Part I

The 1980s

            In any ten-year period, there are a large number of absolutely fantastic pitcher’s duels in the major leagues.   You want an example?   OK, on August 26, 1987, Cleveland met Milwaukee in Milwaukee, Teddy Higuera against John Farrell.  Farrell pitched nine innings of three-hit shutout baseball, striking out seven and walking only two.  He was the lesser of the two.  Higuera pitched ten innings of three-hit shutout baseball, striking out ten.   Doug Jones relieved Farrell in the tenth inning, gave up a run with one out in the bottom of the tenth, and lost the game, 1-0.

            That wasn’t the punch line; that was the setup.   This is the punch line:  on a listing of the greatest pitchers duels of the 1980s, that ranks #50.  There are 49 pitchers duels, in the 1980s, better than that one. 

            OK, how do we decide what is the best pitcher’s duel of the 1980s?   Who is to say that one pitcher’s duel is better than another?

            Obviously, the decision involves near-arbitrary choices—but there is a rational basis to separate one from another.  A two-hit shutout is better than a three-hit shutout.  Ten shutout innings are better than nine.  A three-hitter with 10 strikeouts is better than a three-hitter with 9 strikeouts.  A pitcher’s duel between Roy Halladay and CC Sabathia is better, other things being equal, than a pitcher’s duel between Ross Detwiler and Garrett Mock.  These are not difficult things to agree upon.

            The arbitrary part comes when we have to choose between a three-hitter with 10 strikeouts and a two-hitter with 7.  Which is better?  If you have a game between Roy Halladay and Ross Detwiler and a game between CC Sabathia and Garrett Mock, which is better? It’s arbitrary.

            It’s arbitrary, of course, but we can nonetheless choose.   You’re free to argue, you’re free to disagree, you’re free to make up your own list.   This is my list, and I have a rational basis for it.

            Let us say that there are four elements that make a classic pitcher’s duel:

            1)  Quality starting pitchers,

            2)  Outstanding performances by those starting pitchers,

            3)  Quality performances by other pitchers appearing in the game, other than the two starters, and

            4)  A low score.

            With the help of Retrosheet and my son Isaac, who created a spreadsheet for me that has the information I need, I ranked every major league game played during the 1980s as a pitcher’s duel, giving each one a “pitcher’s duel score”.  Here’s how I did it:

            1.  Quality of Starting Pitchers.

            For this, I used the pitcher’s Season Score.       I wanted the first three factors above to be essentially even as influences on the outcome of the process, so I converted the Season Score to a zero-to-hundred scale, by the following method.  The best pitcher’s season of the 1980s was by Dwight Gooden in 1985, when he went 24-4 with a 1.53 ERA.  That’s a season score of 449.   The worst pitcher’s season of the 1980s was by Mike Parrott in 1980, when he went 1-16 with an ERA of 7.28.   That’s a Season Score of -113.    We’ll set Gooden equal to 100 and Parrott equal to zero, and scale everybody else between them.     The “score” for each pitcher is his Season Score, plus 113, divided by 562, times 100, converted into an integer.

            For the game above, Teddy Higuera was 18-10 in 1987—a good pitcher—but with a not-too-great 3.85 ERA.   That’s a Season Score of 210, which becomes 58 on our converted scale.   John Farrell, on the other hand, was a recent callup (making his second major league start.)  He finished the season 5-1 with a 3.39 ERA, but still, as a late-season callup his season score was 67, which becomes 32 on the conversion scale.   It’s 58 against 32, which is still good; that’s a total of 90.   The average for a game in the 1980s was 76.

            The worst pitching matchup of the 1980s occurred on July 1, 1986, when John Butcher of the Indians squared off with Rick Langford of the A’s at Cleveland’s cavernous park.   John Butcher in 1986 was 1-8 with a 6.56 ERA—and he was the better starting pitcher in the game.   Langford was 1-10 with a 7.36 ERA.    That is a bad pitching matchup, although Butcher pitched a shutout and the Indians won the game 9-0.   That was Butcher’s win for the year, and the last win of his major league career.

            On the other end of that scale, in Busch Stadium on September 11, 1985:   Dwight Gooden faced against John Tudor.  Gooden, as we mentioned, was having the best season of any major league starter in that decade—but Tudor wasn’t chopped condiments, either.  He was 21-8 with an 1.93 ERA.   This ranks, actually, as the sixth-best season by a starting pitcher in the 1980s.   In other words, although Tudor couldn’t win the Cy Young Award because he was going head to head with Gooden, he was actually better than 75% of the Cy Young pitchers of the 1980s.

