The current pitching is amazing

These days, baseball is leaving those watching the Los Angeles Dodgers pitchers knocking out gems in the National League Championship Series with their mouths open.

Game 1: Blake Snell retired 24 batters for eight innings, in the minimum (he allowed one hit, but the batter-runner was thrown out trying to steal). He was pulled and nearly lost the game.

Game 2: Yoshinobu Yamamoto pitched a three-hitter to achieve his first complete game in the postseason in eight years.

Eight seasons without anyone covering the nine-inning stretch in postseason games?

It's modern baseball: starters rarely make it past the sixth inning. Relievers warm up from the first innings, and in many cases, it's five innings for the starter, and they go one inning for each reliever. The box scores are full of pitchers.

The Seattle Mariners, playing the Toronto Blue Jays in the American League Championship Series, had their pitchers throw a combined 100 pitches in their first game. That was another big piece of news in recent days.

Snell pitched 103 and was traded. Yamamoto was held to a 111-run lead, and the Japanese pitcher's complete game was the first in the playoffs for a Dodgers pitcher since 2004, when he covered for José Lima against St. Louis.

Times have changed, no doubt, and feats from other eras have come to light that, given the way the game is played now, would be difficult to emulate or even come close to.

Luis Tiant, a Cuban who shone brightly in the Major Leagues and closed his career in the Mexican League (he pitched for the Leones de Yucatán at the Kukulcán), has a unique record in postseason history: on October 15, 1975, he pitched a complete game for the Boston Red Sox in the World Series against the Cincinnati Reds, throwing an impressive 163 pitches. There were relievers, certainly, but few, and the starters knew the kind of matchups they were facing. They were all about going all out.

In the 1981 Fall Classic, Fernando Valenzuela closed out the Dodgers by striking out Lou Piniella to give them a Game 3 victory over the Yankees. “Wizard” Septién’s commentary states that “El Toro’s” 149th pitch was enough to give Piniella a home run and pave the way for the Angels to raise the Fall pennant.

Another fact that emerged after Yamamoto's feat and his complete game: Christy Mathewson, a legend from the early 1900s, pitched ten complete games in the World Series for the New York Giants. Back then, it was a straight-up Fall Classic. And Yamamoto's performance is frightening.

Other times… no doubt about it.— Gaspar Silveira