I swear if the Phils an Marlins played an entire season against each other, the Marlins would finish 162-0 and the Phillies, 0-162. At least that's how it seems in the roller coaster world which is to be the 2005 Phils season.

Yesterday, Dontrelle Willis D-railed—are we sick of this yet?—the Phils offense, shutting them out, 4-0, on only three hits (all singles) and a walk while striking out seven. This was an offense that entered the game with the most runs in baseball. It was Willis's second straight shutout to start the season.

It was the fourth shutout and fourth complete game for the Marlins in nine games (though one shutout was a team shutout, not a complete game). I am of two minds on this: First, I thought that if the Marlins could get their young starters to gel, they would be the team to beat in the NL East. Second, I think "Don't Call Me Trader" Jack McKeon is going to Billy Ball the arms off the starters by the All-Star game.

He makes Dusty Baker look like a pitcher coddler. The Marlins starters have racked up 63.1 innings in nine starts. That's a hair over seven innings a start, and this is just April when managers usually go easy on the rotation. They've also thrown 896 pitches, which is just a hair under one hundred per game. So maybe it's not so bad if they are typically held to a reasonable total.

We'll just have to see if this is all an early-season aberration or if the workload of the starters becomes an issue as the season progresses. It does make them more interesting, at least, in my book.

Anyway, for fun, let's assume that the Marlins can keep it up, shutout and complete games at the 44% clip they are doing now. How unusual would that be?

No team has ever shutout the opposition more than 25% of the time, and no team in the expansion era have eclipsed 20%. Here are the all-time team leaders:

Here are the teams with the highest shutout rates in the expansion era:

As for the complete games, their rate is extremely unusual today, but in baseball's primordial past—I'm talking about when the Royals were good—, many teams had starters complete most if not all their games. Here are the teams with the highest percentage of complete games pitched by their starters in the expansion era:

The Marlins would have the highest rate in 24 years, but the Billy Ball-era A's put them to shame.

Finally, the Marlins have a team 1.36 ERA (1.42 for the starters, 1.19 for the relievers, both tops in the majors). There is only one team in baseball history with a lower ERA, the 1876 St. Louis Brown Stockings, no relation to the team that was the forerunner to today's Cardinals, whose 1.22 ERA is almost forty points better than the number-two team. The lowest ERA in the "modern" era was 1.73 by the 1907 Cubs. The lowest in the expansion era was 2.45 by the 89-73 1967 Chicago White Sox. Hera er the lowest all time:

By the way, the Rockies have a 7.64 team ERA, the Nationals own a 5.81 ERA—Natty dread!—, and the Rangers a 5.79 ERA. Five others have team ERAs over 5.00. The Rockies, if they could possible continue at that pace, wouldn't even own the record. Here are all the teams with ERAs over 5.75. Note that the dreadful '96 Tigers and '30 Phils make the top four. Another Washington Nationals team is number two:

Finally, even among this early-season induced ridiculousness, What Willis has done still stands out. Could he go a whole season shutout out the opposition while throwing a complete game? I think the odds are better that he doesn't throw another shutout this year. However, I'm feeling indulgent. What are the best individual "records" for the stats we've just discussed (min. 50 IP)?

Here are the pitchers with the highest percentage of shutouts all time:

The highest percentage of complete games in the expansion era:

The lowest ERA, expansion era:

The lowest ERA, expansion era, starters only: