Consecutive Starts Without a Complete Game
Posted by Raphy on May 20, 2009
With his complete game last night, Barry Zito has ended the second longest (since 1954 and presumably in baseball history) streak of starts with out a complete game.
Here are the leaders:
StreakStart Streak End Games W L GS CG SHO GF SV IP H R ER BB SO HR ERA HBP WP BK Teams +-----------------+-----------+-----------+-----+------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ Kirk Rueter 1999-07-04 2005-07-29 193 67 60 193 0 0 0 0 1112.1 1253 600 549 372 402 135 4.44 10 8 0 SFG Barry Zito 2003-08-12 2009-05-13 185 69 69 185 0 0 0 0 1145 1067 588 545 494 813 124 4.28 49 25 4 OAK-SFG Tony Armas 1999-08-16 2008-07-01 167 53 65 167 0 0 0 0 896.2 863 500 460 425 655 116 4.62 49 42 6 MON-WSN-PIT-NYM Odalis Perez 2002-09-24 2008-09-28 157 46 57 157 0 0 0 0 900.1 988 492 456 252 603 117 4.56 21 19 7 LAD-KCR-WSN Woody Williams 2002-06-21 2007-09-13 156 63 50 156 0 0 0 0 954.2 992 479 449 260 604 125 4.23 43 22 4 STL-SDP-HOU Tim Wakefield 1998-08-25 2005-07-10 154 56 54 154 0 0 0 0 933.2 925 543 473 356 658 122 4.56 60 33 1 BOS Frank Castillo 1996-05-04 2005-05-26 153 46 64 153 0 0 0 0 829.2 911 519 483 286 588 110 5.24 34 9 3 CHC-COL-DET-TOR-BOS-FLA Jimmy Haynes 1998-05-23 2003-06-08 152 50 64 152 0 0 0 0 871.2 981 545 501 418 530 108 5.17 21 37 2 OAK-MIL-CIN Adam Eaton 2003-06-16 2009-05-15 143 51 52 143 0 0 0 0 803.2 888 489 454 288 558 115 5.08 41 19 0 SDP-TEX-PHI-BAL Ted Lilly 2004-08-28 2009-05-13 138 65 45 138 0 0 0 0 801.1 755 405 386 284 682 127 4.34 18 21 13 TOR-CHC
May 20th, 2009 at 11:30 am
And he only needed to go eight innings to break the streak.
May 20th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
Although as Raphy wrote it is almost certain that no one had such a streak prior to 1954, I tried to prove it in a roundabout way. I looked for the most seasons prior to '54 in which a pitcher started at least 20 games and completed 0. The search found nothing, and I assumed I had done something wrong. But then I searched for fewest CG in a season with at least 20 starts. Two pitchers had 1 (and those were in '51 and '53). Prior to 1954, no pitcher EVER started at least 20 games in a season without completing at least one. Only ten pitchers ever started at least 10 games in a season without completing one, the most being 14 in '53. So it is quite certain that even the longest consecutive incomplete game streak was quite brief by modern standards.