I am willing to listen to suggestions for a better title, the current one is an homage to both the great Sun Ra and an old hardware commercial.
Anyway, we need a thread for the best NY SP since probably 1978 Ron Guidry, and maybe the best ever.
With Cole scheduled for his second start of the season tomorrow in NY's 4th game, I wanted to check what a SP could potentially do to lead his team to a title in a two month season, the upper limit, so my first thought was to look up Orel Hershiser 1988 down the stretch.
August 19-Sept 28: 9 starts for an almost unbelievable 82 innings (9 in the first 8 and then 10), 0.44 ERA, including six straight shutouts to close the regular season.
October 4-20: 5 more starts in the postseason plus a crucial one out relief appearance the day after he had gone seven innings in the NLCS, a 1.05 ERA in 42.2 more innings.
124 innings, 14 starts, 10 complete game shutouts, and just 9 ERs total allowed in the others. It seems ridiculous to preemptively put that into a Cole thread as it seems like the outer limit of human perfomance and there's a reason it was the first one I thought of, but on the other hand Orel already had 180 innings on his arm that season when he started this (making it that much more amazing) and Cole had 373 Ks combined in regular and postseason last year and did not lose a start between May and game 1 of the WS, and now he has had a few extra months to rest his arm and he is extra hungry for a title after being left in the pen in game 7, so close. Also Orel did this in two months ending in a ring, Cole would have three months for there to be a similar ending, so he can pace himself a bit more to get to those totals.
Something for our new leader to shoot for anyway...
Anyway, we need a thread for the best NY SP since probably 1978 Ron Guidry, and maybe the best ever.
With Cole scheduled for his second start of the season tomorrow in NY's 4th game, I wanted to check what a SP could potentially do to lead his team to a title in a two month season, the upper limit, so my first thought was to look up Orel Hershiser 1988 down the stretch.
August 19-Sept 28: 9 starts for an almost unbelievable 82 innings (9 in the first 8 and then 10), 0.44 ERA, including six straight shutouts to close the regular season.
October 4-20: 5 more starts in the postseason plus a crucial one out relief appearance the day after he had gone seven innings in the NLCS, a 1.05 ERA in 42.2 more innings.
124 innings, 14 starts, 10 complete game shutouts, and just 9 ERs total allowed in the others. It seems ridiculous to preemptively put that into a Cole thread as it seems like the outer limit of human perfomance and there's a reason it was the first one I thought of, but on the other hand Orel already had 180 innings on his arm that season when he started this (making it that much more amazing) and Cole had 373 Ks combined in regular and postseason last year and did not lose a start between May and game 1 of the WS, and now he has had a few extra months to rest his arm and he is extra hungry for a title after being left in the pen in game 7, so close. Also Orel did this in two months ending in a ring, Cole would have three months for there to be a similar ending, so he can pace himself a bit more to get to those totals.
Something for our new leader to shoot for anyway...