As the Angels take the field for their first game following Jered Weaver‘s no-hitter, we look at a question of particular urgency to them: Does a team generally play better after a no-hitter?
I gathered team results following the previous 24 no-hitters, dating back to the year 2000. Results are shown for the winning or losing streak that immediately followed the no-no, and the record over the next 10 games.
Notes: I’ve included Roy Halladay‘s postseason no-no, but limited the follow-on to the remaining 8 games of that postseason run, which I pro-rated to make the averages add up to 10 games. Also, since I haven’t figured out how to put links in a table here, I’ll include the linked list at the end of the post.
After a No-Hitter
[table id=44 /]
If there’s any real effect here, it’s mild; the collective .529 W% equates to just under 86 wins in a full season. The longest streak after a no-no was 6 wins by the 2011 Tigers, but then they dropped their next 4; the next-longest were a 4-win streak and a 4-loss streak. Two teams went 9-1 after the no-hitter, but those are relatively distant history; the more recent extremes are on the losing end, a 2-8 last year and three straight 3-7’s in 2010. The only team with a playoff no-no was upset in the next round.
Of course, if Albert bangs a couple of HRs tonight, or a game-winner, we could be looking at a whole ‘nother kettle of fish.
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Linked list:
2012-04-21 (PG), White Sox: W2 … 4-6
2011-07-27, Angels: W1 … 6-4
2011-05-07, Tigers: W6 … 6-4
2011-05-03, Twins: W2 … 2-8
2010-10-06, Phillies (NLDS game 1): W2 … 4-4
2010-07-26, Rays: W4 … 7-3
2010-06-25, Diamondbacks: L1 … 3-7
2010-05-29 (PG), Phillies: L4 … 3-7
2010-05-09 (PG), A’s: W1 … 3-7
2010-04-17, Rockies: L2 … 5-5
2009-07-23 (PG), White Sox (PG): L3 … 4-6
2009-07-10, Giants: W1 … 4-6
2008-09-14, Cubs: W2 … 7-3
2008-05-19, Red Sox: W3 … 5-5
2007-09-01, Red Sox: W3 … 7-3
2007-06-12, Tigers: L2 … 7-3
2007-04-18, White Sox: W3 … 6-4
2006-09-06, Marlins: L2 … 4-6
2004-05-18 (PG), Diamondbacks: W1 … 3-7
2003-04-27, Phillies: W1 … 5-5
2002-04-27, Red Sox: L1 … 9-1
2001-09-03, Cardinals: W2 … 9-1
2001-05-12, Marlins: W1 … 6-4
2001-04-04, Red Sox: L1 … 7-3
I am not sure that having a CG shut-out thrown against them was the response that they really wanted… 😉
[…and Joey Bats just looked woeful at the plate, with Lind not too much better. sigh]
Mark, I agree that Dan Haren and the Angels ran into a hot opposing starting pitcher.
It’s pretty hard to keep that no-hitter carryover “momentum” going when you are shut down like last night. Brandon Morrow actually looks like a pitcher this year, not just a hard thrower.
And, Mark, you are dead-on about Bautists and Lind. Jose Bautista has actually regressed from a poor start as the season has gone on. He is not even taking walks any more and he looks like he has no clue at the plate.
I’ll quit my Jays’ rant in a minute, but what other team in the league has the combined batting average for its #3 and #4 players that Bautista/Lind have. I realize the weaknesses of batting average, but still. 13 XBH in 213 plate appearances?? 🙁
Neil L & Syd Mark:
I realize Edwin Encarnacion doesn’t have a track record like Bautista or even a season the equivalent of Lind’s 2009 (?), but can a manager occassionally go with a hot hitter in the clean-up spot? Bautista and Lind stink on ice right now…but, NO, the whole psyche of Joey Bats would be destroyed by batting him 6th or 7th. Is it possible Encarnacion has figured out the Dwayne Murphy mantra and Lind and Bautista have amnesia?
