Bailey Ober Throws Historic Complete Game… and Not Just Because It’s 2024 and Nobody Does That Anymore

Bailey Ober: Minnesota Twins at Oakland Athletics
Credit: D. Ross Cameron-USA TODAY Sports

Bailey Ober has had an up and down 2024 season with the Minnesota Twins. He came in as a legitimate possibility to win the No. 2 starting role, after Sonny Gray departed in the offseason. Unfortunately, that’s not exactly how the first half of the season has played out.

Entering Saturday’s start in Oakland vs the Athletics, Ober had a 4.81 ERA, 1.192 WHIP, 82 ERA+ and a -4 runs above replacement. Had the regular season ended this morning, Bailey Ober would have finished with the worst ERA, ERA+ and RAA of his career. Luckily, it did not.

Bailey Ober has historic performance for Minnesota Twins vs Oakland Athletics

Because this afternoon, the MN Twins offense got Bailey a big early lead and he started peppering the zone, like any good pitcher should when in that situation. And today was one of those days where A’s batters never stood a chance, once his 6-9, 260 lb frame got locked in.

How good was he? Historically good. It took Ober just 89 pitches to get all 27 outs needed to close out the Oakland Athletics on Saturday. Impressive, right? What if I told you he also K’d 10 A’s hitters? Impossible, right?

Yeah, pretty much. In the end, his line (9 IP, 4 H, 2 ER, 0 BB, 10 K) is pretty much impossible, given his pitch count. The only runs he gave up were two solo homers.

Statcast has tracked MLB data back to 1988. According to Sarah Langs (MLB.com) only one other time in those 35+ years has a Major League Baseball pitcher thrown a 10+ strikeout complete game in under 90 pitches.

The only other was a David Cone (Yankees) perfect game in 1999 vs the Montreal Expos… a team that hasn’t existed for 20 years (last season was 2004). It was also the least amount of pitches needed for a Twins pitcher to complete a game since 2005, and the fifth least in franchise history.

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