On August 15, 2012, Felix Hernandez threw MLB's 23rd perfect game. King Felix tossing a perfect game is not a huge surprise to most baseball fans. If I said, "Hey, somebody tossed a perfect game yesterday." And you said, "Who?" King Felix would be one of the first three or four names to come to your mind as possible pitchers who have the stuff to throw a perfect game (along with names like Justin Verlander, David Price, and Jered Weaver).
However, the recent history of the game shows us that perfect games aren't pitched only by the aces of the game. In the last decade, perfect games have been pitched by the following pitchers: Felix Hernandez (2012), Matt Cain (2012), Philip Humber (2012), Roy Halladay (2010), Dallas Braden (2010), Mark Buehrle (2009), and Randy Johnson (2004).
Nobody is surprised to see Hernandez, Halladay and Johnson on that list and very few are surprised by Cain and Buehrle. But who in the world would have guessed that Philip Humber and Dallas Braden could have possibly thrown shutouts much less perfect games?
The history of the game shows us a number of fantastic pitchers who have hurled perfect games including Hall of Famers Monte Ward, Cy Young, Addie Joss, Jim Bunning, Sandy Koufax, and Catfish Hunter. There are very few perfect game hurlers who never made an all-star team. Humber and Braden join Don Larsen (who threw his perfect game in Game 5 of the 1956 World Series) as the only pitchers to throw perfect games who never made an all-star team. (Noting that this excludes the five pitchers who threw perfect games before the All-Star Game was created.)
You've probably heard that Hernandez's perfect game is the third this year. Notice, it's also the sixth perfect game in the last four years. That's 26% of the perfect games in the past 137 years of baseball (starting in 1876) that have been thrown in the past four years, less than 3% of MLB's history. Furthermore, 12 of the 23 perfect games have been thrown in the past 25 years. That's 52.2% in 18.2% of the history sample history.
This has made numerous sports experts ask the obvious question: why is this happening? Why are perfect games increasing in exponential fashion? There are many theories as to why.
Some claim the pitching is simply getting better and/or the batting is getting worse. Well, let's take a look. Here are the league's batting averages over the past 10 years.
2012 – .255
2011 – .255
2010 – .257
2009 – .262
2008 – .264
2007 – .268
2006 – .269
2005 – .264
2004 – .266
2003 – .264
So, yes, batting average has been on a decline, but this is not an exponential decline similar to exponential increase of perfect games! A .255 batting average is quite frankly just that: average. The lowest on record is .237 in 1968 and the highest on record is .296 in 1930. Most years saw the overall batting average between .240 and .270. It's not like batters used to average .350 and now they're suddenly averaging .190!
The fact that batters are hitting .255 is a tiny dip in MLB's lengthy history. It is the minutest of correlations to the reality that six perfect games have been thrown in the past four years. It is not the cause.
Some claim the advanced scouting techniques that exist today are the cause of so many perfect games. I don't see any correlation between improved scouting and more perfect games. I find this idea to be rather flimsy. It's not like pitchers are the only beneficiaries of scouting reports. Hitters get the reports, too! I don't have any quantifiable statistics regarding scouting. You can easily prove scouting is better than before and that there are more perfect games today, but I don't really see a line that can be drawn between the two. I mean it's also true that we've had the first African-American president over the past six perfect games, but nobody is correlating President Obama to these perfect games.
I think the scouting improvements and perfect games are mutually exclusive facts. To me, scouting is a two-way street and I don't see why pitchers would have the advantage over hitters because of advanced scouting.
One suggestion I heard last week was that there is a mentality in hitters today that they are either going to strikeout or hit a home run and nothing in between. We've seen this in a lot of batters (Adam Dunn comes to mind) and I think there is some merit to that.
In 1904, one player, Harry Lumley, struck out more than 100 times in a season while playing in 150 of the Brooklyn Superbas' 153 games that season. It wasn't for another 10 years that two players had the nerve to strike out 100 times in a season when in 1914 Gus Williams and Grover Gilmore both embarrassed themselves in triple digits. And it wasn't until 1937 that three players struck out more than 100 times, led by Vince DiMaggio. By 1961, 10 players managed to strike out over 100 times. And it has only gotten worse from there.
In 2011, 78 players struck out 100 times or more. In 2010, it was 88 players. It has gotten so bad that from 2008 to 2011 we saw a player strike out more than 200 times in each of those years. So, yeah, I think the strikeouts might have something to do with the perfect games, but it is hard to tell just how much. Obviously if a player doesn't put the ball in play, they aren't going to get a hit, and they can't walk if they are swinging for the fences. So the number of increased strikeouts is a fair correlation to the number of increased perfect games.
But here's what's really interesting to me. The first no-hitter was thrown by George Bradley on July 15, 1876. Felix Hernandez's perfect game was only the 23rd perfect game, but it was the 278th no-hitter in 137 years. That's more than two no-hitters per year and only 0.1679 no-hitters per year.
There has been a crazy increase in perfect games, but has there been a crazy increase in no-hitters? The answer is surprisingly: no. Not at all.
I mentioned before that in the past 25 years, 52.2% of the perfect games had been thrown (in 18.2% of MLB history). Well, in the past 25 years, 22.6% of the total no-hitters have been thrown in 18.2% of MLB history. That is an astounding difference.
In the past four years, six perfect games have been thrown of the 23 in history (26%). Meanwhile, only 17 no-hitters have been thrown, which is 6.1% of the no-hitters in MLB history in less than 3% of the history of MLB. And there are other four year spans with similar no-hitter counts to the current era (1914-1917 has 19, 1967-1970 has 19, 1990-1993 has 18, 1883-1886 has 15, 1905-1908 has 14).
So we are going through a typical upswing with the no-hitters, but we have gone way off the chart with the perfect games. Why is that? Experts can blather all they want about pitching getting better, about intense scouting driving these perfect games, but the reality is the only real difference we are seeing is that pitchers are throwing more no-hitters without walks. And so the only real research we can do or wild speculation we can make is: "why are batters not drawing walks during perfect games?"
The potential answer is two-fold and it starts with the batters. It is said to be an unwritten rule that you can't bunt to break up a no-hitter. This is often brought up in 0-0 or 1-0 games where a pitcher has a no-hitter going and somebody tries to bunt. And we wonder: what is more important, an unwritten rule or winning the game?
I believe that a new unwritten rule has been subconsciously implanted into the minds of batters that says, "No drawing a walk to break up a perfect game." To me, that is one of only two possible explanations for the ridiculous number of perfect games we've seen over the past five years.
The other reason is that the umpires have the same unwritten rule. I'm not sure if an umpire had a notoriously bad strike three call in Cy Young's perfect game on May 5, 1904, but I know those types of calls have happened frequently of late in similar situations.
We all remember Jim Joyce blowing the call at first base and destroying Armando Galaraga's perfect game on June 2, 2010, but I think worse calls — well, let's not go that far, calls that are nearly as bad — are being made at the plate to keep perfect games going because umpires don't want to be "the next Jim Joyce."
I believe it is this mentality held by the batters (however subconsciously) and a similar mentality held by the umpires that is driving the number of perfect games through the roof. It is not better pitching. It is not better scouting. It is simply a mental shift in players' and umpires' minds that prevents them from playing and officiating baseball the way it was meant to be.
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