Same thing with Pujols- does he really have to bat third or fourth while he absolutely is stinking the ball field up? I mean, the switch doesn’t have to be permanent – just until somebody who stinks right now finds his stroke….
Paul E. let’s be careful not to tuen John’s blog into a Blue Jays fanboard, but I totally agree. Encarnacion has been hitting cleanup at least against left handers and Bautista should be moved down into a lower-pressure slot in the batting order.
Heck, you could make a good case for switching Brett Lawrie’s and Jose Bautista’s places in the batting order.
Go ahead and fanboard. We always have room for our continental neighbors. 🙂
Pujols, last 14 games:
.093 .140 .111 .251
Morrow’s gem was the 3rd 9-IP CG this year facing 28 batters or less, following Humber’s perfecto and Matt Cain’s 1-hitter. There were 5 such games all of last year; average of 8 such games over the past 3 years.
So,the idea that a club might or might not play better after a no-hitter made me wonder: Has it ever happened that a team that LOST a no hitter then went on, in the next game to WIN a no-hitter? And, similarly, has it ever happened that a team the WON a no-hitter was, in the very next game, the victim of losing one? I suspect that the answer to both questions is “no” because no-hitters occur so infrequently. But it would be interesting to see whether such roller-coaster action has ever occurred.
Believe it or not, there is. In fact, twice
On September 17, 1968, Gaylord Perry of the San Francisco Giants no-hit the St. Louis Cardinals, with the Cardinals’ Ray Washburn no-hitting the Giants the following day. On April 30, 1969, Jim Maloney of the Cincinnati Reds no-hit the Houston Astros, with the Astros’ Don Wilson no-hitting the Reds the following day.
Also worthy of mention are the 1917 St. Louis Browns. Ernie Koob and Bob Groom no-hit the White Sox on consecutive days (May 5th and 6th) but the latter game was the second of a double-header.
The White Sox won the WS that year. The Browns, not that year or any other.
John, gotta show your blog a little love. Don’t want it to get lost in the shadow of Mt. Rushmore. 🙂
By the way, thank you for the nice little Brandon Morrow factoid after his start.
I think the fact the winning percentage is only a combined 0.529 for the pitcher’s team over the next 10 games is caused by two things.
1. The inordinate impact that the starting pitcher has on the outcome of a game, arguably more than a goalie in hockey or a quarterback in football. So the outcome of the next 10 games depends more on the quality of the opposing starters than on the beneficial carryover effect of the no-hitter. It’s an illustration of the old saw that in baseball “momentum is only as good as your next day’s starter”
2. The degree to which a no-hitter is a product of “luck”, a perfect confluence of circumstances and little events that work out to produce the favorable outcome. This perfect storm of circumstances is not so much based on the skill of the pitcher’s team or the pitcher himself as it is on chance. Mind you this “chance” favors the good pitcher, but luck still plays a role, I believe.
John, if you had to assign quick-and-dirty percentages, how much of a no-hitter is due to a pitcher’s skill and how much to circumstances beyond the pitcher’s control? 80%-20%, 70%-30%, 99%-1%? What do you think?
“How much of a no-hitter is due to a pitcher’s skill and how much to circumstances beyond the pitcher’s control?”
I’ll say 50-50. There are a lot of guys with a no-hitter who were not terribly good pitchers.
I can’t believe you say 50-50. Then why do we adulate the author of a no-hitter if so little credit should accrue to the starting pitcher.
You’re reading too much into my statement. One aspect of what I meant was, the difference between a 3-hitter and a no-hitter is often pure luck. But either way, it’s an admirable performance.
And “luck,” as I mean it, encompasses a lot more than whether a routine grounder hits a pebble. There’s luck in who you’re facing (e.g., Weaver’s no-no was the 2nd straight game that the woeful Twins were blanked). There’s luck in the plate umpire’s calls. Etc., etc.
I don’t necessarily fawn over a guy who throws a no-hitter; it depends on the degree of dominance. But I do admire all such pitchers if for nothing else than keeping their composure through the 9th.
I would guess much more than 50% luck.
