Johan Santana of the Twins came close to a fairly rare event in baseball. He shut out the Mets, 9-0, and almost did it with no strikeouts, but Paul Lo Duca finally whiffed in the ninth. Santana also had no walks. He needed just 92 pitches.
The last shutout in the majors where the starter went the distance with just one strikeout and no walks by the famous Mike Grace of the Phillies against the Yankees on September 2, 1997.
The last player to have a zero strikeout, zero walk shutout was Jeff Ballard of the Orioles on August 21, 1989 against the Brewers.
I think I was at that Mike Grace game actually, we definitely had my dad's name up on the scoreboard for his birthday in one of those years and September 2nd is the right date...and I can barely vaguely remember it being a Phils/Yanks game...hmm...
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Now that's not a name I'd have expected to see on that kind of list. Wow.
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