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).

3. May 11, 2021, vs Angels

Out of all the starts in McCullers’ career year of 2021, this was arguably his best. A Tuesday night home game in early May doesn’t have huge implications on the way a team’s season will turn out, so it’s not like this was an overly high-stakes game, but it was still some of his best work.

McCullers came out on top in a classic pitcher’s duel with Angels superstar Shohei Ohtani by throwing 8 innings on just 96 pitches, punching out 9 batters, and walking only 2. Highlights included a strikeout of Ohtani when he came up to bat to lead off the 4th inning on a nasty knuckle curve, as well as setting down 11 in a row between the 3rd and 6th inning. The one thing that ruined McCullers’ shutout was a big game-tying home run by Taylor Ward in the top of the 8th, but he got the next two batters to ground out to finish the inning.

Because both starters were dealing in this game, McCullers almost had nothing to show for his brilliant effort, but his offense banded together against the vulnerable Angels bullpen in the bottom of the 8th to pull ahead. Yuli Gurriel’s 2-out, 3-run homer all but sealed the deal, and Ryan Pressly got the save in the 9th to secure a 5-1 Astros win and make McCullers’ effort worth the while.

Another interesting quirk about this game was the fact that it only lasted 2 and a half hours as a result of the great starting pitching. This is the deepest that McCullers pitched into a game in 2021, and is one of the 3 times that he has pitched 8 innings in a single start. He went 7 or more innings and allowed 1 run or fewer in just 2 other starts last season, one of them being a 7-inning shutout effort against the Rays just a couple of weeks before this outing.

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.