A 2014 FIRST: THE LATEST DAY IN SEASON FOR A COMPLETE GAME

The headline probably doesn't quite give you the exact image needed to get the full picture. We aren't saying that 2014 will produce the latest date for a complete game from a starting pitcher: that record would be held in a year when the regular season didn't begin until the middle of April (for example, 1950, when the first complete games occurred on April 18th).

No, we mean the "day in the season," or the number of days since "Day 1" of any given baseball season.

It will be at least until May before Clayton Kershaw has another
complete game for the Dodgers...

As of tonight (4/10/2014), we have yet to have a complete game in ten consecutive days of the MLB schedule. That's the highest number of days for such a dearth in the history of the game.

Last year, Clayton Kershaw had a complete game on April 1st, thanks to a terrifically economical pitch count (just 94 over the entire nine innings). There wasn't another one until April 10th.

There were only 14 complete games thrown in April 2013. That total was just 13 in April 2012.

The last time four complete games were thrown on the same day was on June 15, 2011.

Two related trivia questions. First: when was the last time two pitchers threw complete games in the same game? Second: when was the last time two pitchers threw complete games in the same post-season game? We'll leave the answer to the first in abeyance for awhile; for the second, here's a two-part answer. The last time two pitchers threw CGs in the same non-WS post-season game was on October 10, 1987, when Danny Cox and Mike Krukow did it (Cardinals vs. Giants, NLCS Game 4). The last time two pitchers threw CGs in the same World Series game? October 10, 1968, when Mickey Lolich beat Bob Gibson in Game 7 between the Tigers and Cardinals.