Here&rsquo;s one of those great discussions baseball people will have in bars and restaurants long after games end: What is the most perfect game a guy can pitch? Is it a pitcher striking out all 27 batters he faces? Or is it a pitcher throwing nine perfect innings while throwing only 27 pitches?</p><p> There&rsquo;s no wrong answer, of course, but I pick the second. A pitcher striking out every batter he faced would be remarkable, of course &hellip; but it at least seems possible. Getting batters to swing and make an out on the first pitch time after time, well, that would take more than great pitching. That would take some sort of hypnosis or something.</p><p> And that&rsquo;s why, in some ways, Luke Hochevar pitched the most remarkable game for a Royals pitcher in quite a long time. He hypnotized the Cincinnati Reds on Friday night. He threw the first complete game of his career &mdash; his first nine-inning complete game since 2005 when he was pitching for the University of Tennessee against Auburn. Hochevar allowed just three hits and one run. But here&rsquo;s the big thing: He finished off the Reds in 80 pitches. As far as anyone knows, that&rsquo;s the fewest pitches for any Royals complete game since &hellip; well, since anyone started counting pitches.</p><p> He got the Reds out on four pitches in the first inning. Four. Apparently, several Cincinnati players had dinner reservations they were not going to miss. Hochevar got the Reds on seven pitches in the second inning and eight pitches in the third. In the fifth inning, Hochevar hung a curveball to Cincinnati&rsquo;s Jonny Gomes, and he deposited it over the left field wall &ndash; the <em>10th </em>home run Gomes has hit against the Royals in his Kansas City crushing career. That would be 10 home runs.</p><p> &ldquo;Beautiful park, great barbecue, other than that I got nothing to explain it,&rdquo; Gomes would say.</p><p> After Gomes, though, Hochevar retired the next 14 batters. He breezed. He dominated. He had 76 pitches going into the ninth inning, which was absurd &mdash; there were times in previous Hochevar starts when he would have that many pitches in the third inning. </p><p> But the ninth inning was even more absurd. Cincinnati&rsquo;s Willy Tavares bunted back to Hochevar on the first pitch. Alex Gonzalez took one pitch, a strike, and then he grounded out to short. And then, with history on the line, Brandon Phillips hacked away at the first pitch, grounded out to short to end the game. Just like the first inning, Hochevar had gotten the Reds on <em>four </em>pitches. Preposterous.</p><p> First, let&rsquo;s talk about rarity: Only five pitchers this decade have thrown a complete game in 80 pitches or less. It hasn&rsquo;t happened in the American League since 2005. Pitch-count numbers are sketchy and unreliable, but it does appear that the complete-game-in-80-pitches-or-less trick has been pulled only five times in the American league the last 20 years.</p><p> Second, the question: What does doing something this cool mean for the career of Luke Hochevar? Well, obviously, it&rsquo;s only a guess, but I think it could mean a lot. It could give him a mental picture of exactly what kind of pitcher he can be in the big leagues. </p><p> You already know the Hochevar story: He was the first overall pick in the 2006 amateur draft. And when you&rsquo;re the first pick in the draft, people expect great things and they expect them fast. Trouble is, success didn&rsquo;t happen fast for Hochevar. Evan Longoria was the fourth pick of that draft, and he was the American League rookie of the year in 2008, and he&rsquo;s been crushing the ball this year. Tim Lincecum was the 10th pick in the draft, and he led baseball in strikeouts last year and won the Cy Young Award. Joba Chamberlain was the 41st pick and he has been a big story in New York.