Part 2/10:
The complete game has become an anomaly in the modern game; in 2023, there were only 37 complete games thrown in the entire Major League Baseball (MLB) season, a stark contrast to the early 20th century when pitchers routinely completed the majority of their starts. Legendary pitchers like Cy Young and Bob Gibson exemplified this workhorse mentality, with Young completing 40 out of 41 starts in 1904 and Gibson finishing 28 of his 34 starts in 1968. This drastic decline in complete games—from 856 in 1980 to just 36 in 2022—highlights the shift from endurance to effectiveness as the primary metric for a pitcher’s worth.