I wrote here a couple weeks ago about “Baseball’s Increasingly Rare Complete Game.” The piece resonated with readers. It was our most-clicked article for a week and one of my most-viewed pieces of 2026. It prompted some excellent responses, including this instructive lead comment from reader Albert Alioto: “July 2, 1963. The San Francisco Giants beat the Milwaukee Braves 1-0 in 16 innings. Both pitchers, Juan Marichal and Warren Spahn, went the distance. Spahn was 42 years old.”
Albert flagged Jim Kaplan’s book about that game, titled The Greatest Game Ever Pitched. Kaplan dubbed it the pitching “duel of the century.” That’s hard to dispute. Albert personally met Marichal nearly 50 years later. The guy was a terrific pitcher. He hurled 18 complete games that year — among the 214 he completed between 1962 and 1971. In 1968, he had 30 complete games. That was more complete games than the 29 by all MLB pitchers combined last year.
And that wasn’t unusual for that era. For the likes of Marichal and Spahn and Bob Gibson and Sandy Koufax and most top starters in a team’s rotation, complete games were the goal. It was the norm for the entire history of baseball until the last decade or so, as “analytics” have hijacked the sport.
It was also Albert who emailed me last week with a news item further underscoring the increasing rarity (if not insanity) of MLB complete games. Ironically, I read his email just as another case in point popped up (literally for a few batters) in Pittsburgh that evening.
Albert informed me of a case with his erstwhile Oakland A’s. As some of you know, the celebrated A’s franchise has left Oakland — itself a sad story. The “Amazing A’s” of the 1970s were one of the best clubs ever, rivaled that decade only by Cincinnati’s awesome Big Red Machine. The fact that the A’s could be permitted to leave Oakland is a testimony to what a depressing place the once-splendid Bay Area has become. It seems more committed to radical politics and gay pride than to its two historic sports teams.
Indeed, the other storied Oakland franchise — the Raiders football team — is also gone. Likewise, the ‘70s Raiders were awesome, rivaled only by the Pittsburgh Steelers and Dallas Cowboys. The Raiders bolted the Bay Area for Las Vegas in 2020. The A’s are currently playing in a minor-league park in Sacramento until their new home is finished on the Las Vegas Strip. A’s owners were so quick to get out of Dodge that they’ve settled for an amateurish-looking minor-league facility until the Vegas structure is completed. Oakland must have really become inhospitable. As for whoever is responsible for these huge losses, shame on them. (READ by Paul Kengor: “Remembering the Raiders-Steelers Rivalry of the 1970s.”)
Speaking of shame — and back to the point of this article — the A’s fans were chanting “SHAME! SHAME!” last week when the opposing coach ended his pitcher’s perfect-game bid because of a pre-determined pitch limit.
Coaches bow to the golden calf of analytics.
It happened last Sunday in Sacramento. The visiting Miami Marlins manager pulled pitcher Eury Pérez after seven perfect innings. Pérez’s replacement proceeded to immediately detonate, walking batters and giving up hits and homers alike, including a grand slam. The Marlins nearly blew an eight-run lead in a wild near-collapse.
For seven innings, Pérez was perfect. But that’s not what matters in today’s MLB. What matters is the pitch count. Coaches bow to the golden calf of analytics. Faceless wizards behind the curtain (or screen) dictate when to pull a pitcher. Once Pérez hit 92 pitches, the coach reached for the baseball as quickly as Barry Bonds or Mark McGwire reached for steroids in a Bay Area pharmacy. Pérez was pulled ahead of the eighth inning, safe from the unthinkable travesty of daring to throw 100 pitches. The Marlins went to the bullpen as fans booed. Even A’s fans were outraged. They, too, wanted to witness a perfect game. It’s historic, rare. And today, in the era of the “pitch count,” they’re increasingly rare if not impossible and impermissible.
Reliever Lake Bachar walked the first batter he faced. The perfect game was over. The second batter hit a single. The no-hitter was over. Could it get worse? By the inning’s end, a grand slam by the A’s Jonah Heim made it 8-5. Heim and the A’s generated more runs in the ninth. The Marlins barely held on for a 9-8 win.
Pérez was yanked for the reasons that dominate decision-making in modern baseball: a young and developing pitcher, a pitcher recovering from a recent injury (hamstring), or the alleged wisdom of bringing in a fresher and stronger arm from the bullpen.
Bunkum! Let the kid have a shot at a perfect game. He may never get another.
A similar scenario unfolded in Pittsburgh on Wednesday evening. Pirates’ pitcher Jared Jones was tossing a gem against the first-place Atlanta Braves. He, too, had a perfect game going. He was yanked in the sixth after only 77 pitches. Predictably, the bullpen blew the game, as it has done all season for the Bucs, giving up a two-run homer to catcher Joey Bart (who had just been traded by the Pirates to the Braves). The Pirates lost 3-0.
In the case of Jared Jones, the Pirates manager, Don Kelly, had a more valid injury excuse: a top pitching prospect, Jones recently reentered the rotation after missing a year and a half with major elbow surgery. He’s on a short leash as he builds up his arm strength. But still, he was humming. He had only thrown 77 pitches and seemed at full strength and not waning one bit. No one was warming up in the bullpen as Jones mowed down the Braves’ explosive offense, striking out Michael Harris II, Matt Olson, and Drake Baldwin in their first two at-bats.
It’s not clear if Pirates manager Don Kelly talked to Jared Jones to see how he was feeling and if he could go longer. One thing was sure. Jones didn’t feel great about not getting a perfect game. In fact, he said it downright sucked.
“It does suck,” said Jones. “Something cool’s coming on, but I’m on, what, my eighth start off of surgery? I completely understand it, and it is what it is.”
It is indeed. Obviously, that’s a matter for debate, and I don’t have enough information about Jared Jones’s elbow, but for now, there’s no debating that this craziness is becoming quite the spectacle in Major League Baseball.
One wonders: Are there genuinely good “analytics” to back these “pitch count” sacred cows? Is there enough “data” — over a statistically reliable period of time with large enough sample sizes — to verify that pulling pitchers from perfect games after 70-90 pitches is a smart strategy and genuinely keeps pitchers healthy?
Sure, Pérez and Jones were recently injured. But non-injured pitchers, including the likes of reigning Cy Young winner Paul Skenes and everyone else in the league, are likewise under pre-imposed limits. There are virtually no exceptions. Does this really matter?
It didn’t seem to matter in the days of Juan Marichal.
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