We know that BABiP averages around .290 to .300. (We really want BA on contact, since we don’t want to eliminate HR. Mmmmm BACon.) The best for a pitchers career is .250 or so. For a season his ability might max out closer to .200. Let us say that for that one game his true talent BACon is .100, that is, he is inducing such weak contact/his fielders are so good, that we expect that each batted ball has a 90% chance to be fielded for an out. If he K’s 9 he must get 18 outs from batted balls. (Yes he could get some from baserunning plays, GiDP’s, CS etc.) Given a 90% success rate, that chance that you will succeed in all of 18 independent trials is about 15% Since I doubt that a pitcher’s true talent BACon ability is ever as good as .100, I think there is a great deal of luck in having all batted balls fielded. The best thing a pitcher can do to help himself is to K a lot more batters.
kds, an impeccable and thought-provoking answer to my question.
You’ve attempted to quantify what portion of a no-hitter might be attributable to position players being able to field the batted balls.
Batting average on contact or BACon …… that sounds almost “Jamesian”. 🙂
One thing I take away from your post is that a power pitcher with a high career strikeout rate is a better candidate for a no-hitter than other pitchers. Makes good sense.
That’s called getting the no-hitter done yourself. Then the only wild card is the home plate umpire’s strike zone judgement. And we’ve seen what role umpire’s judgement can play in a no hitter.
“The best thing a pitcher can do to help himself is to K a lot more batters.”
kds, your post made me look again at the linked no-hitters so kindly pulled up by John.
There were 188 strikeouts in those 23 games for an average of 8.2 per game. Certainly above the league average.
The high number of strikeouts from the games was Randy Johnson fanning 13 Braves on May 18th, 2004.
Francisco Liriano’s 6-walk, 2-strikeout excuse for a no-hitter on May 3rd, last year against the white Sox was the low-strikeout game from the list.
Would Liriano’s game be the ultimate posterchild for luck and no-hitters? He had 3 double plays turned behind him and his no-hitter lowered his ERA to a mere 6.61 and he threw more balls than strikes.
And there have been an awful lot of bad ball clubs that have been no-hit as well….If team “A” is hitting .270 and team “B” .240 , I guess there is a 3% greater likelihood of team “B” getting no hit. Since the likelihood of a no-hitter is close to 1 in 1,700 pitcher starts, that 3% increase is relatively significant.
In the 1960’s there were a heckuva lot of teams with middle infielders and catchers who couldn’t muster a .240 average – there’s nine outs right there. Throw in your corner infielders who didn’t hit for average but occassonally drive the long ball, you know, guys who could be “pitched to” and we’re drinking champagne on a more frequent basis.
Pretty simple, huh? Hey, I’m no Larry Shepherd, but at least no one I’ve coached had his arm fall off
Since it does seem apparent that we are entering another pitchers era, I’m wondering how it will effect how we view some of these players long term and who’s careers it will impact the most? We all know that many pitchers from the dead ball eras are overrated and some hitters are underrated and the opposite is true in the big hitting eras. Will someone like Halladay nearing the end of his career benefit more or less than someone entering his prime like Verlander? Will someone like Evan Longoria end up undervalued like Eddie Matthews was because he only hit .244, even tho his OPS+ was about the same as the season before when he hit 50 points higher? We may think that baseball fans are a lot more sophisticated now than they used to be and maybe that’s true in some cases but I still think that a majority don’t look past the surface. How many fans follow baseball more closely than baseball writers and yet the majority of them still overvalue RBI’s and wins or at least did so until very recently.
As always, love your stuff John
That’s a good question, and I think the greater sophistication from the HHS bunch (clearly, the trailblazers) will be more careful to evaluate from a better perspective. But I’m not sure we are entering into a new pitchers age. I think it’s just as likely that some grand old sluggers are leaving the stage, PEDS are less prevalent, and there just hasn’t yet been a great new generation of hitters to emerge.
“But I’m not sure we are entering into a new pitchers age.”
Mike L, isn’t the evidence mounting to suggest we are. It depends on how you define pitchers era.
