Spahn only recorded 2 SO that day and his game score of 97 barely misses the cut.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/SFN/SFN196307020.shtml
November 11th, 2009 at 12:56 am
Thanks for doing the Spahn calculation. I look forward to Part 2 (and 3 and 4 and ... ?). I hope the Koufax perfecto of 9 September 1965 shows up somewhere in the series - Bob Hendley pitched a one-hitter and only two batters reached base against him. See also Mike Attiyeh's choice of the top 5 pitching duels of all time at http://baseballguru.com/attiyeh/analysismikeattiyeh04.html
November 11th, 2009 at 6:43 am
I didn't do any calculations. Every b-r boxscore has the game score included in the pitching line.