Diamondbacks 4, Astros 6 - Mad Max replaces Bad Mex

Record: 19-8. Pace: 114-48. Change on last season: +3

Tonight may be one of those games we look back on in twenty years and say, "Yes, I remember seeing Scherzer make his major-league debut." For our uber-prospect retired all 13 hitters faced, fanning seven, and sending everybody scurrying to the record books. We'll have to wait, however: Baseball-Reference.com's stats in this area only go back as far as 1956, and there has been no-one since who started their career with one outing of four perfect innings. We can speculate what might have happened if Scherzer had started the game: probably only his pitch-count would have stopped this from being truly monumental. Perhaps we might even have seen something like Juan Marichal's first appearance in 1960, a complete game one-hitter with one walk and twelve K's, that's possibly the finest debut of all-time. more...