A shutout in Major League Baseball refers to a game in which a single pitcher holds the other side to no more than one hit. It’s not a shutout if two or more pitchers cooperate to do this, but the team itself can claim to have “shut out” the opposition.
A perfect game has only been pitched 23 times in the past 135 years, most recently by Seattle Mariners pitcher Félix Hernández on August 15, 2012.
A shutout was originally included in the definition of a perfect game before the MLB made a rule change in 2020.
Johnson holds the all-time record for the most career shutouts (110). One season’s record for shutouts was 16, set by Pete Alexander (1916) and George Bradley (1876).
It was customary for starting pitchers to throw a large number of complete games during the dead-ball era and the first three-quarters of the twentieth century, which increased a pitcher’s chances of getting the win by throwing more complete games.
With the emphasis on pitch counts and relief pitching, pitchers today seldom earn more than one or two shutouts per season, making these shutout records some of the most protected in baseball.
Only a few pitchers today will complete a season’s worth of games. Complete-game shutouts fell to a new low during the 2018 season, with eleven American League pitchers and seven National League pitchers each completing the season with just one shutout.
Who Has Thrown The Most Shutouts In White Sox History?
Ed Walsh has a record of 1.82 ERA and is the first pitcher in the American League to post 10 or more shutouts on two separate occasions.
