To date, the number of complete games is eleven. Starting pitchers included in the mix only total nine. Marcus Stroman and Ivan Nova both have two apiece. Clayton Richard, Scott Feldman, Masahiro Tanaka, Dallas Keuchel, Tyler Chatwood, Ervin Santana, and Zach Greinke each have one. Eleven starting pitchers have tossed a complete game in the 2017 Major League Baseball Season which has completed approximately 650 of its 2,400+ scheduled matches.

Complete games: a history

When a starting pitcher throws a game without the assistance of a relief pitcher, he is considered to have thrown a complete game.

St. Louis Cardinals' Carlos Martinez recently pitched nine innings of a 13 inning game; however, he was not credited with a complete game because relief pitchers entered after the ninth inning. A starting pitcher must begin and end a game for it to be considered complete.

The 2017 season isn't unlike its predecessor with a total of 59 complete games during 2016. Complete games are unusual, scarce, a difficult achievement, and flat-out rare. The fleeting nature of complete games, however, is an evolving phenomenon -- something that has become more rare with each passing decade. Cy Young pitched 749 complete games, Pud Galvin 646, Tim Keefe 554, Walter Johnson and Kid Nichols 531, Bobby Mathews and Mickey Welch 525.

What has happened and where have they gone?

The lack of complete games can be blamed on newfangled technology that let's baseball gurus know when a pitching arm has reached its limits. It is also easy to blame the ever fragile rotator cuff -- which is indelibly linked to Tommy John and Tommy John surgery in today's world. The MLB season is a little longer and a baseball pitch is a little faster, thus, there are fewer complete games pitched every season.

But, such reasons are, at best, boring to baseball fans

What's not boring is the "dig deeper" reasoning. Pitchers are paid handsomely for working less than a complete game. There is a relief pitcher for the seventh inning, the eighth inning, and the ninth inning -- and all three of them are paid handsomely too. An athlete who can throw fifteen pitches every other game and gets paid millions is as good as it gets.

A starting pitcher who gets paid exponentially more has an even better gig.

The 2017 MLB season may be the most exciting one ever witnessed in America, but it's guaranteed that Cy Young's record will still be intact.
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED