On a night when he was clearly not at his best, St. Louis Cardinals’ ace Chris Carpenter still pitched eight scoreless innings en route to a 6-1 victory over the visiting Arizona Diamondbacks.
Carp’s command was off in the early innings as he prevailed for his eighth win of the season despite allowing seven hits, one hit batter and one walk.
It was Carpenter’s second shutout outing of at least eight innings this season. The other was also exactly eight innings in duration, a dominant two-hitter on May 25 in Milwaukee. Carp has yet to pitch a complete game in 2009 as the club remains cautious with their oft-injured ace.
Carpenter also went seven innings in his season opener on April 9. The one run that scored during that outing was unearned. Those were his only three scoreless outings of more than five innings this season.
To help put this into historical context, the always-ready Tom Orf offers an assist with the data.
Friday night’s eight-inning shutout was Carpenter’s 12th in his Cardinals career. That ties for only 13th-best on the club in the last 55 years, or since 1954. Hall of Famer Bob Gibson, pitching in a different era, is the runaway leader with 67 such games.
Dropping the criteria to seven innings with no earned runs, as noted above, Carp has three of those games this season and 19 total as a Cardinal, good for a tie for eighth-most since at least 1954. I found it most interesting to note that the leader, Gibson, collected “just” 68. When I say “just”, I mean not in comparison to others, but to himself.
In other words, only once in 68 career games during which Gibson spun seven innings with no earned runs allowed, did he not remain in the game to do the same thing in the eighth inning, too.
Simply amazing.
All Cardinals hurlers who reached double-digits in number of either eight or seven inning outings with no earned runs allowed in the last 55 years follow.
| Cardinals 1954-2009 | ||||||
| 8 IP-0 ER | 7 IP-0 ER | |||||
| Rk | # | Rk | # | |||
| 1 | Bob Gibson | 67 | 1 | Bob Gibson | 68 | |
| 2 | Bob Forsch | 27 | 2 | Bob Forsch | 35 | |
| 3 | Steve Carlton | 20 | T3 | Matt Morris | 23 | |
| T4 | John Tudor | 19 | T3 | Steve Carlton | 23 | |
| T4 | Curt Simmons | 19 | T5 | John Tudor | 22 | |
| T6 | Larry Jackson | 18 | T5 | Curt Simmons | 22 | |
| T6 | Ernie Broglio | 18 | 7 | Joe Magrane | 20 | |
| 8 | Matt Morris | 15 | T8 | Chris Carpenter | 19 | |
| T9 | Nelson Briles | 14 | T8 | Ernie Broglio | 19 | |
| T9 | Joaquin Andujar | 14 | 10 | Larry Jackson | 18 | |
| T11 | Ray Washburn | 13 | 11 | John Denny | 17 | |
| T11 | John Denny | 13 | 12 | Joaquin Andujar | 16 | |
| T13 | Vinegar Bend Mizell | 12 | 13 | Nelson Briles | 15 | |
| T13 | Joe Magrane | 12 | 14 | Donovan Osborne | 14 | |
| T13 | Chris Carpenter | 12 | T15 | Ray Washburn | 13 | |
| T16 | Bob Tewksbury | 10 | T15 | Bob Tewksbury | 13 | |
| T16 | Lynn McGlothen | 10 | T17 | Vinegar Bend Mizell | 12 | |
| T16 | Reggie Cleveland | 10 | T17 | Jose DeLeon | 12 | |
| T19 | Lynn McGlothen | 11 | ||||
| T19 | Danny Cox | 11 | ||||
| T19 | Reggie Cleveland | 11 | ||||
| T22 | Ray Sadecki | 10 | ||||
| T22 | Larry Jaster | 10 |
Carpenter began pitching for the Cards in 2004. He missed most of the 2007-8 seasons. Carp has pitched less than 4 seasons with the CArds, 750 innings about. Gibby pitched 17 seasons for the Cards (1959-1975), 3884 IP.
To compare on a per inning basis, if Carpenter had 5 times the innings as a Cardinal and if he maintained this level of performance (big ifs), then he could have 60 in column 1 (second place) and 95 in column 2 (first place).
Gibson was very durable. He ate a lot of innings. They reached the majors about the same age, 22 for Carp, 23 for Gibson. Gibson will record more innings during his career, owing to Carpenters injuries.
If not for the injuries, Carp would certainly be among the top five Cardinal pitchers of all time. In fact, I seem to recall that we rated him among the top 40 Cardinals of all-time when we did that series after the 2006 season; naturally, this was before he got hurt and missed most of 2007 and 2008.
As it is, I’d probably rate the top 5 Cardinal pitchers of all time as: 1-Gibson, 2-Dean, 3-Tudor, 4-Sutter, 5-Cooper, with Carpenter right behind them.
A healthy Carp would probably be up to #3 by now; even with the injuries, his winning percentage as a Cardinal now stands at .720 (59-and-23 lifetime as a Card), John Tudor, who used to hold the Cardinal record at .705, was 62-and-26 as a Card. Of course, if Carp goes 3-3 over his next six decisions, he’d be tied with Tudor.
Actually, Jmo, two years ago, you did rank the Cards’ all-time pitchers. Of course, Carp has been mostly injured since then so that list ought to be pretty representative of today.
Your top five were: Gibson, Dean, Sutter, Brecheen and Forsch with Cooper right behind them. Then you had Tudor and Carlton with Carp at the end (your #9 pitcher and #40 overall).
Hard for me to understand how a partial season of Carpenter during which he spent part of the time on the DL could have changed things so much…