Ruane: When both starting pitchers made their MLB exits
From SABR member Tom Ruane at Retrosheet on May 28, 2014:
This article seems like an inevitable companion piece to my last one, but doing a similar study of career finales didn’t occur to me until David Nemec posted a question to SABR-L asking if any team other than the 1901 Cleveland Blues had ever started four pitchers in a row making their last major league appearance. So blame him for this one.
Anyway, let’s start by looking at all major league games featuring two starting pitchers appearing for the last time. Well, probably not ALL of them. We are going to cut our search off after 2009, since it seems bad form to declare categorically that a pitcher who last appeared in 2010 (for example) will not appear again. You might think that even a 2009 cutoff won’t guarantee that there aren’t pitchers on our list who will resurface at some point down the road, but you’d be wrong, since the last game on the list below is from 1998. I suspect that even the most optimistic among us doesn’t hold out much hope for the return of those two pitchers.
So as before, let’s start with the concise list.
Read the full article here: http://www.retrosheet.org/Research/RuaneT/retro_fun4.htm#A140526
Originally published: May 29, 2014. Last Updated: May 29, 2014.