On June 6, Drew Pomeranz threw 123 pitches against the Yankees, in only five innings. He allowed six hits and two walks - not outrageous totals - and he faced only four or five batters in each inning. Pomeranz's pitches by inning: 18-27-19 30-29. In the 30-pitch fourth inning, he faced only four batters (5-5-12-8).)
I started wondering about the most pitches thrown in five or fewer innings. Of course, because pitch count data does not exist for most of major league baseball's history, we have a limited amount of data. I searched Baseball Reference's utterly awesome Play Index for games in which the starting pitcher recorded 15 or fewer outs and threw 120 or more pitches.