The Maddux

Greg Maddux is my favorite player ever. I tended to gravitate toward position players as a child, but over time that changed. As I was more and more drawn to pitchers, I was especially drawn to those who succeeded without throwing harder than everyone else. I know the strikeout is the "best" out, but I liked pitchers who got grounders and weak pop flies, or struck guys out by painting the corners. I imagine this is because in my own limited playing career, I was a pretty solid pitcher, despite never throwing hard. By the mid 90s, I was in love with Greg Maddux. One morning the week I graduated from high school in 1998, while eating breakfast at the kitchen table, I noticed in the box scores that Maddux had thrown a shutout while throwing fewer only 99 pitches. I soon began to keep an eye out for similar games, and to think of such a performance as a "Maddux."

Requirements for a Maddux:

A Maddux is a complete game shutout with fewer than 100 pitches.

(It must be 9+ innings, nothing shortened by rain or anything else.) 

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OTHER POSTS WITH INFO ON THE MADDUX:

For how many Madduxes each team has thrown and had thrown against it, click here.
For the 13 Madduxes thrown by Greg Maddux himself, click here.
For pitchers with multiple Madduxes in the same season, click here.
For teammates with Madduxes in the same season, click here.
For the two times a Maddux was thrown on Opening Day, click here.
For the youngest and oldest pitchers to throw a Maddux, click here.
For pitchers who lost a Maddux due to unearned runs, click here.
For the fewest career games until one's first Maddux, click here.
For the seven times multiple Madduxes were thrown on the same day, click here.

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LAST UPDATED: August 4, 2018

Allow me to tip my hat to Baseball-Reference and their Play Index. It's made compiling everything that follows possible (I've come a long way from scribbling them down in a notebook when I happened to notice one in the box scores).

Madduxes are fairly rare. There have been an average of roughly eleven per season going back to 1988, when MLB pitch counts began to be kept consistently. There are 306 Madduxes on record since then, thrown by 194 different pitchers.

Career Maddux leaders (1988-present):

1. Greg Maddux       13

2. Zane Smith            7

3. Bob Tewksbury     6

t4. Tom Glavine         5

t4. Roy Halladay        5

How can you not love a stat with that leader board?! Active notables include Henderson Alvarez, Bartolo Colon, and James Shields, with 4 each, and Josh Beckett, Derek Holland, Tim Hudson, Paul Maholm, Jason Marquis, and Ervin Santana each have 3.

Maddux (1998) and Zane Smith (1991) share the single-season record with 3 Madduxes apiece.

Seasons with the most Madduxes:

1988: 25

1990: 20

1992: 18

1989: 16

1993: 14

On the opposite end of things, the fewest Madduxes in any season is 3, in 1999, and again in 2016.

During the 2000s, the highest total is 13, in 2009. While scoring has been down in the last few seasons and pitching numbers look better, I doubt the Maddux is going to rise to the level it was at 20-25 years ago. This is due in part to strikeout totals climbing, making it more difficult to finish a game on so few pitches.

Other Maddux data:

* It's hard to strike too many guys out in a Maddux, because of course Ks require a minimum of three pitches. Yet,  on 15 different occasions, a pitcher has managed to hit a double-digit strikeout total while twirling a Maddux. The record: 12 strikeouts, by Cliff Lee, on April 14th, 2011, against the Nationals. UPDATE: The strikeout record was tied by Carlos Carrasco on September 17, 2014.

* On the other hand, it's tough to record a shutout without any strikeouts. Zane Smith, Tom Glavine, and Rick Porcello are the only pitchers to throw a Maddux without striking anyone out.

* Walks can kill a potential Maddux. 176 of the 306 Madduxes since 1988 (57.5%) were accomplished with zero walks. Mike Witt and Chuck Finley were each able to throw one while walking four batters.

* On August 3rd, 2004, Carlos Silva somehow threw a Maddux while giving up 11 hits. They were all singles, and he got four double-play balls. Living dangerously, Carlos, living dangerously.

* Dennis Martinez, Kevin Gross, Chris Bosio, Kenny Rogers, Kevin Brown, David Cone, Derek Lowe, Philip Humber, Henderson Alvarez, Edinson Volquez, and James Paxton each pitched a no-hit Maddux. Martinez, Rogers, Cone, and Humber's were each also perfect games.

* 32 Madduxes have been 1-0 games, including Roy Halladay's performance on September 6th, 2003, when he became the only pitcher to throw an extra-inning Maddux, going 10 frames on just 99 pitches.

* The highest-scoring Maddux was a 16-0 contest in 2005, in which Mike Hampton worked around what must have been a lot of sitting in the dugout time to lock down the Maddux.

* As I said, there are only full regular season pitch count records since 1988, so that's the starting point I'm using for things here, but pitch counts were kept in the postseason a few years earlier than that. For the years in which we have official counts, there has been just one postseason Maddux though, thrown by Bret Saberhagen in Game 7 of the 1985 World Series, when he shut the Cardinals out on just 92 pitches and won himself World Series MVP honors. (Don Larsen's perfect game in the 1956 World Series also reportedly took just 97 pitches.)

* Just as some no-hitters are better than others, some Madduxes are a little more impressive than the rest. 99 pitches is accomplishment enough, but some guys were able to do it on far fewer pitches.

Fewest pitches in a Maddux:

1. Jon Lieber            78

t2. Aaron Cook         79

t2. Bob Tewksbury   79

t2. Kevin Brown        79

5. Doug Drabek        80

I would also point out that on August 13, 2006, a 40-year-old Greg Maddux pitched 8 shutout innings on just 68 pitches. Sadly, manager Grady Little would not let him finish what could have been the record. Was that the worst pitching decision of Little's career? I say yes.

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Why do I bring all this up now? In San Francisco this evening, Cliff Lee and Matt Cain had an absolute duel. Through nine innings, Lee had thrown just 89 pitches. and Cain had been almost as efficient, with 91 pitches. Double-Maddux!!!

Except, you have to pitch the entire game, and with neither pitcher having allowed a run, the game continued. Cain came out of the game for a pinch-hitter at that point, but Lee went back out for the 10th. That was something of a big deal, as no pitcher had pitched a 10th inning since Aaron Harang in 2007. The Phillies still hadn't given him any run support though, and he was at 102 pitches by the time he finished the inning.

The first Maddux of 2012 will have to wait. Perhaps Lee or Cain will go on to throw one their next time out. Maybe Jamie Moyer, who earlier this week became the oldest player in MLB history to record a win, will be the one to do it. It could be Roy Halladay, climbing into a tie for 3rd place along the way. Most likely it will be none of those guys. Someone unexpected will probably be the first to do it this season. That's the beauty of the Maddux, you can never know when it will happen. Not now that Greg has retired, anyway.

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