No-no Fever! The Non-Hyped Sequel
Looking at a few questions from last week.
What luck!
If you don’t live under a rock, you surely know by now that Jon Lester threw a no-hitter on Monday. (Seriously, it was on World News Tonight.) He conveniently did this within the week after my post on predicting a no-hitter. We’ll discuss my little formula that I created in the spirit of early sabermetrics some more.
Mr. Seamheads Blog Founder Mike Lynch asked these questions last week:
[W]hich pitcher in history had:
1. The best odds of throwing a no-hitter?
2. The best odds of throwing a no-hitter, but never threw one?
3. The worst odds of those who have thrown no-hitters?
To Mike and the rest of you, here’s what NoHitOdds shows for seasons with 500 or more batters faced while pitching for 1 team are:
- Tommy Byrne’s 1949 campaign had the greatest single percentage at .979% for a given game. Nolan Ryan was close behind at .976% in 1972, and his 1970 and 1991 season are #3 and #4 respectively.
- To answer this, let’s again mimic Bill James to determine and expected number of no hitters by multiplying GS to NoHitOdds. This puts Nolan Ryan again at the top, with (and we’ll round the estimates here) 3 expected no-nos, Randy Johnson a distant 2nd with 1 (rounded down from 1.28), and Roger Clemens is 3rd also at 1. The Rocket wins.
- Les Sweetland, 1930, .000007%
- BONUS: Jon Lester, 2007, .07% (275 batters faced)
A few extra thoughts that popped into my head as I reviewed this creation in the last week:
- The reason for the season-level calculation is because of DER and defensive rosters in general, which generally change from year to year.
- Particularly after Lester’s no hitter, I had to wonder if there’s an extra component that could account for predicting these slim odds against a given opponent. The Royals have been noteworthy this year for being a team that doesn’t hit very well, and so even a left-hander in a park that doesn’t like southpaws a lot (thanks Mr. G. Monster) was able to do it. Calculating this would probably include some sort of batting metric and maybe even an “over-aggressiveness” component; the idea being that a poor hitting team with bad plate discipline is more likely to be no-hit.
- I think the importance of defense in a no-hitter is well accounted for here, though even I’ll continue to say this metric is far from perfect. Who now doesn’t think of Ellsbury’s catch as highly significant Monday?
- There are still a few other things not included, such as any kind of park factor or a way of accounting for the difficulty of fielding plays. The latter information, however, is hindered by the lack of fielder positioning data at the moment.
Now that there’s a no-no in the books, time to sit back and wait to see who’s next.
21 May 2008 13:52
Thanks, Matt! That’s cool stuff. I wondered if Clemens would rank first among pitchers with the best odds who’d never thrown one and now I know. You listed former Phillies and Cubs hurler Les Sweetland as the pitcher with the worst odds, which doesn’t surprise me given what I know about him, but he never threw a no-hitter. Of those who have thrown no-hitters, do you know which pitcher had the worst odds?
Thanks again!
21 May 2008 17:35
Wow, I feel rather stupid, because I read your question right and then looked for the wrong type of answer.
The correct answer to #3 is Jesse Haines in 1924, who had .0065% odds to do it. Rube Marquard at .01% is the next closest.
Next time I’ll remember to read before I type.
21 May 2008 18:25
Ah, Jesse Haines, who won only eight games in 1924, yet tossed a no-no at the Braves on July 17. Haines’ no-no was the first by a St. Louis pitcher since 1876 and the first ever N.L. no-hitter in St. Louis. It was also Tuberculosis Day in St. Louis and I’m guessing Haines’ no-hitter is the only Tuberculosis Day no-hitter as well.