Joe Ryan of the Twins pitches an efficient high-strikeout game to defeat the Red Sox 6-0. He earns both his first career shutout and his first career complete game. Most pitchers today have zeros for their careers in both column. This table shows how both type of results disappeared over the decades:
| Decade | Starts | CG | ShO | CGPct | ShOPct |
| 1920 | 24663 | 11925 | 1235 | 48.35 | 10.36 |
| 1930 | 24631 | 10979 | 1348 | 44.57 | 12.28 |
| 1940 | 24758 | 10458 | 1719 | 42.24 | 16.44 |
| 1950 | 24743 | 7956 | 1521 | 32.15 | 19.12 |
| 1960 | 33290 | 8233 | 2094 | 24.73 | 25.43 |
| 1970 | 39924 | 10041 | 2285 | 25.15 | 22.76 |
| 1980 | 40674 | 5922 | 1541 | 14.56 | 26.02 |
| 1990 | 43836 | 3015 | 919 | 6.88 | 30.48 |
| 2000 | 48584 | 1670 | 647 | 3.44 | 38.74 |
| 2010 | 45530 | 904 | 437 | 1.99 | 48.34 |
| 2020 | 11950 | 101 | 54 | 0.85 | 53.47 |
The big fall off started in the 1950s. There was a brief pause the 1970s as teams started going to five man rotations. The 1980s then accelerated the trend until now less than one percent of starts end in a complete game.
The last column shows shutouts as a percentage of complete games. As complete games disappeared, only the best pitched games led to CGs, and shutouts are about the best one can do.
That’s what Ryan did on Thursday. He threw 112 pitches to 30 batters, 3.7 per batter. He walked none, and struck out nine. With 29 pitches called balls, he didn’t go very deep in counts often.
Ryan’s ERA falls to 2.98.
The introduction of the DH is what caused the increase in CGs in the 70s. I remember Catfish Hunter being quoted that the DH would allow him to “…win more, pitch more and shorten my career.” At the time as a kid I thought that was a strange view, but he was correct.