Do you remember when Luis Tiant and Mike Cuellar started and completed games? In fact, Tiant completed 178 and Cuellar 172! You may remember that Tiant won game 4 of the 1975 World Series with a complete game that featured 163 pitches! That’d be 2 or 3 starts today.
No matter what you think of baseball’s new post-season format, you won’t see many starting pitchers on the mound when the game is over. Call it the “death of the complete game.” In other words, you won’t see Jack Morris pitching a complete game and beating the Braves 1-0 in 10 innings in game 7 of the 1991 World Series. You say 10 innings? You’ll be lucky to see starters pitch 10 innings in two games!
According to the experts, the complete game is another casualty of the emphasis on Analytics. This is from Ronald Blum:
This year, the entire major leagues have logged just 35 complete games, down from 50 last season, 104 in 2015 and 622 in 1988.
Bullpens reign supreme in the Analytics Age.
Starters increasingly are blocked from facing the batting order for a third time.