MLB '09

[Alex]

They should just stop playing it period. Or do it after the season if they must.

Or, at least stop letting people vote for the All Stars starting with the second game of a 162 game season (only 45% of which can even be taken into account for determining who that seasons All Stars are). And dump the "every team represented" rule. If you can't put one person on your term worthy of an appearance then pound sand.

But mostly, just stop having the game.

And I take it the NL lost again.

[Ghoulish Delight]

They did, but that has little to do with my distaste for it counting. Baseball generally has the smallest homefield advantage of any of the major sports, so who gets it is relatively irrelevant. I just miss the more fun tone the game used to have. Bleh.

Today, by the way, is officially the worst day of summer. Not a shred of MLB activity. Depressing.

[Ghoulish Delight]

I'm getting nervous. As much as the Dodgers need a strong starter, I'm not pleased to hear the names Kershaw and Kemp come up as possible trades. I think Colleti is smarter than that, but you never know.

IMO, now's the time to make some moves with the wealth of farm hands the Dodgers have. The past couple of seasons, it was the constant supply of inexperienced but massively talented players coming up and filling holes that has been keeping the Dodgers going. It would have been suicide to trade them, not knowing which ones would turn out to be the long term winners. But now with Kemp, Loney, Ethier, Kershaw, solidified as legitimate major leaguers and the verterans remaining healthy, now the Dodgers can afford to use the value they have in their system to get the pitching they need to make it to the end. They may not get Haliday, but with names like Blake DeWitt, Xavier Paul, and plenty of others they can pick up a good arm without breaking up the winning team they've got in the bigs right now.

I'd even rather see James McDonald go before Kershaw. He'll be a good starter in a couple years, and he's a big help in the over worked 'pen right now, but if they pick up a starter that can get some innings that becomes less of an issue.

[Motorboat Cruiser]

^ Ugh, getting rid of Kershaw or Kemp would be ludicrous. I would also be fine with McDonald going.

Oh, and nice pinch hit, Manny.

[Ghoulish Delight]

With no batting practice, no less.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Less than 2 weeks later, Johnathan Sanchez gets upstaged

[SacTown Chronic]

Perfect games are overrated.

[Strangler Lewis]

Actually, I bet if you look at the ratio of Hall of Famers/potential Hall of Famers/All Stars to lucky bums among the few perfect game throwers, I bet it's far higher than with simple no hitters.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Well, ignoring anything after 1989 since those pitchers potentially can still be inducted, 5 of the 10 modern era perfect gamers went on to be inducted.

There have been 264 no-hitters (248 if you discount the 19 perfect games). There are only 72 pitchers in the Hall of Fame total. So, without combing through all 263 to account for pitchers with multiple no-hitters I think it's a safe bet that yes, a higher percentage of pitchers that threw perfect games have made it to the hall than those that "just" threw no-hitters.

But then, simply the comparative rarity (1/14th the number) is probably evidence enough of how much more significant an accomplishment it is.

[Alex]

Hard to say, out of the 11 modern era perfect games where the pitcher is eligible for the Hall of Fame, five of them are in the hall (and one also became a U.S. Senator).

Of the remaining five eligible (Kenny Rogers, David Wells, David Cone, Randy Johnson, Mark Buehrle) at least one will definitely be going (Johnson). So that is a minimum of 37.5% representation from the games elite.

That said, Nolan Ryan is in the Hall of Fame as well and I believe he alone accounts for 73% of all no hitters thrown in the modern era.