Baseball Trivia Inaugural Edition! Pitcher Pyrotechnics
On May 2nd, 2019, Noah Syndergaard threw a 4-hit complete game shutout (10 K’s and 1 BB) and supplied all of the New York Mets’ offense by hitting a solo homer.
The last pitcher to hurl a 1-0 complete game shutout and hit a solo homer is today’s mound-summiting mind-boggler. His 1-0, solo home run shutout occurred June 17th, 1983. In those nine mildly stingy innings he struck out four and walked five, giving up six hits. He homered off of the Cincinnati Reds’ Mario Soto in the sixth inning that night. For his efforts that evening he contributed 0.699 WPA (Win Probability Added) to his team’s cause; a pretty significant donation for sure.
Drafted – for the first time – in the 14th round of the 1974 Amateur Draft by the Chicago Cubs, he went on to win three World Series rings (two as a player and one as a coach), make two All-Star appearances, and win a Cy Young. One of his World Series rings was earned while not pitching during the Series, due to his start being bumped by a natural disaster.
His career win-loss record is 211-146 with a 3.47 ERA, 1.270 WHIP, and 1969 strikeouts; amounting to 43.7 bWAR. He only has four instances of Black Ink on his Baseball Reference player page. He once led the NL with four shutouts – in six complete games – and then later led all of Major League Baseball in Wins and Winning Percentage (27 & .818, respectively) and the next season started the most games in the AL with 35. The season he won 27 games still stands as the last season a pitcher won 25 or more games. On his only appearance on the BBWAA Hall of Fame ballot, he received just a 0.2% vote, thus pushing him off the cliff and into the moldy voids of Veteran’s Committee and Era Committee judgments. Sadly, he died of a broken neck resultant of an accident at home at the age of 57. Name this dude.
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UPDATE: We have agreed that answers will be provided at the end of each post in link form. Hopefully, this avoids spoilers (by just placing the answer directly in the body of the post) and gives our readers agency in deciding when they are ready for the answer to be revealed or to check their guesses. Cheers!
Pitcher Pyrotechnics ANSWER.
