Julio Urias making history

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[2016 Postseason Update] Urias appeared as a relief pitcher on Oct 13th making him the youngest pitcher to pitch in an NLDS game. Urias threw two shutout innings, partial because of a 3rd base coach boner. It was the game that inspired the “Kershaw Saves ” T-Shirt and possibly the greatest NLDS game played by the Dodgers. Urias will be starting on 10/19/16 making him the youngest starting pitcher ever in the postseason. Hopefully,  we will have a positive update.

Oct 19th start. I was David Young and we watched young Julio strike out four of his first nine outs. That was the peak Julio, but he wasn’t stretched out to get more than nine outs, and the Cubs caught up to him in the fourth. He would end up getting eleven outs but give up four earned runs in the fourth. That was the last game Urias would pitch in 2016. Quite a season for a guy who started the year 19 years old and broke many LAD records for a teen-ager and put himself on many major league teen-ager leaderboards.

[Season Ending Update]

Julio Urias  breaks Joe Moellers fifty-four-year-old record for LAD strikeouts for a teenager by fanning four in his 7/21/16 start giving him 48 compared to Joe’s 46.  With the season now over for Urias,  he ends the year with 84 strikeouts.

Urias ends his season with the 7th most strikeouts by a teenager in the NL since 1958.  Urias is 9th overall when you include the AL and NL.

As you can see, Urias also holds the 2nd highest SO9 rate of any teenager since the LAD came into existence in 1958.  Just Dwight Gooden and the infamous Rick Ankiel have fanned hitters at a better rate then Julio.

As great as all these teenagers were, you don’t see any hall of fame pitchers here. Gooden didn’t fall victim to arm issues but to drugs. Gary Nolan had a massive bone spur, and the story about that will turn your gut when you see how disposable baseball felt about their greatest assets.  Joe Posnanki details how Frank Jobe saved Gary Nolan’s career.

He was 18 years old when he made his first start in the big leagues — he and Feller are the only two pitchers in baseball history to strike out 10 or more big league batters in a game before they turned 19 years old.

 

“Pitchers have to throw with pain,” his Reds manager Sparky Anderson told him. “Bob Gibson says every pitch he’s ever thrown cut him like a knife. You gotta pitch with pain, kid.”

Larry Dierker threw 1250 major league innings by the age of 23.   Mike McCormick would win a Cy Young at age 28 in 1967 for the Giants but he was never really more than an average pitcher.  Ray Sadecki became famous for getting traded from the Cardinals to the Giants for Orland Cepeda in 1966. Cepeda would lead the Cardinals to the 1967 World Championship while winning the MVP and eventually hit his way into the HOF.

Here is the complete list of NL teenagers from 1958 on who struck out at least 40 hitters:

Player	Year	Age	SO	SO9	SO/W
Dwight Gooden	1984	19	276	11.39	3.78
Gary Nolan	1967	19	206	8.18	3.32
Larry Dierker	1965	18	109	6.69	2.95
Larry Dierker	1966	19	108	5.2	2.4
Ray Sadecki	1960	19	95	5.43	1.1
Billy McCool	1964	19	87	8.76	3
Julio Urias	2016	19	84	9.8	3.6
Mike McCormick	1958	19	82	4.14	1.37
Don Gullett	1970	19	76	8.81	1.73
Mike McQueen	1970	19	54	7.36	1.74
Joe Moeller	1962	19	46	4.83	0.79

 

• Posted in: Julio Urias ♦ Uncategorized
• Tagged: Dwight Gooden, Gary Nolan, Joe Moeller, Julio Urias, Larry Dierker, Mike McCormick, Orlando Cepeda, Ray Sadecki