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DENVER — A great many impressive feats were accomplished by the Colorado Rockies in last night’s 8-0 win against the San Diego Padres. The fact that Tom Murphy hit two home runs and drove in five was almost relegated to afterthought status. The game that he called was not.
Jon Gray‘s brilliant 16 strikeout, complete game shutout came with a number of interesting factoids. He became the second-fastest pitcher in Rockies history to reach 200 strikeouts. He extended his own franchise record for rookie Ks in a single season. He tied a Bruce Ruffin record by striking out four in one inning and then extended that out by punching out six in a row which was — you guessed it — a new franchise record.
He pitched both the first complete game and the first shutout of his career. In fact, it was the first time he had pitched into the ninth inning in MLB, saying afterward he could only recall two CGSO’s in college.
For those of you into newer statistics, Gray produced a Game Score of 102, according to CBSSports.com. That’s 11 better than the 91 score Hideo Nomo put up in his no-hitter which was amusingly 20 years to the day before Gray’s historic performance. Baseball-Reference’s GS has Gray at 95. Still a record.
And, of course, he broke Darryl Kile‘s 18-year-old Colorado Rockies record for strikeouts in a single game.
Jon Gray pitched maybe the best game in MLB in 2016 and almost certainly the best game in franchise history, but the most impressive part is that he threw the best game in Coors Field history.
Kile’s accomplishment came in Montreal meaning that Gray was really chasing Randy Johnson, an all-time great who was the only person to ever strikeout 14 hitters in one of the most offensively friendly ballparks ever conceived. “Yeah, I’ve heard of that guy,” manager Walt Weiss joked after the game. “I think he struck me out a few time,” he said of Johnson.
Everything from the expansive outfield to the lack of foul territory in Colorado’s home park can contribute to rising pitch counts and extra base runners. Of course, while overblown, the thin air can turn some flyballs into home runs or doubles off the wall and can affect the break on individual pitches.
There is no environment in baseball that requires you to be more perfect with your pitches than Coors Field, another reason why it was so important the Gray didn’t walk anyone in the start.
The fact that offensive bonuses of the park have been used to justify award snub after award snub (2007 Matt Holiday says hello) calls into question whether or not Gray’s performance was not just the best of the year but one of the best of the last 20 years.
Randy Johnson‘s 2001 campaign has as strong an argument for the single best season by any pitcher. Ever. One of the best pitchers of all time at the absolute peak of his powers came to Coors and put up a performance it would be reasonable to believe would never be beaten. But now the Old Snake must move over for the Gray Wolf who passed him by two.
Gray said after the game that the most important element of his outing to him was the complete game. He has told BSN Denver on multiple occasions that he craves wire-to-wire wins, putting his team on his back for a whole game.
It would still have been amazing in Atlanta or San Diego or Los Angeles, but historically speaking, what Jon Gray did is almost secondary to where he did it. The Wolf of Blake Street, indeed.
