Cardinals’ Sonny Gray completes ‘Maddux’ in dominant performance over Guardians

St. Louis Cardinals starting pitcher Sonny Gray turned in one of the most dominant pitching performances of the season in the team’s 5-0 win over the Cleveland Guardians at Progressive Field Friday. 

Gray, 35, completed the “Maddux,” pitching nine innings of shutout ball while yielding one hit and striking out 11 batters with just 89 pitches. 

Gray’s performance marks the first time a pitcher tossed a complete-game shutout of under 90 pitches since 2021. New York Yankees ace Max Fried was the last pitcher to do it, when he shut down the Baltimore Orioles as a member of the Atlanta Braves.

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The three-time All-Star has thrown seven complete games in his 13-year career, but Friday’s complete game was Gray’s first since 2017, when he did it with the Yankees. 

“I did it a lot earlier in my career, and it’s been a while,” Gray said after the game. “You don’t know if you would be able to do it, especially the way the games kind of went, and especially with me. Like, I don’t throw over 100 pitches very often.”

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Gray never threw more than 12 pitches in an inning and had two innings with eight or fewer pitches. Gray was on the attack throughout the game with 19 first-pitch strikes to the 28 batters he faced. 

The Cardinals’ starter retired 15 of Cleveland’s hitters on three pitches or fewer, including six on the first pitch.

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“I knew the innings were kind of moving right along. I did know that I was perfect through that long. I made a good pitch there when the guy got the hit, so I was fine with that,” Gray said. “When I was going out for the ninth, it felt like just another inning, which was nice.”

The Cardinals (45-38) will look to build on Gray’s performance when they take on the Guardians (40-40) in the second game of a three-game series Saturday at 4:10 p.m. ET. 

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