Halladay-Oswalt-Hamels Could Be Historically Great

by Bill Baer on October 11th, 2010
Posted in 2010 Playoffs, MLB, Philadelphia Phillies | Print | 19 Comments »

As mentioned in the Game Three recap, the Phillies barely used their bullpen to fend off the Cincinnati Reds, instead relying on baseball’s best starting rotation. Of the 27 innings, the starters pitched 23 of them, including two complete game shut-outs by Roy Halladay and Cole Hamels. It was the first time since 2001 that a team had two CG’s in one series.

2010 NLDS, Philadelphia Phillies vs. Cincinnati Reds

The others:

2001 NLDS, Arizona Diamondbacks vs. St. Louis Cardinals

1997 NLCS, Atlanta Braves vs. Houston Astros

The 2001 Diamondbacks would go on to win the World Series in seven games over the New York Yankees while the 1997 Atlanta Braves advanced only to lose the NLCS to the Florida Marlins in six games.

As you can see, no team had the luxury of two complete game shut-outs as the Phillies did.

Only one team had two CG SHO’s in LCS history: the 1974 Oakland Athletics.

  • Game Two, Ken Holtzman: 9 IP, 0 R, 3 K, 2 BB, 78 game score
  • Game Three, Vida Blue: 9 IP, 0 R, 7 K, 0 BB, 90 game score

In World Series history, no team has had more than one CG SHO since the 1966 Baltimore Orioles had three against the Los Angeles Dodgers — Jim Palmer, Wally Bunker, and Dave McNally performed the honors with respective game scores of 82, 80, and 81.

Thanks, as always, to Sean Forman for his Play Index at Baseball Reference, which allows anyone to easily find such great information.

  1. 19 Responses to “Halladay-Oswalt-Hamels Could Be Historically Great”

  2. By Austyn on Oct 11, 2010

    I am a Royals fan by birth (www.RoyalsAuthority.com)and will love them till the day i die, but along with being a Royals fan i love great pitching and that is why i have enjoy this series and am rooting the Phillies on to hopefully a world series title! But anyways it is just amazing, last night and Game 1 of the season you’d think they were playing a college team, such control and easy with there pitching, the Reds didn’t stand a chance.

  3. By kevin on Oct 11, 2010

    Not sure if you’re only counting divisional series, but the White Sox had four complete games in the 2005 ALCS.

  4. By E on Oct 11, 2010

    The giants outpitched the phillies in this past series, and it wasn’t close.

  5. By doubleh on Oct 11, 2010

    Statswise, that may be so, but the Braves are hardly the offensive team that the Reds are.

  6. By E on Oct 11, 2010

    reds played against the central which is terrible.

  7. By GAry on Oct 11, 2010

    Bill, slightly off topic, but do you know where to find total # of rbi chances, or rbis driven in %? thanks in advance.
    Go Phillies!

  8. By Bill Baer on Oct 12, 2010

    Gary,

    Using Ryan Howard as an example, here is where you would find that information on Baseball Reference:

    Click here

    Go to a player page and click More Stats next to Standard Batting. Find Situational Hitting and your information is under Base Runners.

  9. By hk on Oct 12, 2010

    GAry,

    This link will give you RBI% and let you sort by time period and minimum # of base runners:

    http://www.baseballmusings.com/cgi-bin/RBIPCT.py

  10. By micah on Oct 12, 2010

    @ E,

    tell me how you came up with the giants outpitched the phils, and it wasn’t close.

    The phils gave up 11 hits in 27 innings, the giants gave up 24 hits in 38 innings.

    By my calculations the Phils had a WHIP of .56, the Giants had a WHIP of .82. The Phils had an ERA of 1.0, the Giants had an ERA of 1.67.

    Also, as was previously stated, the phils were playing against a much better offense.

    Maybe my calculations are off, but it seems to me that the phils had the best pitched first round, by far.

  11. By Bill Baer on Oct 12, 2010

    His argument may be from a retrodictive standpoint. The Phillies certainly had better results, but did they perform better?

    K/9, NLDS

    Phillies: 8.0
    Giants: 10.9

    BB/9, NLDS

    Phillies: 1.3
    Giants: 1.7

    We know that strikeouts and walks are the most telling statistics for pitchers, and it seems pretty evident that the Giants performed better. Hits allowed (and subsequently WHIP) aren’t good predictors of future performance, since pitchers have very little control over the rate at which batted balls are or are not converted into outs.

    However, it’s a small sample so you really can’t draw too much from it. If anything, you can say that the pitchers were about equal.

  12. By micah on Oct 12, 2010

    and again bill, to be fair, the reds are a much better offensive team than the braves.

  13. By micah on Oct 12, 2010

    and also I’d throw out there that the phils pitchers were pitching at CBP and GABP, while the giants pitchers were in pitcher friendly parks.

  14. By Dave on Oct 12, 2010

    I think E is just trying to stir up trouble.

    Can’t we just agree that both teams pitched well? I saw an article about whether Halladay or Lincecum pitched better in their respective starts. Who cares? They both were dominant. There is enough room on the podium for the both of them.

  15. By Bill Baer on Oct 12, 2010

    Thanks for being the voice of reason, Dave.

    The Phillies’ staff, I think, is demonstrably better but the Giants’ staff is capable of matching it, for sure.

  16. By e on Oct 12, 2010

    Not stirring up trouble, just call it as it see it. I think the phillies staff is better, but The Giants outpitched them last series.

    I don’t agree with saying the reds offense was so much better b/c:

    1) the NL central sucks
    2) Outside of Votto, they don’t really have another very good hitter, just a bunch of decent ones.

  17. By micah on Oct 12, 2010

    e,

    first of all, one awesome hitter and a bunch of decent hitters makes for a very good offense.

    second of all, one awesome hitter and a bunch of decent hitters is one awesome hitter and several decent hitters more than atlanta has.

  18. By Tim B on Oct 12, 2010

    From what I can tell, the Giants didn’t throw two complete game shutouts, one of them being a no-hitter. The Giants also didn’t face a very active lineup, while the Phillies did. This is a no-brainer, the Phillies pitched better against a better hitting team than the Giants did.

  19. By mhad on Oct 13, 2010

    @ micah,

    Well, the Braves did have Heyward, of whom I think it is fair to say is an awesome hitter. Pretty sharp drop off from there, though.

    In general, though:
    It’s kind of silly to compare the Giants and Phillies rotation right now, given that head-to-head matchups are imminent. Let that decide!

  20. By AB Testing on Oct 21, 2010

    Teams always have those top 1-2-3 on paper but when it came time to play the game very rarely do you see sub 1 era’s. 2010 may not be the year for that even after the year of the pitcher. But if home run stay down like they did this year Its possible to see a stretch of dominance any year.

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