Matt Garza and all hits allowed are singles
Posted by Andy on April 4, 2011
A reader, Xander, pointed out that Matt Garza allowed 12 hits (all singles) in his Cubs debut game. How unusual is this?
By simply setting hits allowed equal to singles, we can see games where all the hits a pitcher allowed were singles.
Here are the games with the most such hits since 1919:
| Rk | Player | Date | Tm | Opp | Rslt | IP | H | R | ER | BB | SO | BF | AB | 1B | WPA | RE24 | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lefty Grove | 1929-08-14 | PHA | CLE | W 5-3 | 17.0 | 20 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 8 | 77 | 68 | 20 | 1.59 | |||
| 2 | Fabian Kowalik | 1936-09-23 | BSN | BRO | L 6-8 | 9.0 | 18 | 8 | 8 | 2 | 0 | 47 | 43 | 18 | 8.00 | |||
| 3 | Jack Quinn | 1923-07-05 | BOS | PHA | W 7-5 | 9.0 | 18 | 5 | 5 | 1 | 2 | 41 | 38 | 18 | 5.00 | |||
| 4 | Al Mamaux | 1919-09-27 | BRO | BSN | L 6-14 | 8.0 | 17 | 14 | 7 | 3 | 1 | 46 | 41 | 17 | 7.88 | |||
| 5 | Pete Alexander | 1920-10-01 | CHC | STL | W 3-2 | 17.0 | 16 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 8 | 69 | 64 | 16 | 0.53 | |||
| 6 | Hal Carlson | 1919-08-15 (2) | PIT | BSN | L 2-3 | 14.1 | 16 | 3 | 2 | 5 | 4 | 61 | 54 | 16 | 1.26 | |||
| 7 | Jesse Barnes | 1919-04-23 | NYG | PHI | W 10-7 | 9.0 | 16 | 7 | 6 | 2 | 1 | 41 | 36 | 16 | 6.00 | |||
| 8 | Red Ruffing | 1927-07-04 (1) | BOS | PHA | L 2-10 | 9.0 | 15 | 10 | 10 | 5 | 5 | 46 | 39 | 15 | 10.00 | |||
| 9 | Jesse Barnes | 1926-06-21 (2) | BRO | BSN | W 6-4 | 9.0 | 15 | 4 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 41 | 40 | 15 | 3.00 |
Virtually all of the top games are from before 1940, probably because extra base hits were markedly rarer back then.
Even since 1940, there have been 107 games with at least 12 hits and singles allowed, including Garza's game. In fact it was done last year by both Gavid Floyd and Mike Pelfrey.
April 4th, 2011 at 12:56 pm
The Pirates sure do love to defy the odds of rare events. Even after Garza left the game, the Pirates added four hits for a total of 16 in the game...all singles. Oh, and they picked up the win!
April 4th, 2011 at 1:59 pm
Even rarer was that Garza also had 12 strikeouts.
-- The last pitcher with 12 Ks and 12 hits in a game was Curt Schilling in 2001.
-- The last one to do that without allowing an extra-base hit was Bob Feller in 1941. (Feller went all 13 innings in a loss, allowing 13 singles and 11 walks, with 13 strikeouts.)
-- Schilling won 22 games that year and Feller 25 -- so obviously, Garza is headed for a huge season! 🙂
April 4th, 2011 at 2:06 pm
A few other oddities from the early going:
-- The last time the Orioles began a season 3-0 was 1997. Coincidentally (or not), that was the last time they made the postseason. The last time Baltimore swept a road series from a division foe was the end of the 2005 season, also against Tampa.
-- In sweeping the Rays, Baltimore allowed 1 run on 4 hits in each game.
The O's have not had a longer streak allowing 1 run or less since they closed out the 1995 season with 5 straight shutouts. Their last 3-game streak of no more than 4 hits allowed was in 1992; the last longer streak was in 1974.
-- Zach Britton earned the win for Baltimore yesterday in his big-league debut. Only one other Orioles pitcher has ever started and won his MLB debut within the season's first 5 games, and that was the 34-year-old Japanese pro veteran Koji Uehara in 2009. Before that, the last pitcher in franchise history to do it was Jack Kramer of the 1939 St. Louis Browns.
-- The Angels rapped out 19 hits, including 5 HRs and 4 doubles -- but lost to KC, 12-9. It matched the Angels' franchise record for most hits in a loss, done twice previously, most recently in 2000; that was also the year of the last 5-HR loss for the Angels. Yesterday's game was the first time the Angels ever lost while getting at least 9 extra-base hits.
-- Royals rookie pitcher Tim Collins -- all 5 feet 7 inches and 170 pounds of him -- earned his first major-league win with 3 innings of stellar relief against the Angels. Collins, just 21 years old, changed organizations twice last year while pitching in the high minors, but still had a monster season, with a 2.02 ERA in 71 innings, allowing just 40 hits with 108 strikeouts. In 223 minor-league innings, Collins has a 2.26 ERA and 329 strikeouts (13.3 Ks per 9 IP). He has struck out 6 of the 15 batters he's faced in 2 outings thus far.
(BTW, these are all generated by me perusing the box scores and then checking the Play Index; they may have been published elsewhere, but I'm not aware of it. Not saying these are any big deal, but they're mine.)
April 4th, 2011 at 3:02 pm
One reason there aren't any recent pitchers in this list is you won't see many pitchers hanging around in games nowadays to yield this many hits (15 or more to make this list).
An indication of this trend is that there are 11 games of 5 IP or less with 12 or more hits allowed that were all singles, and ALL of these games are since 1971 (including Pelfrey's game last year). Conversely, since 1919 there have been 158 such games of 7 IP or more, but only 27 of those 158 games since 1971.
April 4th, 2011 at 4:21 pm
From that list of 107 games, Tommy John has a game that sticks out as a bit of an odd duck statistically in a more significant way (in my opinion).
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/CAL/CAL198309140.shtml
He had a WPA of 1.231 for the game (which went 13 innings, so that sort of makes sense), and then they LOST. I'm gonna bet there aren't a lot of games where a player has a WPA of greater than 1.0, and even fewer where that player's team then subsequently lost the game.
April 4th, 2011 at 7:25 pm
[...] Baseball Reference blog also did a post off my comment about this today that you can find here that talks about all the hits off Garza were singles. Before Garza, Feller was the last one on the [...]
April 4th, 2011 at 9:49 pm
Too bad they didn't tabulate pitch counts way back. I'd like to see how many pitches Lefty threw. I bet he didn't miss his next start either.
April 4th, 2011 at 11:30 pm
@3, John Autin:
There were many in Blue Jay land that were not happy about Collins being part of the Escobar & Reyes for Gonzalez+Collins+Pastornicky trade. Jays management have never been fans of undersized pitchers.
April 5th, 2011 at 8:08 am
That Grove game is insane! 17 IP 20 singles. That was no dead ball in 1929 either.
April 5th, 2011 at 4:09 pm
I'd like to see how many pitches Lefty threw. I bet he didn't miss his next start either.
You are correct. But perhaps he should have. Through that start he was 18-2 with a 2.41 ERA in 217 IP. After that, he went 2-4 with a 4.32 ERA in in 58 IP. He then didn't get a start in the World Series (he made 2 relief appearances). I wouldn't be surprised if his arm was bothering him a bit.
April 5th, 2011 at 4:10 pm
Pitch count estimator puts him at 275.