A Thread For Starting Pitchers That Are Doing Really Well

good job

Renteria really sucks.

Ryan Dempster has been shockingly effective in his two starts. 13 IP, 4 hits, 4 BB, 2R (1 ER), 10 K. Kudos.

not really shocked cuz dempster showed #3-type stuff in relief last year, mixing in a lot of above avg pitches but nothing super-special; having him in the bp was kind of confounding to me. havent seen him yet this year but my guess is that he'll be a quality starter

Yeah the shock is from years of mis-having him as a closer.

edgar "i stretch a lot in the batters box" renteria provided half their offense!

Kyle Lo(h)se deserves a place here

Cain just dingered.

And has 6 no-hit innings.

it is now 6.2 3-hit innings.

can add Looper to the list of ex-closers doing wtf well as a starter.

LEE YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO SAY ANYTHING WHICH IS THE POINT OF THE THREAD HINT HINT

Off-topic but on-topic in the "taking thread title literally" sense: SCOTT OLSEN (!?!?!?)

Not surprising: Jair Mothjerrfjuckjing Jurrjens. What is surprising, though, is his 7.46 K/9.

Yeah, after yesterday's start I grabbed him in the fantasy league. He looked good in an "I don't give a fuck about ANY of these chumps" way.

Ponson wtf.

every year there's always one or two dudes like this guy was in '00:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/s/smithch07.shtml

joe saunders

scott olson, tho he got rocked last night

Jon Lester is pitching really well so far today.

: D

Man I sure picked the right meaningless Royals game to go to. Never thought I'd see a no-hitter.

well they are often worse pitched than some one or two hit games.

well, you know, it takes a tremendous amount of luck to achieve a one or two hitter.

they are often worse pitched than three or four hitters.

haha, fuck you :)

(METS HAVE DONE FINE W/OUT ONE IN 46 YEARS)

best pitched game i ever saw live was when pedro struck out 15 and lost. to tampa. completely wtf.

excuse me, retrosheet.org tells me he struck out 17 and lost.

PITCHING
Tampa Bay Devil Rays         IP     H   R  ER  BB  SO  HR

Trachsel W(2-2)               9     3   0   0   3  11   0
Boston Red Sox               IP     H   R  ER  BB  SO  HR

P. Martinez L(5-1)            9     6   1   1   1  17   0

but Trachsel pitched better! HE GAVE UP HALF AS MANY HITS!

anyone see WGN rerun the 9th of Jim Maloney's no hitter vs the Cubs in '65, a few weeks ago during a rain delay? The guy walked TEN and threw something like 190 pitches!

Back when the game was played by MEN

pretty sure while w/ montreal pedro threw 9 perfect innings & ended up losing

that's not too impressive, a lot of bad luck involved there.

xp to Andy: MEN whose arms were dead at 31!

so what? all the hitters were either boozed up or hungover. EVEN PLAYING FIELD.

xp to Andy: MEN whose arms were dead at 31!

-- Dr Morbius, Tuesday, May 20, 2008 4:17 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

Back then, you didn't know whether you'd HAVE your throwing arm the next day -- lost to the combine out on the back forty, or combat, or what have you. You just threw like hell, left everything out there on the mound.

I once left my watch out on the mound, but that was not on purpose.

daniel cabrera, the consecutive reigning AL walks champion, pitched his third game WITHOUT issuing a walk this season last night. his three-peat is in peril as he has now tumbled out of the top ten on the heels of his 8th straight quality start.

Following Daver's stinging rebukes, I'd like to known if it's now OK to say that Lester pitched a NH.

Dana Eveland is pitching very nicely.

http://static.flickr.com/72/175995087_edd1f77f57_o.jpg

i saw andrew miller strike out 9 the other night, but i originally thought it was 13 or so, so i couldn't even imagine seeing 17

joe saunders is 8-1 w/ a 2.31 era right now

JUSTIN DUCHSCHERER

n/m

Cueto through five

Last Play: G. Blanco reached on bunt single to third

>:O

BRETTY MYERS OH MY THRU 6

Oh well

Greg Maddux still has it. He's perfect so far . . .

Ladies and Gentlemen, Bitter Cubsfan

I guess it's all part of what they call . . . gowring up.

Tigers had it perfect to the 8th. Still a no-no

Gunnar Henderson does not respect the no-no

Martín Perez v the Twins

93 pitches...maybe he has one more inning. And, you know me, after that it loses all meaning.

They fucking pulled him and gave up a hit three batters later lol

(Glad for the alert--my negativity is directed at the game of baseball and the inexorable drift of history.)

crochet through five against his former team *checks notes* the chicago white sox

literally walks the next batter

no-hit alive through six tho

Max Fried through 6 (77 pitches).

7/92...5 minutes from my sister's, hope I can catch the end.

In case you missed the weird ending to this yesterday:

https://athlonsports.com/mlb/yankees-announcer-under-fire-after-exposing-official-scorer-during-max-fried-controversy

Michael Kay's reaction not very thoughful.

