James Shields picked up his 6th complete game of the season yesterday – his third in a row – in shutting down the Houston Astros and leading the Rays to a 5-1 victory. It was a dominating performance – 9 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 1 BB, 9 K – fairly representative of how he’s pitched this year. Shields has been a very good pitcher for a few years now, regardless of his ERA bouncing around, but he’s really stepped up his game in 2011.
After upping his strike-out rate last year, Shields has done so again this year (to 8.7 K/9). He’s going to his signature pitch, the change-up, even more, and batters still can’t hit it. Same with the curveball, which looks like it might be a bit sharper than it used to be. Then there’s a pretty decent slider. With such effective off-speed stuff, Shields can mix in his fastball variants (four-seamer, two-seamer, cutter) and keep batters off balance. And he’s throwing his pitches for strikes, while also getting batters to expand the strike-zone; thus his 2.1 BB/9.
No wonder he’s 8-4 with a 2.29 ERA. The 6 complete games is tops in baseball – usual leader Roy Halladay is tied with Justin Verlander for second (with 4). Only 28 pitchers in the last ten years (not counting 2011) have even 6 complete games in a season, and if Shields continues at this pace he could have the most for any pitcher since the Big Unit’s 12 in 1999.
Fun fact: since 1997, these guys have had at least 10 complete games in a season; Randy Johnson (twice), Curt Schilling, Pedro Martinez, CC Sabathia, and… Scott Erickson. Taking it back to ’94 we add Gregg Maddux (twice) and… Pat Hentgen.
Also last night: The Pirates beat the Red Sox to move above .500 and into a tie for third place in the NL Central; Guillermo Moscoso and Vance Worley dueled (the game’s first hit came in the 6th inning), but the Phillies got the walk-off 1-0 win in the 9th over the A’s; Felix Hernandez broke up a no-hitter at the plate, and dominated on the mound for the M’s; and much more.
What to watch tonight: Could be a low scoring affair in Philly as Trevor Cahill and Cole Hamels face off; With Fransisco Liriano and Yovani Gallardo pitching against each other, we might see dueling no-hitters or a 5-5 game depending on which version of each pitcher shows up; and the groundball tendencies of Justin Masterson go up against flyball pitcher Matt Cain. Full schedule with probable pitchers here.
