World Series gem shows how much baseball has changed
For those who gripe about baseball squandering far too much time wallowing in its past — yep, count me in — the only no-hitters in World Series history prove just how much the game has, indeed, changed.
About the only similarity between Don Larsen’s perfect game for the New York Yankees and the Houston Astros’ combined no-no Wednesday night was the number of pitches thrown by the starters.
Larsen needed just 97 of them to mow down all 27 batters he faced in Game 5 of the 1956 World Series against the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Cristian Javier tossed that exact same number in Game 4 at Philadelphia but went only six innings before calling it a night, giving way to a trio of relievers to finish off the masterpiece.
Larsen pitched in an era when one was expected to finish what he started. That season, with 16 teams playing a 154-game schedule, 758 complete games were recorded — more than 61% of all regular-season contests.
Eight more were thrown in the World Series, five by the Yankees and three by the Dodgers.
Compare that with the current state of the game, when starters are feted like royalty if they last five or six innings. With nearly double the teams and a 162-game schedule, there were just 36 complete games during the
regular season — less than 1.5% of the starts.
There haven’t been any in the postseason, but that’s nothing new. Houston’s Justin Verlander was the last pitcher to throw a complete game in October or November, five long years ago when he beat the New York Yankees 2-1 in Game 2 of the 2017 AL Championship Series.
These days, you’ve got a better chance of spotting Bigfoot than catching a pitcher going nine innings in a playoff game, a phenomenon that has become even more pronounced with the emphasis on bullpens that can come at hitters in 100 mph waves.
Astros manager Dusty Baker wasn’t thinking of posterity when he turned to his ‘pen. In fact, he expected someone to get a hit off the three relievers he planned to use.
“A combined no-hitter is, I mean, that’s hard to do because usually somebody’s going to give it up,” Baker said.
Still, as impressive as Javier was, there was zero chance of him getting a chance to match the hitless part of what Larsen did over a full game (a perfect game was already out of reach since the Astros starter walked two). No worries.
The Dominican flamethrower wasn’t the least bit peeved about having to watch the final three frames from the dugout. The subject didn’t even come up at his news conference afterward.