            At this point you may ask “Why stop with the Season Score?   Why not look at the pitcher’s entire career?  Wouldn’t John Tudor be more impressive, after all, if he was Jim Palmer or Tom Seaver?”

            He would indeed, and there is no reason you couldn’t score the pitchers on that scale if you chose to.   I just did not have the data to do that in my spreadsheet, and I don’t know whether it would be better or not, so I didn’t include it.   But there’s no reason you couldn’t.

            2.   The Quality of Performance of the Starting Pitchers.

            The quality of the performance we evaluated by Game Scores, which are sort of on a zero-to-100 scale to begin with, so we didn’t have to convert them.

            I remember this game, and many of you will remember it as well.   The worst performance of the 1980s by two starting pitchers in the same game occurred on June 26, 1987 at Fenway Park.   The pitchers that day were two guys who might well meet up someday in Cooperstown:  Tommy John and Roger Clemens.  Both were having pretty good years.  Tommy John, 44 years old at that time, nonetheless finished the season 13-6 with a 4.03 ERA, and Clemens. . .well, Clemens was always having a good season, and would win the Cy Young Award that year.

            On that day, however, neither pitcher had his mojo working.   Boston scored four runs in the first, and five more in the second—two of them off of John, and the other three off of the bullpen.   Clemens, staked to a 9-0 lead after an inning and a half, gave up eight runs in the bottom of the third, the Yankees claiming an 11-9 lead by the end of the inning.   The Yankees eventually won it in extra innings, 12 to 11.   Game Scores:  John, 8, Clemens, 8.

            On the other end of that scale:  Floyd Youmans against Nolan Ryan in the Astrodome, July 22, 1986.    Through nine innings the game was nothing-nothing.   Youmans had given up two hits, no walks, eight strikeouts.  It was the only complete game of his career in which Youmans didn’t walk anybody—but he didn’t win.    Nolan Ryan was Ryanesque.    Through 9 innings Ryan had given up only 1 hit, only 2 walks, and had struck out 14 batters.  Both pitchers—working on a one-hitter and a two-hitter—stayed in the game into the tenth.  Ryan got one more out in the tenth but walked two and was replaced by Dave Smith, who got out of the inning un-scored on.   Glenn Davis homered for the Astros leading off the bottom of the tenth, and the Astros’ won, 1-0.   Through the first nine innings the two pitchers combined had allowed 3 hits and 2 walks, and had struck out 22.   Game Scores:  Youmans, 85, Ryan, 96.   

            3.  Quality Performances by Other Pitchers in the Game.

            In Montreal on August 23^rd, 1989, Orel Hershiser pitched 7 shutout innings for the Dodgers, giving up 4 hits and striking out 6—a fine performance, I am sure you would agree, but not quite on the level of Nolan Ryan in one of his crazy near-no-hitters.  Pascual Perez, pitching for Montreal, matched Hershiser inning for inning, giving up 7 hits but no runs through 8 innings.

            Hershiser, however, gave way to Jay Howell, who pitched two shutout innings, getting the Dodgers through nine.   Perez gave way to Tim Burke, who matched Howell with two shutout innings of his own.    Howell was replaced by Alejandro Pena, who shut down the Expos for four more innings.   It took two Smiths to equal one Pena—two shutout innings for Montreal by Bryn Smith, two more by Zane.    It was nothing-nothing through 13 innings.   Pena was replaced by Tim Crews, who blanked Montreal for three more innings—but the Smiths were replaced by Rich Thompson, who pitched six innings of shutout relief, the finest performance of his major league career. 

            John Wetteland came in for Los Angeles; he was a rookie then, and had been a starter for the previous month.   He pitched a shutout inning, and another, and another, and another.   Through 18 innings it was scoreless, 19, 20.   In the 21^st inning a starter came in for Montreal, Dennis Martinez.    Wetteland wound up pitching 6 shutout innings, giving the bullpen 15 on that day.

            Finally, in the top of the 22^nd inning, Rick Dempsey hit a home run.   The Dodgers won it, 1-0 in 22 innings.  Montreal pitchers struck out 17 batters in the game, walked none—and lost.

            Doesn’t that HAVE to be the greatest pitcher’s duel of the decade?   22 shutout innings, 21 by the other team—how can you beat that?

            I can see an argument for that position, but this is the way I see it.    The concept of a “duel” implies a one-on-one matchup.   When the bullpens are impressive—certainly when they are this impressive—that counts toward the game being an all-time great pitcher’s duel, but it isn’t exactly what we mean by the term.   What we mean by the term is one on one, mano a mano, Dennis Weaver against the mad truck driver.

