2015: COMPLETE GAMES #4, #5--IN THE SAME GAME

"Dammit, Malcolm, I said it was the same DAME,
not the same GAME!"

Last night brought us a very short game (2:03) in which Felix Hernandez went the distance, allowing five hits and no runs, striking out nine.

Another reason why this was the shortest game of the 2015 season (at least to date...) is that the losing pitcher, Phil Hughes, also went the distance, allowing just six hits and two runs over eight innings.

So that gave us CGs #4 and #5 for the still-young year (unless you are part of baseball's administrative apparatus handling suspension appeals; see below...) and the first instance of two CGs in the same game for 2015.

We'll go back and look at the frequency of dual CGs in a later post. But let's digress from this and examine all of the contributing factors in the brevity of this game.

First, no run scoring. Final: Seattle 2, Minnesota 0.

Next, pitchers go all the way. Pitch counts: low and efficient (96 for Hughes, 102 for Felix). That means no pitching changes (which average between three and five minutes each).

Next, no walks (related to the pitch counts). This leads to the question of just how many games occur in a season where neither team draws a walk...we'll go look at that in a bit and report back.

Finally, the home team won. That means the game ends with only seventeen full half-innings. That saves another 5-6 minutes.

Thanks to this little CG cluster, pitcher's won-loss records in complete games in 2015 are still under .500 (2-3).