Nobody Was Coming to Get Them

Here is the part that gets lost. The 1971 Orioles did not strike anybody out.

That staff punched out 793 hitters in 1,415 innings, which comes to five per nine. Cuellar finished with 124 in 292 innings. McNally had 91. Only Dobson and Palmer cleared 180. A modern front office would look at those strikeout rates and assume the ERA was about to collapse. It never did. The 2.99 came from somewhere else entirely.

It came from behind them. Mark Belanger at short, Davey Johnson at second, Paul Blair in center, Brooks Robinson at third. All four won Gold Gloves that season. The pitchers threw strikes, let hitters put the ball in play, and trusted four of the best defenders alive to erase what came off the bat. Seventy complete games out of the rotation. Nobody was coming to get them in the seventh, because nobody needed to.

That is what made them impossible. Not overpowering stuff, but a machine where every part assumed every other part would do its job. They won their last eleven games of the regular season, swept Oakland in the ALCS, and then lost the World Series in seven to a Pittsburgh club that had Roberto Clemente playing the best baseball of his life. Even perfect systems run into that.