MLB '12

[Moonliner]

Originally Posted by Kevy Baby

Wouldn't the odds be shown as ~9,090:1 (using the common "odds" vernacular)?

Because if anyone knows a thing or two about being odd, it's Kevy.

[Kevy Baby]

And while I expect Alex to provide a more comprehensive analysis, I did find this site where someone did the math (through 2008) which puts the number at 345,950.

Add ~2,430 regular season games per year (30 teams x 162 games per year / 2) x 3 years = 7,290 games.

Then using an assumption of an average of four games per divisional playoff, and 5.5 games per league championship and World Series (I am too lazy to look up the actuals), that is an additional 33 games per season ((4 x 4 divisional) + (2 x 5.5 league) + 5.5 then round up the half game) x 3 =~100 additional games.

Then, there have been 935 games played this season so far, which brings the count up to 345,275.

So the odds are closer to 15,694:1

I need to get a job

[Ghoulish Delight]

I did say it was sloppy.

[Kevy Baby]

Sorry for correcting you. I was bored and curious.

Regardless, it must have been awesome to witness.

[Alex]

Of course, that is over the course of history, as Keith Olbermann put it on his baseball blog:

Last night, Matt Cain threw the first major league perfect game in nearly two months!


He threw the first individual no-hit game in nearly two weeks!


He threw the first no-hitter of any kind in five days!

He did throw the only no-hit game of the night, though R.A. Dickey didn’t get one in St. Petersburg only because of a dubious scorer’s decision that might yet be reversed

Time will tell if it is just statistical clumping (as Olbermann goes on to talk about) or perhaps is a sign of some fundamental shift.

Actual conversation last night as I was falling asleep (and pretty much there):

Lani: Hey! The Giants had a perfect game.
Me: No they a hit that could have been ruled an error.
Lani: I think the news said it was a perfect game.
Me: nggghgngngn

[Kevy Baby]

I'm confused by your post Alex (or maybe by Keith's POV). What is the issue with the perfect game?

[Ghoulish Delight]

He's pointing out that perfect games/no hitters have been conspicuously frequent of late.

And his half-sleep conversation with Lani was Alex conflating Cain's perfect game and Dickey's near-no-hitter.

[Alex]

In the first 136 years of professional baseball there'd been 17 perfect games. In the last 2 years and 11 months there have been 5.

Sign of something? Or just an odd clump? After all, the first two perfect games in the National League happened within a week of each other and then it was another 84 years until the third one (also a fact offered in Olbermann's blog post).

[Strangler Lewis]

Whatever the odds, they're better than actually getting a crisp garlic fry at AT&T.

As to the clumping of perfect games, the reality is that from the dawn of the lively ball until maybe the mid-sixties, maybe later, with a few rare exceptions--pitchers pretty much sucked. You can see You Tube videos of the swings of Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Ken Griffey, Jr., etc. and see that little if anything in the science of the swing has changed in the last 80 years. Much in the science and athleticism of pitching has. Look at videos of guys lumbering around the mound in the forties and fifties. No wonder they could pitch endless complete games on two or three days rest. Most of them weren't working that hard.

Today's pitchers have the advantage over today's hitters. Except for the ones that suck. And even them sometimes.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Last year by this time the Dodgers had been shut out 7 times.

Yesterday was only the 2nd this season.

#positivespin