Latos Numbers
Posted by Raphy on May 14, 2010
In what seems to be happening on a daily basis, another young pitcher threw a gem yesterday. This time it was Mat Latos's turn. Latos absolutely shut down the Giants and missed a perfect game by half a step. On the way to his one-hit shutout Latos also out 6 for a game score of 91. This comes on the heels of last week's beauty in which Latos allowed 0 runs on 2 hits with 9 strike outs in 8 innings. And he's only 22. Here are a couple of interesting lists to put Latos's performance into perspective.
In the current PI era (1920-1939,1952-2010) only 5 previous pitchers had thrown at least 5 innings with at most 2 hits with no walks in consecutive starts (a couple of those had a relief appearance thrown in). Only 1 those pitchers, Billy Pierce in 1958, pitched more innings in those games than Latos did in his starts.
| Rk | Strk Start | End | Games | W | L | GS | CG | SHO | GF | SV | IP | H | R | ER | BB | SO | HR | HBP | WP | BK | Tm | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | Rich Harden | 2008-08-19 | 2008-08-24 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 14.0 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 21 | 1 | 0.64 | 0 | 1 | 0 | CHC |
| 7 | John Montefusco | 1982-07-20 | 1982-07-25 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 14.0 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 8 | 0 | 0.00 | 0 | 0 | 0 | SDP |
| 15 | Marcelino Lopez | 1965-07-03 | 1965-07-09 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 14.0 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 10 | 0 | 0.00 | 1 | 0 | 0 | CAL |
| 16 | Billy Pierce | 1958-06-21 | 1958-06-27 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 18.0 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 12 | 0 | 0.00 | 0 | 0 | 0 | CHW |
| 17 | Al Smith | 1936-05-29 | 1936-06-06 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 16.0 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 7 | 0 | 0.00 | 0 | 0 | 0 | NYG |
Even if his starts were not consecutive, throwing 2 games with a gamescore of at least 87 at such a young age, so early in the season puts Latos on very short list of pitchers. Here are the previous pitchers who were younger than 23, that also put up 2 starts in their team's first 34 with a gamescore of at least 87 (1920-1939, 1952-2010).
| Rk | Player | Year | #Matching | W | L | GS | CG | SHO | SV | IP | H | ER | HR | BB | SO | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Herb Score | 1955 | 2 | Ind. Games | 2 | 0 | 1.000 | 0.50 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 18.0 | 7 | 1 | 0 | 7 | 25 | 0.78 |
| 2 | Dwight Gooden | 1985 | 2 | Ind. Games | 2 | 0 | 1.000 | 0.00 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 18.0 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 23 | 0.67 |
| 3 | Wade Blasingame | 1965 | 2 | Ind. Games | 2 | 0 | 1.000 | 0.78 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 23.0 | 6 | 2 | 1 | 8 | 20 | 0.61 |
May 14th, 2010 at 8:29 am
[...] You Are Here > Baseball-Reference.com > Blog > Baseball Stats and Analysis Baseball Reference Blog Numbers, News, and Notes « Latos Numbers [...]
May 14th, 2010 at 11:11 am
Elias notes that since 1901, Cy Young in 1905 is only pitcher other than Latos and Pierce to go 8+ innings with 0 runs, 0 walks and at most 2 hits in consecutive starts.
http://espn.go.com/espn/elias?date=20100514
May 14th, 2010 at 11:16 am
@ Ralphy - What a shame Elias has all those stats, probably all the info that Retrosheet volunteers are trying to piece together now plus a ton more, and they will not share it with anyone.
May 14th, 2010 at 12:28 pm
In Pierce's 2nd outing he retired the first 26 batters! A PH double was the only hit.
May 21st, 2010 at 8:29 am
[...] Latos Numbers (Baseball-Reference). Raphy takes a closer look at Mat Latos’ near-perfect game. When a young pitcher ends up on a list with Herb Score and Dwight Gooden, that’s usually a good thing. [...]