Just how rare was that Kyle Hendricks 81-pitch shutout?

Photo by Quinn Harris/Getty Images Kyle Hendricks during his “Maddux” on May 3, 2019Sara Sanchez’ excellent article about Kyle Hendricks’ 81-pitch shutout last May 3 against the Cardinals as part of her 12 Days of Cubsmas series got me to thinking: Just how often does a game like that happen?

Complete-game shutouts as a whole have become an endangered species in modern baseball. Across all of MLB in 2019, there were just 25 CG shutouts of nine innings, about one percent of all games — and that number was actually up from just 17 in 2018.

For the Cubs, they have just eleven over the last 10 seasons, and two of those were no-hitters by Jake Arrieta. Arrieta threw three of the other nine.…