Yesterday (May 12), the Twins’ 6′ 9″ righty Bailey Ober pitched the first shutout of his six-season MLB career (his third complete game) – and he did it in stellar fashion. Ober twirled an uncommon gem, now commonly termed a “Maddux” – designated as a single-pitcher shutout of at least nine innings in which the pitcher threw less than 100 pitches. The victims were the Miami Marlins, who fell to the Twins 3-0 in Minnesota. Ober used 89 pitches to set the Marlins down on two hits (no walks, seven strikeouts). It was the second Maddux of 2026, and the first also involved the Marlins. On April 1, the Marlin’s Sandy Alcantara shut down the White Sox (10-0) on 93 pitches (three hits, no walks, seven strikeouts).
In his game, Bailey faced just 29 batters and 72 percent of his pitches were strikes. He went to a three-ball count only twice and had five innings in which he threw less than ten pitches. Long story short, Bailey’s outing spurred The Roundtable to update a past blog post on “Madduxes.”
As I looked into Madduxes, I was able to find 397 documented regular-season “Madduxes” – 331 since MLB officially began tracking pitch counts in 1988 and 66 pre-1988 listed by stathead.com.
Now, of course, the Baseball Roundtable’s goal is to find the unicorns among statistics. When it comes to Madduxes, no hitters are not unicorns. Seventeen of the recorded Madduxes were no-nos. Neither are perfect games. Available pitch counts (Baseball-Almanac.com) show that at least ten of MLB’s 24 regular-season perfect games were completed in less than 100 pitches (and you can add in Don Larsen’s perfecto in the 1956 World Series, which came in at 97 pitches). A bit of #InBaseballRoundtableOneThingAlwaysSeemsToLeadToAnother, the most pitches thrown in a Perfect Game is 125, by Matt Cain of the Giants in his perfect outing versus the Astros (a 10-0 win) on June 13, 2012. In that one, Cain fanned 14 Astros, giving him a tie (with Sandy Koufax) for the most strikeouts in a Perfect Game. But I digress. Let’s get back to our regularly scheduled programming.
It became clear, I was looking in the wrong forest for my Maddux unicorn. So, I changed direction – and I found my first unicorn: Only one pitcher has ever thrown a Maddux while giving up ten or more hits.
Photo: Keith Allison on Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
On August 3, 2004, Twins’ righthander Carlos Silva shutout the Angels on 99 pitches – while giving up 11 hits and two walks (he struck out three) and having one batter reach safely on an error. The Twins, ironically, equaled the Angels’ 11 hits, but tallied ten runs. They did draw three walks to the Angels’ two and had two hit batsmen, with no one reaching on an an error. However, there were two big differences. First, The Angels’ hits were all singles, while the Twins’ hit parade included four home runs and a double. Second, the Twins turned six double plays behind Silva to zero twin killings turned by the Angels. In Silva’s Maddux, 19 of the thirty batters he faced saw two or fewer pitches (seven of those putting the first pitch of the at bat in play).
Silva went 14-8, 4.21 in 2004 and that Maddux was his only complete game. For his career (2002-2010 … Phillies, Twins, Mariners, Cubs), Silva went 70-70, 4.68 in 316 games/180 starts, with six complete games and two shutouts.
I also found another interesting unicorn. Only one player has pitched what I’d call an Uber-Maddux. On September 6, 2003, the Blue Jays’ Roy Halladay pitched the only extra-inning Maddux. In a tough 1-0 win over the Tigers, Halladay pitched ten shutout innings (three hits, one walk, five strikeouts) on just 99 pitches.
Now, a few more Maddux’ tidbits.
- Strikeouts, of course, run up the pitch count and diminish the opportunity for a Maddux. The most strikeouts in a Maddux is 13, achieved by the Tigers’ Tarik Skubal May 25, 2025 (in a 5-0, 94-pitch win over the Guardians). Seventy-two of Skubal’s 94 pitches were strikes (includes balls put in play) and his 13 strikeouts used 59 pitches, while the 16 batters he faced that didn’t fan required a total of 35 pitches.
- Walks also run up the pitch count and the most walks issued in a Maddux is five, by the Dodger’s Vic Lombardi in a 5-0, 92-pitch win over the Cubs on July 11, 1947. Lombardi’s Maddux got off to a slow start. In the first two innings, he gave up three walks and a single and used 35 pitches. He struck out two in the game and was aided by four double plays.
- The fewest pitches thrown in a Maddux is 58 by the Braves’ Red Barrett in a 2-0 win over the Reds on August 10, 1944. Barrett’s game was a two-hitter, with no strikeouts or walks. Although the pitch count for this game is not listed in stathead.com (so, if you’ve read this far, you can add one to my 397 Maddux count), it is generally recognized and can be found in his Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) bio by Sidney Davis; The SABR Article “August 10, 1944: Braves’ Red Barrett shuts out the Reds with record-low 58 pitches” (by Jack Zerby); the Baseball-Reference.com Bullpen section; the “Michelson Book of World Baseball Records”; and Baseball-Almanac.com. This outing is also recognized as the fewest pitches ever in any nine-inning complete game.
- As you might expect, Greg Maddux holds the record for the most career Madduxes thrown (13). Next on the list is Zane Smith with seven. Maddux shares the record for the most Madduxes tossed in a season (three in 1998), with Smith (1991) and Sandy Koufax (1964).
- 51 of the 397 Madduxes I was able to document came in right at 99 pitches – no margin for error. Mike Witt, Roy Halladay and Carl Erskine each had three of those. Greg Maddux went to the edge, using 99 pitches in a Maddux, just once in 13 qualifying outings.
- The largest margin in a Maddux was 14-0, Mark Buehrle of the White Sox, over the Indians, on July 21, 2004.
- The oldest pitcher to toss a Maddux was the Mariners’ Jamie Moyer, with A 93-pitch, 4-0 win over the Royals on June 2, 2006 (at age 43-years and 196 days). The youngest was also a Mariner: Felix Hernandez (age 2o- years and 142 days, ), a 95-pitch, 2-0 win over the Angels.
- The Braves’ Warren Spahn threw two Madduxes in June of 1963 (his age-42 season).
- Jamie Moyer threw his first (of of our) Madduxes on June 3, 1988 (at age 25) and his last Maddux came June 2, 2006 (at age 43).
I would add that Madduxes are becoming more of a rarity (which is an obvious trend given today’s pitching usage). Going back to the first year of MLB officially tracking pitch counts as a statistic: The five seasons from 1988-92 saw 92 Madduxes, while the most recent five complete MLB seasons (2021-25) saw 17. The last season in which we saw ten or more Madduxes was 2014 when there were 12.
Primary Resources: Stathead.com; Baseball-Almanac.com
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