Nice pitching duel between yamamoto and Grant Holmes rn.

Betts hits a homer as my finger hovers over the send button. Dodgers got a chance at a no-no, Yama probably goes 8

Insane thing to post

Smith-shawver thru 7

Skubal 85 pitches no runs given up after 8 innings. Two hits but could still get a Maddux.

And he did. 13ks & 94 pitches in 9 innings.

103 mph final pitch??? 🤯

adrenaline's a hell of a drug

Yeah he was missing the zone (nerves?) horribly on the first pitches of the first two batters of the inning but emptied the tank like he was Verlander. Great work.

Game score (I think) of 96--just missed 100.

(Accomplished 16 times in a 9-inning game, according to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_score.)

Looking at the list of guys who've done that--13; Ryan did it three times, Scherzer twice--it's amazing how one game can be a pretty good indicator of a great pitcher. Of the 13:

HOF -- Spahn, Koufax, Ryan, Johnson
Headed to the HOF -- Kershaw, Scherzer, Verlander
Probably headed to the HOF -- Cole
Could have been in the HOF -- Nap Rucker
Would be in the HOF if not a jerk -- Schilling
Excellent pitchers derailed by arm trouble -- Kerry Wood, Matt Cain

The only real fluke on that list is Brandon Morrow.

Brandon Morrow <3 he put the Dodgers bullpen on his back in 2017. Did not know he threw a 17 strike out game but makes sense: his 100mph+ fast ball, not as ubiquitous back then, was electric. Know you are far more familiar with him Clemenza so I won't challenge your fluke claim, but to even have a fluke outing like that you've got to have immense potential.

I shortchanged him a bit--he was very good out of the pen his last four years--but as a starter, I think he was qualitatively different than even Wood and Cain.

I’m surprised there’s only 3 perfect games on that list

Brandon morrow got fucked over by the Mariners in development iirc, got bounced around between starting and the bullpen and then showed signs of life in Toronto. He is famously the California native drafted by Seattle and Lincecum was the Seattle native drafted by the Giants, so their names are often invoked together by Mariners fans. They rushed Morrow by putting him in the bullpen opening day 2007 and it’s generally agreed they killed his confidence and probably fucked his development.

Yeah, you can compensate one or two hits with a ton of strikeouts...The whole point of this detour: what Skubal did in this one game today is probably a significant indicator in terms of the career he'll have. Not that we didn't know he was a great pitcher already, but a 100 9-inning GS (which, again, he did miss) is probably a better HOF flag than winning a Cy Young--a number a good pitchers have won Cys who were never thought of as HOF-calibre. And compared to something like hitting for the cycle, not even close. Haven't checked, but I bet a third to a half of the players who ever hit for the cycle were players of no special distinction.

Typed out and deleted a bit above on his 2017 playoffs use and the tragedy of his arm being destroyed against a team that knew what was coming. He comes back from shoulder surgery with the Pads to a singular Dodgers season where he throws in basically every post season game. In hindsight, he threw his arm off in the process. If he got fucked in 2007 he also got fucked in 2017. At least he got his bag with the cubs

xp good point

Lots of good starters get their start in the pen tho. But he definitely yo-yo’d a lot between roles. When the jays fully committed to him as a starter, he’d have these amazing games and then have a game where he’d be closing in on 90 pitches by the 4th.

The 13 strikeouts Skubal recorded Sunday were the most ever in a Maddux, topping the 12 recorded by Cleveland’s Carlos Carrasco in 2014, the Phillies’ Cliff Lee in 2011 and the Dodgers’ Sandy Koufax in 1964.

But none of it seemed to impress Skubal too much when he learned about the feat:

"I'm not really trying to pitch for accolades, I'm trying to win."

https://www.freep.com/story/sports/mlb/tigers/2025/05/25/tarik-skubal-tigers-game-guardians-aj-hinch/83854730007/

Brandon Pfaadt

Rude lol

David Peterson 104 Pitches, 9 IP, 0 Runs

Senga/Peterson, Mets with double aces rn

Senga is healthy?!

Senga leads the NL in ERA and is 2nd in MLB

Peterson has been excellent since returning from hip surgery last year. It felt a little too good to be true last year but he’s looking like the real deal this year.

Senga is healthy?!

terrible jinx

Ooooof

Damn. Hopefully he's not out too long. They've got options to hold down the fort for a bit at least.

What stocks should I buy thinwall?

holy shit

Trump hasn’t exploded from an obstructed bowel?!

brewers have a pitcher taking a perfecto into the 7th

brewers rookie misiorowsi perfect through six (80 pitches tho)

guy throws a 96mph slider ffs

Same guy I was posting about last week, I think...11 career innings now, no hits.

feels like the brewers are icing their own pitcher by scoring 5 in this inning

So much for that.

Clarke Schmidt through 7