Strasburgian Starts

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

(Copied and pasted from the nbf)
Today at mbtn.net's wildly popular and exciting "Meet the Dicks" series, I wrote about Dick Rusteck who 44 years ago today threw a 4-hit, complete game shutout over the Reds at Shea Stadium in his Met and major league debut. (As you know, I also made my debut that day, though drawing additional parallels afterward is a little depressing to consider, as Rusteck followed up that magnificent arrival with arm troubles that would prevent him from ever having another quality start and an altogether a brief career.

http://mbtn.net/master-all-way-meet-dicks-part-3

Anyhow, with help of an exclusive Ultimate Mets Dataquery, we got a list of all Met rookies who made their Mets debuts as starters, and the results of those games. Magic!

As I suspected, Rusteck is the Mets' all-time Strasburgian Starter, going 9 innings, allowing 0 runs and 4 singles. Nobody even reached 2nd base.

Here are a few more quality-start debuts, courtesy UMDB:

Gary Gentry, 4/10/69: 8.2 IP, 7 H, 2 ER
Brent Gaff, 7/7/82: 7.2 IP, 8 H, 0 ER
Masato Yoshii, 4/5/98: 7 IP, 3 H, 0 ER
Rick Anderson, 6/9/86: 7 IP, 4 H, 0 ER
Jason Isringhausen, 7/17/95: 7 IP, 2 H, 2 ER
Jon Matlack, 7/11/71: 7 IP, 7 H, 2 ER
Nino Espinosa, 9/13/74: 8 IP, 8 H, 3 ER

* * *
And some other notable Met starters and their MLB/Met debuts:
Seaver, 4/13/67: 5.1 IP, 6 H, 2 ER
Darling, 9/6/83: 6.1 IP, 5 H, 1 ER
Gooden, 4/7/84: 5 IP, 3 H, 1 ER
Wilson, 4/4/96: 6 IP, 6 H, 3 ER
Jones, 8/14/93: 6 IP, 7 H, 1 ER
Pelfrey, 7/8/06: 5 IP, 5 H, 2 ER

* * *
Notable stinkers
Darrell Sutherland, 6/28/64: 0.1 IP, 3 H, 5 ER
Grant Roberts, 7/27/00: 1.1 IP, 6 H, 6 ER
Jon Niese, 9/2/08: 3 IP, 7 H, 5 ER

[Guest Edgy DC]

Aaron Heliman, L, 2003:
6.0 IP / 6 H / 5 R / 1 ER / 2 BB / 2 SO

Undone by errors by Bono, Burnitz, Reyes, and himself.

Nino Espinosa, ND, 1974:
8.0 IP / 8 H / 3 R / 3 H / 0 BB / 2 SO

Two-run homer to Andre Thornton. Typical Nino --- low walks, low whiffs.

Neil Allen, L, 1979:
6.0 IP / 7 H / 3 R / 3 ER / 1 BB / 1 SO

Orosco and McDowell also came up as starters, but as the number five starter, they each appeared out of the bullpen before their first starts came around.

[MFS62]

Great job JCL.
But shouldn't you be getting ready for your surprise birth..... (oh shit. I ruined it).

Later

[Benjamin Grimm]

Others that came up in my SQL results that tickled my memory:

Juan Berenguer's debut in 1978, because I was there and was excited at seeing a new star pitcher debut. (Oh well.)

And Tim Leary, of course. I remember watching the first inning at my aunt's house, but then got called away for meal time, and when I got back to the TV not long after, he was out of the game! There was no Internet to run to, so I had to wait for the broadcasters to revisit the topic.