The word on everyone's lips after watching the Dodgers-Diamondbacks game Saturday evening: Ouch.
Prescriptive Hall of Famer Clayton Kershaw came out throwing clay pigeons instead of pills, and seven batters later he found himself being wrapped in gauze in the dugout. He did manage to get one batter out, but the other six Arizona batters crossed the plate: it was a macabre continuation of the intermittent horror movie that has so often taken over when Kershaw--so dominant in the regular season--tiptoes into the playoffs.
We're not here to pile on, despite what some might be expecting. We'll just say that the ways of kryptonite are more mysterious than any of us can fathom. Instead, we provide solace and something akin to comfort by placing Kershaw's unfortunate meltdown in historical context.
You are invited to feast (or shield) your eyes from the chart below, which lists (with thanks, as usual, to Forman et soeur) all 39 post-season starts in which the pitcher recorded either no outs or one out...
You may be surprised to discover that the record of the teams whose pitchers made such quick and unceremonious exits isn't quite as catastrophic as one would expect: 10-29, which is just as respectable as the 1962 New York Mets. (So: horrible, but not unmentionable.)
Pitchers in the 21st century with such ultra-short starts (eleven in all) are shown in red type.
There are some extremely short starts here, and it's possible that some enterprising expert on the post-season has documented why such pitchers as Curly Ogden, Wade Miley, John Thomson and Johnny Cueto were such spectacular first-inning blips. (Injury is, of course, the most likely answer.)
As you might have suspected, there are no other Hall of Fame pitchers on the list aside from Kershaw. Arguments could be made on behalf of Dwight Gooden having possessed Hall of Fame-level talent, but Gooden's early flameout in the 1998 ALDS occurred long past the time when folks talked about him in hushed tones.
The worst first-inning performance that a team was able to overcome and win the game anyway: the Pirates' Vic Aldridge, in Game Seven of the 1925 World Series.
The worst start from an ethical standpoint: Lefty Williams' infamous tank job in Game Eight of the haunted 1919 World Series.
The only time that there were two such first-inning flameouts in the same World Series happened in 1960, when the Yankees' Art Ditmar and the Pirates' Vinegar Bend Mizell swapped stinkeroos in the early stages of one of the most wild & woolly Fall Classics ever.
[ODD NOTE: Bill James' Game Score method, shown in the second-from-left column, goes a bit goofy with such short starts. Recall that it starts off with a score of 50 and moves up and down from there: it just doesn't get enough data to move the needle as far as we might think. Let's note, however, that Kershaw's score--14, which should probably be translated to -36 for the purposes of its actual game impact--is the worst out of all the 39 "brief encounters" shown here.]
Let's close with some small amount of solace for Kershaw. His six runs allowed in a third of an inning was not the absolute worst performance of its kind in the post-season. In 2019, Mike Foltynewicz and Dakota Hudson each allowed seven runs in the same brief but brutal span. In their cases, however, there were errors behind them that contributed to their early demise.
Will we see another of these meltdowns in the current post-season? As we just saw, there were two in 2019, and two last year (Aaron Civale and Mike Clevinger). Remember, the post-season is still just getting underway...stay tuned.