            I gave credit for the performance of other pitchers in the game, in this way.   First, I figured the “Game Score” for all pitchers in the game, as if they were one pitcher.   (I say “I” figured it. . .actually, Isaac figured it, but whatever.)    The Dodgers pitched 22 innings in that game, striking out 18, walking 6, giving up 13 hits and no runs.  If one pitcher did that, that would be a Game Score of 138, so I entered that as “138”, even though this violates the essence of the Game Score concept, which is intended to assess the performance of a single pitcher.

            Team Game Scores, figured in this way, no longer stay within the bounds of zero and one hundred—not that they always do, anyway, but they do more than 99.9% of the time.   Team Game Scores for the 1980s ranged from 138 to minus 76—a spread of 214 points.   I thus converted them into a “team performance score”, for our present purposes, by adding 76 points and dividing by two.    The Dodgers for this game get 107 points; the worst performance of the decade gets zero.  The worst performance of the decade was the Mets against the Phillies, June 11, 1985, a game lost 26-7.

            I said that I wanted the three elements to be equal, but that’s not exactly true; I want the performance of the pitchers to count more than their identity.   In games where only two pitchers work, this element becomes a redundant counting of the second element, and often gives about the same score by the two methods.

            4.  Pulling it Together.

            The “Pitcher’s Duel Score” for any game is the sum of these three scores outlined above, minus five points for each run that is scored in the game.   (If there is a great pitcher’s duel but somebody scores 7 runs off a reliever in the 9^th inning, it rather mars the performance.)

            There were 20,337 regular-season major league games in the 1980s.    I scored each of those.   You remember the Teddy Higuera/John Farrell matchup I talked about earlier?   That scores at 428:

            58 points for Teddy Higuera’s performance on the season,

            32 points for John Farrell’s performance on the season,

            94 points for Teddy Higuera’s performance in the game (his Game Score was 94),

            86 points for John Farrell’s performance in the game,

            85 points for the performance of all Milwaukee pitchers in the game,

            78 points for the performance of all Cleveland pitchers in the game,

            Minus 5 points for the one run that was eventually scored in the game.

            These are the top ten pitcher’s duels of the 1980s:

10.  May 9, 1988, Boston at Kansas City (Clemens against Gubicza)

            Here’s something you may not remember:  Roger Clemens was supposed to pitch against Mark Gubicza in Kansas City on April 27, 1986, but the game was rained out.  Clemens then made his start against Seattle two days later, striking out 20 hitters and emerging as a star.

            Clemens had only 19 major league wins before that, but I was already a huge Roger Clemens fan, having met him when he just out of college and then having seen him dominate the Royals in August, 1984.   I had tickets to the game that was rained out in KC, and then I was in Boston on a book tour on April 30, 1986, so I just missed the historic 20-strikeout game on both ends.

            Anyway, the Clemens/Gubicza duel finally came off on May 9, 1988.   Gubicza was actually better that year than Clemens was; Clemens was 18-12 with a 2.93 ERA and threw 8 shutouts (!), but Gubicza was 20-8 with a 2.70 ERA and threw 4 shutouts of his own.    But Clemens was better on this day.   The game was scoreless through five innings.  Marty Barrett reached on an error leading off the sixth, and scored an un-earned run on a two-out triple by Mike Greenwell.    The Red Sox scored again in the 9^th, Gubicza putting the runner on, the bullpen letting him in.   Clemens, on the other hand, allowed nothing:  three hits, one walk, sixteen strikeouts.

            We didn’t see this game, I’m sure.   Isaac was born two days later.   The game scores at 447 on our pitcher’s duel score—141 points for the quality of the two pitchers who started the game, plus 159 points for the performance of the two starting pitchers (Clemens’ Game Score was 96), plus 157 points for the performance of all pitchers in the game, minus 10 points for the two runs that were scored.

9.  September 16, 1988, Cincinnati at Los Angeles (Tom Browning against Tim Belcher)

            There was a two-and-a-half-hour rain delay at the start of the game, and then there was a dual no-hitter through five innings.   Browning never did give up a hit; he pitched a perfect game—27 men up, 27 down—making his record at that point 16-5.   He finished 18-5.    Belcher gave up an un-earned in the sixth, three hits finally, one walk.   He also faced only 27 batters in an eight-inning complete-game loss. 

            The game scores at 452 by our system—120 points for the quality of the two pitchers, plus 174 points for the performance of the two starting pitchers (Browning’s Game Score was 94), plus 163 points for the performance of all pitchers in the game, minus five points for the one run that was scored. 

