A Look Back at Lance McCullers’ 3 Best Starts as he Returns to Action

As Astros ace Lance McCullers Jr. returns to the mound on Saturday, here is a look back at the 3 best starts of his career to date.

It has been almost a full calendar year since Houston Astros starter Lance McCullers Jr. appeared in a major league game. He was removed from the clinching game 4 of the 2021 ALDS with a forearm strain that would end up sidelining him for 10 months. After 4 rehab starts and a lengthy recovery process, though, the highly anticipated return of the Astros’ longest-tenured ace is finally upon us. McCullers will take the mound Saturday night in an attempt to secure a victory in the team’s 3-game series against the Athletics.

McCullers and the Astros agreed to a lucrative contract extension just before the 2021 season, and he showed why he was worth it. A season ago, he posted career-bests in ERA, games started, innings pitched, and strikeouts. Despite walking more batters than anyone else in baseball, his 0.7 HR/9 and 6.8 H/9 both led American League starters. He didn’t come all that close to throwing 200 innings but he still finished top-10 in AL Cy Young voting for the 2021 season.

It’s easy to forget given the Astros’ great surplus of elite homegrown starting pitchers, but if he was healthy, McCullers would have likely started this season at the top of their rotation. He was not their opening day starter in 2021, but his performance throughout the year was good enough to give him the starting nod in game 1 of the postseason. With the departure of Gerrit Cole and the absence of Justin Verlander last year due to injury, McCullers became the de-facto ace in Houston.

In anticipation of his return, which will make the Astros an even scarier team heading into the postseason with the handful of aces they have up their sleeve, here is a look back at 3 of the best starts of McCullers’ major league career up to this point (game data retrieved from BaseballSavant and BaseballReference).

2. July 6, 2018, vs White Sox

For the next brilliant McCullers start, we have to travel back to a period before he started growing out his glorious locks, and when Majestic was the official uniform supplier of MLB instead of Nike: not that long ago in the grand scheme of things, but it still feels that way. This start was special for McCullers because it was the day that he set his career-high in strikeouts in a single game. Missing bats wasn’t the only thing he did right in this outing against the rebuilding White Sox either.

In front of a near-sellout crowd on a Friday night, he went 7 innings and threw 93 pitches, allowing just 3 hits, 4 hard-hit balls per Statcast, and 0 walks. Not walking anybody in 7 innings is already impressive, but the most important stat of this performance: 12 strikeouts. McCullers hasn’t struck out 12 batters in a start since. He allowed all 3 of those hits against consecutive batters in the 6th inning, and all 3 were singles. He got Jose Abreu to ground into an inning-ending double play, however, to limit the damage.

Houston had a 3-1 lead by the time McCullers exited the game, but they completely blew the doors off the White Sox bullpen, scoring a run in their half of the 7th and an additional 7 runs in the 8th. Every starter in their lineup reached base at least once, so they more than rallied around McCullers’ dominant outing.

Unfortunately, this performance came right before a tough time in his career. Following this night, he would make just 4 more starts in the 2018 season before an elbow problem reduced him to a bullpen role at the end of the year, including the postseason. Not too long after the Astros got bounced out of the 2018 ALCS by the juggernaut that was the Boston Red Sox, he would undergo Tommy John surgery and miss the entire 2019 season in which his team won 107 games.

1. June 3, 2015, vs Orioles

It is wild considering the great seasons McCullers has had, as well as the fact that he has started some of the biggest games in franchise history (including game 7 of the 2017 World Series), that his best career appearance was his 4th-ever big league start.

When a 21-year-old Lance McCullers Jr. took the mound on a Wednesday night in June 2015, many fans still did not yet know his name. He had thrown just 15 MLB innings before this game, and the Astros were off to a surprisingly great start to the year, but they were coming off a 92-loss campaign and 3 consecutive 100-loss seasons before that. Tal’s Hill still graced center field at Minute Maid Park, and Houston’s opponents in the Manny Machado and Adam Jones-led Baltimore Orioles were the defending AL East champions. Especially from the perspective of an Astros fan, this day is part of an era that seems unrecognizable compared to now.

To date, this remains the only complete game that Lance McCullers Jr. has ever thrown. He struck out 11 batters, walked none, allowed 4 hits, and a single earned run. He emptied the tank on 107 pitches, and a 2-out RBI single by the now-retired Delmon Young in the 4th inning was the only blemish on his line. After that single by Young, McCullers retired 16 of the final 17 batters that came to the plate for Baltimore that night. It would’ve been 16 in a row to end the game if not for a 2-out single by Adam Jones in the top of the 9th.

Veteran slugger Chris Carter (remember that name?) went deep twice in this game for Houston, including a go-ahead solo shot in the 5th inning, to propel them to a 3-1 win. This improved the Astros’ record on the young season to 34-20, and they would go on to record their first winning season since 2008 when they were still in the NL Central. It would end up starting a streak of 6 winning campaigns (not including the 60-game 2020), which will improve to 7 in 2022.

The Astros have still been an elite team in McCullers’ absence, but he has been missed. He was an instrumental part of the core that made it back to the World Series a year ago. You’ll notice that he allowed at least a run in all 3 of the starts I chose to highlight; he has thrown 6-7 innings of shutout ball plenty of times, but I just decided to give a nod to his outings that have ended up being career outliers.

McCullers has had a great career despite multiple lengthy absences due to injury, and while he’ll likely be on some sort of innings limit tonight given his injury, the prospect of him dominating on the mound late in the year once again is enticing as the Astros gear up for another deep run.