Inning-by-inning runs, with totals for runs, hits and errors.
Team	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	R	H	E
ATL	0	0	0	0	0	1	1	0	0	2	7	0
HOU	2	0	2	2	0	1	0	4	–	11	16	1

IV · THE GAME · MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL

Tom Glavine

Pitcher · 17 August 1987 · Atlanta Braves · New York Mets · 25 March 1966, Concord, Massachusetts

The debut was a loss by nine runs. The career that followed was 682 starts, 305 wins, and twenty-two years of work in Atlanta and New York.

At a glance

Career: 682 games started · 305 wins · 203 losses · 4413.1 innings · 3.54 ERA
Debut: 17 August 1987, aged 21, at the Astrodome, Houston
Last game: 14 August 2008, for the Atlanta Braves
Seasons: 22 seasons · 1987–2008

Look closer

The debut was decided early and never close
Houston scored in four of the first five innings — two runs in the first, two in the third, two in the fourth, one in the sixth — and led 7–1 before Atlanta scored its second run in the seventh. The Astros added four more in the eighth, which is why the ninth inning shows a dash for the home side: they never had to bat. Atlanta made seven hits to Houston's sixteen. The whole thing took two hours and forty-two minutes in front of 18,810 people.
The first seasons were losing ones, then the record turned
In 1987 he won two games and lost four. In 1988 he won seven and lost seventeen. In 1989 he won fourteen and lost eight — the first winning season. From 1991 through 2002, twelve consecutive years with the Braves, he won between ten and twenty-two games every season, and lost between six and twelve. The 1991 line is twenty wins and eleven losses with an ERA of 2.55; the 1998 line is twenty wins and six losses with an ERA of 2.47.
Complete games became rare after the middle of the career
In 1991 he completed nine games. In 1992 he completed seven. Between 1989 and 1995 he completed twenty-five games across seven seasons. Between 2003 and 2008 he completed four games total, and three of those seasons show zero complete games. The season table does not explain why the number fell, only that it did.

The story

On the night of 17 August 1987 the Atlanta Braves and the Houston Astros met at the Astrodome. Houston scored two runs in the first inning, two in the third, two in the fourth, one in the sixth, and four in the eighth. Atlanta scored one in the sixth and one in the seventh. The final score was 11–2. Houston made sixteen hits to Atlanta's seven, and committed one error to Atlanta's none. The home side never batted in the ninth, which is why that half-inning shows a dash rather than a nought. The whole thing took two hours and forty-two minutes in front of 18,810 people.

That was the debut. The career that followed lasted twenty-two seasons and 682 starts, every one of them as a starter — the saves column is zero for every season, and the games-played total matches the games-started total exactly. He won 305 games and lost 203. He pitched 4413.1 innings, struck out 2607 batters, walked 1500, and allowed 4298 hits. His ERA — earned run average, the number of earned runs a pitcher allows per nine innings — was 3.54 across the whole career.

In 1987 he won two and lost four. In 1988 he won seven and lost seventeen, with an ERA of 4.56. In 1989 the record turned: fourteen wins, eight losses, an ERA of 3.68, and four shutouts — games in which the opposing team scored no runs at all. That season he also completed six games, meaning he pitched all nine innings without being replaced.

From 1991 through 2002, twelve consecutive seasons with the Braves, he won between ten and twenty-two games every year. The 1991 line is twenty wins, eleven losses, an ERA of 2.55, and nine complete games. The 1993 line is twenty-two wins and six losses. The 1998 line is twenty wins, six losses, and an ERA of 2.47 — the lowest of the career. The 2000 line is twenty-one wins and nine losses.

In 2003 he moved to the New York Mets. The season table shows him with the Mets from 2003 through 2007, winning between nine and fifteen games a year, with ERAs ranging from 3.53 to 4.52. In 2008 he returned to the Braves for thirteen starts, won two and lost four, and his last game was on 14 August — one day short of the twenty-first anniversary of the debut.

The career total of 305 wins took twenty-two years to accumulate. The highest single-season total was twenty-two, in 1993. The rest of the answer is arithmetic and time.

Why it mattered then

A starting pitcher in the late 1980s and 1990s was expected to work deep into games, and the season table reflects that expectation. Between 1989 and 1995 he completed twenty-five games — games in which he pitched all nine innings without being replaced by a reliever. In 1991 alone he completed nine. The complete-game total for the whole career is fifty-six, and more than half of them came in the first half of the career, when the role was still built around endurance as much as velocity. The move from Atlanta to New York in 2003 came after the season table shows years with the Braves running from 1987 through 2002. The Mets signed him at age thirty-six, and the table shows him starting thirty-two to thirty-six games a year with them and winning between nine and fifteen. By then the complete game had become rare across the sport — he completed four games total with the Mets, and three of those seasons show zero — but the workload remained steady: he pitched between 183 and 212 innings a season with the Mets, which is the mark of a pitcher who was still trusted to start every fifth day.

Why it matters now

The career is a record of durability more than dominance. He never struck out two hundred batters in a season — his highest total was 192 in 1991 — and his career ERA of 3.54 is good but not extraordinary. What the season table shows instead is steadiness: twenty-two seasons of work, 682 starts, and the 1987 and 2008 lines are the only ones with fewer than twenty-five starts. The ratio of wins to losses is 305 to 203, which works out to a winning percentage of .600 — he won three games for every two he lost, sustained across two decades. The ratio of strikeouts to walks is 2607 to 1500, or 1.74 to one, meaning he struck out nearly two batters for every one he walked. These are not the ratios of a pitcher who overwhelmed hitters, but of one who worked efficiently and kept his team in the game. The complete-game total of fifty-six is a number that places the career across two eras: the older model, in which starters were expected to finish what they started, and the newer one, in which pitch counts and specialist relievers became the norm. By the end of the career, complete games had become rare enough that the table shows seasons with zero. The shift is visible in the numbers themselves, which is why the table is a document of change as much as consistency.

The surprising detail

The first season and the last season have identical lines in two categories: wins, losses, and ERA. In 1987 he won two and lost four with an ERA of 5.54. In 2008, twenty-one years later, he won two and lost four with an ERA of 5.54. The innings pitched were different — 50.1 in 1987, 63.1 in 2008 — and the number of starts was different — nine in 1987, thirteen in 2008 — but the win-loss record and the earned run average are the same to two decimal places. The season table does not explain why the numbers matched, only that they did.

What is disputed

Every figure here comes from the MLB Stats API. Statistical categories were not all recorded consistently across the twenty-two seasons covered, and minor discrepancies in totals can appear depending on how partial innings and inherited runners are counted; the totals given are the ones the league publishes today.

Remember this

305 wins across 22 seasons, built steadily rather than in bursts — the highest single-season total was 22.

Test yourself

Houston scored in four of the first five innings in the debut game, and Atlanta scored in only two innings total. Using the linescore, what does the ninth inning tell you about how one-sided the result was?

Go deeper

Image: Jeffrey Hayes, CC BY 2.0. Licence: CC BY 2.0. Source.

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