The San Diego Padres are having a good start to the season, and the stats back it up. San Diego’s pitching is doing something Major League Baseball hasn’t seen since 1876. In nine home games this campaign, the club has thrown five shutouts while allowing fewer than a dozen total runs, per OptaStats.
The outlet asserts that it has been more than 140 years since that last happened. The only other MLB team to do that over its first nine home games of a season was the St. Louis Brown Stockings in 1876, per OptaStats. That also happened to be the very first year of MLB play.
By the way, the St. Louis Brown Stockings stopped playing in 1877.
The Padres, meanwhile, are very much still playing. San Diego is 12-3 so far this season heading into Sunday, making them one of the most effective clubs so far this season in MLB.
Inside the Padres insane pitching numbers
The Padres are getting it done from every single spot in their pitching rotation. San Diego has a 1.22 pitching ERA at home, per the San Diego Union-Tribune.
The latest pitcher to throw smoke for the club is Kyle Hart. Hart retired the first 10 batters he faced for San Diego on Saturday in a 2-0 win over the Colorado Rockies. Hart allowed just one hit over six innings of work, while striking out four.
“Our pitching staff has been doing a great job start to bottom,” Padres star Fernando Tatis said, per the newspaper. “And, man, it’s fun to play defense behind them. They keep you in the game. They keep pounding the strike zone. And when they’re doing that, we’re all locked in. … It’s just momentum, momentum creating. Starts with them, and then we follow back and it’s just really good baseball all the way around.”
Hart isn’t the only hurler putting up some solid stats. Nick Pivetta currently leads the Padres in ERA as well as victories. Pivetta has a 1.59 ERA through 17 innings pitched. Veteran Dylan Cease has 18 strikeouts for San Diego, which leads the team.
San Diego will need to keep it up. The Padres play in the very competitive National League West division that includes the defending World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers. The San Francisco Giants, like the Padres, are also out to a surprisingly strong start this year.
The Padres and Rockies are playing again on Sunday.
