Through Major League Baseball’s first 134 years, 1876–2009, some of its most interesting and uncommon events have been the 260 no-hitters (18 of which have been perfect games).1 In 2010, pitchers threw six no-hitters, two of which (and almost a third) were perfect. In this paper, we investigate whether simple mathematical models can explain the frequency of perfect games and no-hitters over the years. We also investigate whether the pitchers who actually pitched the perfect games were those who “should have been expected” to do so.
PERFECT GAMES
From 1876 through 2009, pitchers threw 18 perfect games. Each was achieved by a different pitcher and only once before 2010 (way back in 1880) did two perfect games occur in the same year (see Table 1). Of these perfect games, 17 came during the regular season. In this paper, we only consider regular-season events.
