Wednesday, May 21, 2014

2014: COMPLETE GAMES #27, 28

It was the first night in 2014 where complete games were turned in by "repeaters." Adam Wainwright (Cardinals) and Julio Teheran (Braves) had already gone the distance in a game earlier in the season.

Wainwright's domination of the Arizona Diamondbacks was virtually complete: he allowed only a fourth-inning double to Paul Goldschmidt. He improved his season record to 7-2, lowered his ERA to 1.85 (second behind the Cubs' hard-luck Jeff Samardzija, and just ahead of Johnny Cueto). Wainwright, who's finished second in the NL Cy Young voting twice (2010 and 2013) and third once (2009), seems to have his sights set on bagging that prize in 2014.

Teheran threw a somewhat more prosaic shutout as the Braves helped the Brewers continue to slow down, besting them by a 5-0 score. Julio scattered six hits and struck out eight, improving his record to 3-3 (the Braves have averaged just under 3.2 runs in Teheran's starts this year, as opposed to 4.2 in 2014) and dropping his ERA to 1.92.

QMAX scores for these guys thus far in 2014: Wainwright 2.7 "S", 2.2 "C"/4.9 "T"; Teheran 3.0 "S", 2.4 "C"/5.4 "T". Their top hit prevention games are up sharply at this point in time: Adam has been in the 1S/2S region seven times out of ten, Julio six out of ten. (We'll run a complete QMAX report a bit later on, probably right around the first of June.)

The updated projection for the total number of complete games in 2014 is now: 101.