8.  August 23, 1989, Los Angeles at Montreal (Orel Hershiser against Pascual Perez)

            This is the game I talked about earlier that was scoreless through 21 innings, finally won by the Dodgers on a home run in the 22^nd inning.

            The game scores at 453 points in our system—103 points for Hershiser against Perez, 148 points for the performance of the two starting pitchers, plus 207 points for the performance of all pitchers in the game, minus five points for the run that was scored.

7.  September 5, 1980, Los Angeles at Philadelphia (Don Sutton vs. Steve Carlton)

            Sutton had the lowest ERA in the majors that year, 2.20; Carlton had the second-lowest, 2.34, was 24-9 and won the National League Cy Young Award.   Ron Cey hit a second-inning home run for the only run of the game.   Sutton pitched 8 shutout innings, giving up 3 hits and striking out 10.

            The game scores at 454 points in our system—154 points for the fact that it is Sutton vs. Carlton, 150 points for the performance of the two starting pitchers, 155 points for the performance of all pitchers in the game, minus five points for the one run that was scored. 

6.  September 21, 1981, Philadelphia at Montreal (Steve Carlton vs. Ray Burris)

            Carlton didn’t win the Cy Young Award in 1981 although he was still probably the best pitcher in the league.   Fernando Valenzuela was an early-season sensation, and rode the wave of popularity this generated to the Cy Young Award, not that he wasn’t pretty good, also.    Carlton was 13-4 in the strike-shortened season, 2.42, ERA; Ray Burris was nowhere near as good in general but was awfully good on this particular day.

            Both Burris and Carlton pitched 10 innings of 3-hit, shutout baseball, Carlton striking out a dozen hitters.   They turned the game over to the bullpens in the eleventh, and the bullpens kept it scoreless through 16.    Andre Dawson drove in a run with a single with one out in the bottom of the 17^th, winning the game 1-0.     Bryn Smith, who also pitched in the long game against the Dodgers eight years later, was the winning pitcher—his first major league win.

            The game scores at 455 points—100 points for the quality of the two starting pitchers, plus 178 points for the performance of the two starting pitchers, plus 182 points for the performance of all pitchers in the game, minus five points for the one run that was scored.

5.   Bastille Day, 1985, the Mets at Houston (Dwight Gooden vs. Bob Knepper)

            The game was nothing-nothing through seven.    Billy Doran threw the ball away after a force play at second base, allowing an un-earned run to score, the only run of the game.   Gooden pitched a 5-hit shutout and struck out 11.

            The game scores at 465 points—148 points for the quality of the two starting pitchers, plus 162 points for the performance of the two starting pitchers, plus 160 points for the performance of all pitchers in the game, minus five points for the run.  

4.  October 1, 1985, Mets at St. Louis (Ron Darling against John Tudor)

            We probably should give some extra points for the fact that the pennant was on the line, but we don’t.    Darling was the Mets’ #2 starter that year, finishing 16-6 with a 2.90 ERA; Tudor, as we mentioned earlier, was the #2 pitcher in the league.

            October 1 was a Monday, and there was a week left on the schedule.   The Cardinals came into the game with the best record in the National League, 98-58; the Mets were three games behind them at 95-61.   Darling pitched nine shutout innings.   Tudor pitched ten.   Jesse Orosco pitched a scoreless tenth inning, and a scoreless eleventh.   Darryl Strawberry homered off of a reliever with two out in the top of the eleventh, and the Mets won it, 1-0. 

            The game has a “pitcher’s duel score” of 470—148 points for the quality of the two starting pitchers, plus 165 points for the performance of the two starting pitchers, plus 162 points for the performance of all pitchers in the game, minus five points for the run.

3.  September 28, 1988, San Diego at Los Angeles (Andy Hawkins against Orel Hershiser)

            Orel Hershiser entered the game with a string of 49 consecutive shutout innings.   The major league record was 58, set by Don Drysdale twenty years earlier.  Hawkins was decent, too; he was 14-11 that year, 3.35 ERA.

            The Dodgers had clinched the division, and would go on to win the World Series.  On this day, however, Hershiser and Hawkins each pitched ten innings of 4-hit shutout baseball.   Hershiser’s ten shutout innings gave him 59 in a row, a major league record which still stands, as he did not pitch again during the regular season.  The ubiquitous Jesse Orosco came in for the Dodgers, followed by Tim Crews and Ken Howell.  Mark Davis and Lance McCullers matched them for San Diego, and the game was nothing-nothing through 15 innings.

