Collectively, the 20 most recent postseasons (2005-2024) have produced 85 examples of a starting pitcher finishing his work with at least seven innings and no runs allowed. Strolling through the list, one finds that Giants’ hurlers have the most such efforts, with 11. The Dodgers, Phillies and Tigers come next (eight per squad), with the latest entry goosing Detroit into that second slot. In Game 2 of the 2024 ALDS against Cleveland, Tarik Skubal – Triple Crown wearer, probable 2024 Cy Young Award winner – cut his way through the Guardians lineup to the picture of seven frames, three hits, eight K’s and zero walks, all the while seeing his offense sputter to no runs against Cleveland’s arms.
The southpaw’s performance in that Game 2 followed his postseason debut in Game 1 of the Wild Card round against the Astros, when the 27-year-old finished with six innings, no runs allowed, one walk and six strikeouts. All told, Skubal awaits his next turn holding down 13.0 postseason innings of scoreless ball, ready to test that flawlessness in a do-or-die Game 5 (scheduled for today, October 12).
Who knows how this’ll conclude – Skubal might see his stinginess falter, or maybe, maybe, he could follow in the footsteps of another lefty pioneering the Tigers toward an improbable run: Kenny Rogers in 2006.
Over the course of 17 days in ’06, Rogers made three starts – one in each round – and dazzled and dominated, and destroyed all our conceptions of who he was under the October lights. After all, the 41-year-old (yes, 41) entered that year’s postseason with a dark résumé under playoff illumination, holding an 0-3 record in nine games and a line with more walks than strikeouts and a too-close-to-double-digits ERA of 8.85. Batters had attacked him like they were a collective Jimmie Foxx impersonator (1.040 OPS-against). And, and, and – well, the prospects looked bleak.
And then he extracted a dash of mastery and magic in a demonstrative and emotive flourish that sang to three starts, three wins, 23.0 innings, and crucially, improbably, not a single run allowed to cross the plate. In all of postseason history, only Christy Mathewson in 1905 (27.0 IP) completed a single postseason with more innings and no runs surrendered. If postseason baseball is carried on waves of improbability and ascension of performance, Kenny Rogers, version 2006, transformed the super-cool to the spectacular and carried his club to parts unfathomed.
Once upon a time, starting pitchers had an overwhelmingly large influence on postseason outcomes – on the box scores that summarized all the wins and losses. For example, from 1903 through 1968 (the last year before the introduction of the League Championship Series), nine starters compiled three wins in a single year’s World Series, with eight of those nine representing the ultimate trophy winner (no hurler has started and won three games in the Fall Classic since 1968). From the introduction of the World Series MVP in 1955 through 1968, a starting pitcher won the award 11 times (counting Bob Turley in 1958, who made two starts and two relief appearances in the seven-game series; see? – outsize influence).
But even as the postseason has grown in rounds and opportunities and a starter’s proportion of innings has decreased, the stage still seems made for those standing 60-and-a-half feet from the plate in the first frame, ready to begin the action and make October their own.
Burt Hooton compiled a 0.82 ERA with four victories during the Dodgers title run in 1981. Another Dodger – Orel Hershiser – capped his enchanting ’88 campaign with two postseason shutouts (and a save) in 42.2 innings and threw the final pitch of the World Series past Tony Phillips to hand Los Angeles a title out of a Hollywood script. Jack Morris recorded four wins for the Twins in 1991 and remains the last postseason pitcher to script a shutout lasting more than nine innings.
Curt Schilling and Randy Johnson combining for nine wins (three shutouts), 103 strikeouts and a 1.30 ERA in 2001 to truly lead the Diamondbacks to the crown …
Giants Matt Cain (21.1 innings, 0.00 ERA in 2010) and Madison Bumgarner (4-1 with two shutouts, one save, 1.03 ERA in 52.2 innings in 2014) bookending San Francisco’s stretch of three titles in five years …
John Smoltz’s 0.95 ERA and four victories for the Braves in 1996 (a personal fave).
They – and others – have a place alongside those yesteryear giants like Mathewson and Babe Adams and Stan Coveleski and Sandy Koufax and Bob Gibson and Lew Burdette and Mickey Lolich. For in all these cases, something special was summoned and then unleashed from the mound, pitch after pitch, start after start – with the occasional relief appearance thrown in – across an October when every impending pitch seemingly holds the potential energy to sway and alter and cement legacies and fortunes.
Every single time Kenny Rogers took the hill in the 2006 postseason, his Tigers club won the affair, and with each succeeding display, Rogers etched a more resonant and sharply defined definition of the joy in watching a starting pitcher deal in the playoffs. Yet, for all his sustained supremacy, he didn’t have to face the cauldron of a win-or-go home scenario. That’ll be the reality for Tarik Skubal today. However his start takes form, it’ll begin with that immaculate ERA and a chance to add his own tale to some of the most enduring storylines created by baseball in October.
Thanks to Baseball Reference and its extraordinary research database, Stathead, for help in assembling this piece.
Roger Schlueter
As Sr. Editorial Director for Major League Baseball Productions from 2004-2015, Roger served as a hub for hundreds of hours of films, series, documentaries and features: as researcher, fact-checker, script doctor, and developer of ideas. The years at MLB Production gave him the ideal platform to pursue what galvanized him the most – the idea that so much of what takes place on the field during the MLB regular and postseason (and is forever beautifully condensed into a box score) has connections to what has come before. Unearthing and celebrating these webs allows baseball to thrive, for the present can come alive and also reignite the past.