In the current era of baseball in 2023, if a pitcher throws a complete game, it probably means that they put in a dominant outing. It’s no shock that Sandy Alcantara won the NL Cy Young Award after six such performances accompanied his sterling remaining slate. A team is only going to let a pitcher go that far if they’ve been not only good but efficient in terms of pitches thrown. Otherwise — for better or worse — teams just aren’t going let a pitcher go potentially 100 or more pitches just for the hell of it.
That was not always the case in, say, 1920.