            Finally, in the top of the 16^th inning, the Dodgers manufactured a run against Dave Leiper on a single, two groundouts and an error by late-season callup Bip Roberts, who had entered the game as a pinch-runner in the 11^th inning.  Roberts then singled, leading off the bottom of the 16^th and giving him a chance to redeem himself, but was caught stealing, leaving the Padres with two outs, nobody on base.  Carmelo Martinez walked, and Ricky Horton replaced Ken Howell on the mound for the Dodgers.  Mark Parent, pinch-hitting for San Diego, drilled a two-run home run, and San Diego won the game, 2-1.

            We give this one a pitcher’s duel score of 478—133 points for Hershiser against Hawkins, plus 174 points for the ten shutout innings by each starting pitcher, plus 186 points for the performance of all pitchers in the game, minus 15 points for the three runs that were eventually scored.

2.  September 6, 1985, Los Angeles at New York (Fernando Valenzuela against Dwight Gooden)

            Fernando in 1985 had arguably his best major league season, finishing 17-10 with a career-best 2.45 ERA, 208 strikeouts in 272 innings.   Both teams were in the pennant race, the Dodgers a few games in front in their division, the Mets coming in a game and a half behind the Cardinals.

            Gooden pitched 9 shutout innings, striking out 10 batters.  That’s not bad, but Fernando was better; he pitched 11 shutout innings.   Gooden turned it over to Roger McDowell, Terry Leach and the ubiquitous Jesse Orosco, who pitched shutout ball through 13 innings.   Darryl Strawberry hit a 2-run single with two out in the top of the 13^th, and the Mets won it, 2-0.

            We have this one scored at 496—169 points for the quality of the starting pitchers, plus 174 points for the quality of their performance, plus 163 points for the performance of all pitchers in the game, minus ten points for the two runs that were scored.

1.  September 11, 1985, New York at St. Louis (Dwight Gooden against John Tudor)

            This was Gooden’s next start, five days after the duel with Valenzuela.

            You may be wondering why we started this with the 1980s.    We started it with the 1980s because, in the 1980s, it is clear what the right answer should be.    This game is hard to beat.

            With Gooden starting against Tudor, that was not only the best starting pitching matchup of the decade, but the best regular season starting pitching matchup that was possible during the decade.   We give the game 185 points (out of a possible 200) for the quality of the two starting pitchers.

            Did the pitchers pitch well?   Oh, pretty well.   Gooden pitched nine shutout innings once again, giving up five hits as he had against the Dodgers.   He would pitch a 2-hit shutout in his next start, giving him a 31-inning scoreless streak at that point.   The streak was ended by an un-earned run, and, following the un-earned run, Gooden would pitch another 17 consecutive scoreless innings.

            Tudor answered with a 10-inning, 3-hit shutout of his own, striking out 7—which was also his third consecutive shutout; his streak also would end at 31 innings.   Tudor’s Game Score that day was 91; Gooden’s was 81.  That’s a total of 172.

            That wasn’t the best performance by two starting pitchers in the decade; that would be Nolan Ryan against Floyd Youmans, as we talked about earlier.   It wasn’t the best performance, but it was the 16^th best.   20,337 regular-season games during the decade; the Tudor/Gooden game ranks #1 in terms of the quality of the two starting pitchers, and #16 in terms of the quality of their performance.

            Gooden finished 24-4 in 1985, yet here are two consecutive games in which he pitched 9 innings, did not give up a run, and did not get a win.    It’s an unusual thing; when a pitcher pitched 9 innings and did not give up a run, in the 1980s, he won the game a little more than 96% of the time.  The odds of doing it twice in a row and not winning either game are 700-to-1—assuming you can pitch two consecutive shutouts.   You can look at Gooden, if you choose, not as a 24-4 pitcher, but as a 26-4 pitcher who had some unusual tough luck.

            Gooden turned over his game to—who else?—Jesse Orosco, and Orosco gave up a leadoff home run to Cesar Cedeno.    The game scores at 513 by our system—185, plus 172, plus 161 for the performance of all the pitchers in the game, minus five points for the run that was scored.

            I used to work with somebody who had a poster on his office wall based on a aerial photo taken in the 9^th or 10^th inning of this game; it’s driving me batty, but I can’t remember who it was.   I can remember spending many hours looking at that poster, but I can’t place it.   It may have been Josh Byrnes, or it may have been Neyer.   The game was in the middle of a pennant race, and it is a famous game at a certain level.  By our system it is easily the greatest pitcher’s duel of the 1980s, and one of the greatest of all time.