Since today is a day with absolutely no baseball, I thought it’d be cool to propose a new statistic – or, rather an updated take on a relatively new one.
Perhaps you’ve heard of the Maddux. Invented in 2012 by Jason Lukehart, the criteria for a Maddux is simple:
Throw a complete game in under 100 pitches.
Easy, right? Not so – the career leader in Madduxes is…Greg Maddux, with 13. It’s incredibly difficult to do this – Maddux himself threw 109 complete games and could only manage the feat those 13 times. Only 41 people have 5 or more Madduxes in their career (since 1947 – I don’t count baseball before integration as being real baseball).
The Maddux is an excellent stat, but I have a problem with it: it’s just too hard to throw one. With that in mind, I’ve created a tweak on the stat, called the Burdette. Getting a Burdette is simple:
Throw a complete game without allowing a walk or home run.
The FIP-like nature of this game is appealing to me, as walks and home runs are the negative coefficients in calculating that stat. If you don’t walk anyone and don’t allow home runs, you are essentially only at the mercy of luck. Since you’ve also thrown a complete game, you didn’t even allow the possibility of someone else on the team walking someone are giving up a dinger.
The career leaders in Burdettes are Greg Maddux (who already owns his own stat, thank you) and Lew Burdette, who had 35 each. The 2014 leader in Burdettes is Henderson Alvarez, with 3. Dallas Keuchel has 2.
There are roughly a dozen Madduxes in a year, and there are maybe 25-30 Burdettes in a year. That’s around twice as many, but there still aren’t a ton. With that in mind, I’ve also created the mini-Lew (which is a glorified quality start). Getting a mini-Lew is this simple:
Throw 7+ innings with no walks or home runs allowed.
This might as well be called the mini-Maddux, because Maddux is #1 with a bullet (102 of these games). Burdette falls to 9th all-time, with 43. If you think very hard, you can probably guess the league leader in 2014 (Phil Hughes, 7).
This is more like it. There were 116 of these last year, so they happen pretty frequently. The 2013 leader was a 3-way tie between Wainwright, Kershaw, and Harvey (which sounds like the 3 best NL pitchers of last year, no offense to Jose Fernandez) at 6 each. 3 pitchers have 10 mini-Lews in a season: Tommy John (1980), Kevin Brown (1996), and (of course) Greg Maddux (1994 and 1997). In case you’re wondering: yes, Phil Hughes is on pace to set the all-time mini-Lew mark.
That’s it. If you throw a mini-Lew, you’ve thrown a great game. The leaders in this stat are almost unanimously the best pitchers in on the year. It’s a cool stat.