On May 19, 2021, New York Yankees pitcher Corey Kluber stood atop the mound in front of 31,600 fans in the new Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas. Kluber had not allowed a hit all game, the only blemish on his record being a walk to Corey Culberson in the bottom of the third inning. With two outs in the bottom of the ninth, former top Ranger’s prospect Willie Calhoun stepped to the plate to prevent history from taking place.
He was unsuccessful.
After watching a slider catch the outside of the plate for a strike, he hit a routine ground ball to Gleyber Torres, who threw to first base in time to complete Corey Kluber’s first career no-hitter.
Kluber’s no-hit bid was the first for the Yankees since their combined no-hitter in 2003. Although it was the first for the Yankees in 18 years, it has been a common occurrence so far in 2021. Kluber’s performance tallied the sixth no-hitter of the year, less than two months into the season, one short of tying the record of seven in a year set in 2012.
Pitching has been overwhelmingly dominant the first two months into the 2021 season. Hitters have been held to a league wide batting average of just over .230, while the pitchers have accumulated an ERA of 4.02. In comparison to the 2020 season, which played roughly the same number of games as the 2021 season so far, the league had a batting average of .245 and an ERA of 4.44 with 1,999 more hits.
Although it is early, it is fair to call this season a ‘Year of the Pitcher’, meaning a year where pitching took the center stage and dominated baseball. However, this is far from the first time this has happened. A few truly pitching heavy years shine through the pages of the thick history book of baseball. It is time to throw on the old readers, and take a deep dive into them, to see how they stack up to 2021.
1968
The year that originally coined the term ‘Year of the Pitcher’ saw such dominance on the hill, it inspired a novel written by Sridhar Pappu titled, The Year of the Pitcher: Bob Gibson, Denny McLain, and the End of Baseball’s Golden Age. ’68 featured pitching legends like Catfish Hunter with the Oakland Athletics, Luis Tiant of the Cleveland Indians, the San Francisco Giants’ Gaylord Perry and Los Angeles Dodger Don Drysdale at their best. Hunter and Perry each tossed no-hitters that year, with Hunter’s being a perfect game. Luis Tiant obliterated batters with an AL leading 1.60 ERA while Drysdale was busy tossing 58 1/3 consecutive scoreless innings in the NL. This year was an all time low for AL hitters, leaving them with a batting average of .230, the lowest ever for the time being. However, in a year of overwhelming pitching across the board, The St. Louis Cardinals’ Bob Gibson and the Detroit Tigers’ Denny McLain stood above all. Gibson held a 1.12 ERA at the end of the season while racking up 22 wins, 13 of which were shutouts. He also led the league in strikeouts. McLain had an absurd record of 31-6 with an ERA of 1.96. Since McLain, no pitcher has won 31 games in a season. Gibson and McLain each ended up winning their leagues Cy Young award, and MVP. The duo eventually met in the 1968 World Series, where they faced off three times. Gibson won two of them and set a World Series record of 17 strikeouts in game one. The Cardinals went on to win the series in seven games. Due to the strength of pitching, MLB changed its rules to make the strike zone smaller. They also lowered the mound from 15 to 10 inches high, to give hitters a better chance at the plate. The mounds height remains at 10 inches to this day.
2012
The world did not end in 2012, but it must have felt like it for hitters. This year featured an MLB record seven no-hitters. One of which was a combined no-hitter achieved by six players. That was not the only record set by pitchers this year, of the seven no-hitters thrown, three were perfect games, an MLB record. Philip Humber of the Chicago White Sox, the San Francisco Giants’ Matt Cain, and Felix Hernandez from the Seattle Mariners were each perfect once. Humber’s and Hernandez’s perfect games took place in the same stadium (Safeco Field in Seattle) in another first for the MLB as no two pitchers had ever thrown a perfect game in the same stadium in the same year. Hernandez’s perfect performance is the most memorable one of that year. The famous photo of him celebrating with his arms raised, leg kicked, and famously slanted hat had gone viral at the time and cemented his nickname “King Felix”. Since Hernandez’s game in 2012, no pitcher has managed to be perfect.
1884
The ‘Year of the Pitcher’ is a year where pitchers in general dominate the hitters for that season. Although it is bending the rules of a true ‘Year of the Pitcher’ by only talking about one, it does not get more dominant than Old Hoss Radbourn’s 1884 campaign. Radbourn led the league in wins, win percentage, ERA, games started, complete games, innings pitched, and strikeouts. With a record of 60-19, he led the Providence Grays the championship series against the New York Metropolitans of the American Association where he started and won three games in a sweep. He did not tally a single earned run in his 22 innings pitched of the series. Although it was in an era foreign to the game of now, his accomplishments in 1884 are still eye popping. A 1.38 era through 678.2 is unheard of in any form of the game, and if the Hall of Fame recognizes it as legitimate, so should everyone else.
1997
The 90’s was a weird time for pitchers. On one end of the spectrum, fireballers like Randy Johnson zipping balls by hitters for the Seattle Mariners, while on the other end pitchers like Greg Maddux of the Atlanta Braves were barely touching 90. Yet regardless of what the velocity was, chances were that the man in the box was not reaching first base. This was especially true in 1997. The season featured Greg Maddux’s famous 76 pitch complete game, which coined the expression, “to Maddux,” meaning a pitcher threw a complete game in under 100 pitches. This was also the season Pedro Martinez truly broke out. Martinez won his first Cy Young award with a 1.90 ERA as well as becoming one of only 19 other pitchers to strike out 300 batters in a season. Curt Schilling also joined the club after sitting down 319 with the Philadelphia Phillies. However, the pitching performances that cemented this year in the history books came in the postseason. Baltimore Orioles ace Mike Mussina, put on a show in Game 3 of the American League Championship Series by striking out 15, the most ever in an LCS, and third most strikeouts in postseason history. In Game 5 of the National League Championship Series, Livan Hernandez of the then Florida Marlins matched Mussina by out dueling Greg Maddux in a game where he struck out 15. Hernandez’s Marlins eventually went on to win their first World Series in seven games against the Cleveland Indians.
Final Analysis
When it comes down to it, this year stacks up well when compared to other pitcher dominant years of the past. With the no-hitters alone, 2021 has already cemented itself in the baseball history books. Yet, at the same time pitchers like the New York Mets’ Jacob deGrom are putting up stats that are, so far, comparable to Pedro Martinez with the then Montreal Expos in 1997. Others like the Yankees’ Gerrit Cole, Trevor Bauer with the Dodgers, and Yu Darvish of the San Diego Padres have put up their usual Cy Young numbers and don’t look to stop any time soon. Any way you cut it, this one’s for the pitchers.
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