No one is saying we are at 1968 levels, but look at the steady decline in offense, particularly in the National League over the past few years.
Even using as crude a measure as runs per game the numbers for both leagues combined are 2006-4.86, 2007-4.80, 2008-4.65, 2009-4.61, 2010-4.38, 2011-4.28, and this year, so far, 4.19.
Run-scoring really fell off a cliff between 2009 and 2010 but the overall trend seems pretty clear.
Andy blogged about this a while ago for the current season but there is more data available now. It’s not just a slow start for the hitters this year.
The much-publicized 1968 number, of course, for the major leagues is 3.42 RPG. Would the paying public stand for that kind of baseball today?
One intersting little tidbit about this year’s hitting is that the number of extra base hits per game, up to last night, is 2.87, the same as 2010 when teams scored 4.5% more runs per game (4.38 then compared to 4.19 this year).
Perhaps the differences are too small to be significant, but why are fewer runs being scored this year when there are esssentially the same XBH/G as the last two years?
While scoring is down again so far, I would not draw strong conclusions from 16% of a season, without at least examining the weather trends for this April compared to those of other recent years.
And I’m not going to do that. 🙂
Actually, John A, there is a correlation between certain types of athletic performance and the predominance of specified types of allergens- particularly tree pollens. This was first noted by the German scientist Karl Von Krank during among those training for the 1936 Berlin Olympics. 1935 was a particularly wet autumn in England and Wales, as well as across the continent. The results were somewhat surprising in that sprinters seemed less affected than the “muscle” sports like discus, javelin, and shot put. So, you might have been on to something.
Agreed, JA, but there is no denying the downward offensive trend of the last 5 years.
It is not a weather effect this year, in my opinion. It has not been a particularly cold April across the NE United States. And there have been lots of Sun-belt home games
Mike @33,
Ha-ha, very nice.
With all due respect to one of HHS’s favorite sons, Timmy Pea, your post is reminescent of his contention that the Coriolis effect affected left-handed batters differently than right-handed batters, in the Northern Hemisphere, of course.
@33, Mike L (as in Leg-puller) —
Wasn’t von Krank also the one who claimed that baseball was invented in Munich by the Piltdown Man? 🙂
John A @39, the very same Von Krank. Also a member of the Oderini, if you recall.
The bigger question is whether *anything* sparks a team (or does the opposite). It’s the old “momentum” cliche. I’ve never seen any numbers indicating that anything specific has had some consistent lasting effect. Sometimes we hear about a player giving a speech that moves the team, which may have an effect, but we can’t really quantify that.
Excellent point, eorns. It’s funny that baseball has the truism “momentum is tomorrow’s starting pitcher,” yet so many still believe in momentum.
I looked at the final career pitching WAR of each retired pitcher who has thrown a complete game no-hitter since 1918. The average career WAR for those pitchers is 32 (that’s the level of Sal Maglie, Pat Hentgen, Jason Schmidt, Chris Short). The median career WAR for those pitchers is 21.7 (Estaban Loaiza or Scott Erickson level). Note that in doing this calculation I counted each no-hitter separately, so for example, Nolan Ryan’s 83.2 career goes into the calculation seven times. I excluded active pitchers because their incomplete career WARs would have thrown off the calculation.
Some all-time greatest pitchers with no major league no-hitters: Roger Clemens, Grover Cleveland Alexander, Lefty Grove.
The lowest career WAR pitcher to throw a no-hitter: Don Black, -3.2 career WAR, who made it to the majors during World War II, pitched a no-no in 1947, and in 1948 suffered a cerebral hemorrhage while at bat during a game, ending his career.
birtelcom, what a valuable contribution to the discussion. Thank you for the information. I am trying to digest what it means.
The average and median of the pitcher’s WAR seem a lot different. Is that because Nolan Ryan pulled the average way up or because a lot of career mediocre hurlers tossed no-hitters?
And what do think your results mean in the context of skill vs. chance/luck contributing to the next no-hitter?
Greg Maddux also never threw a no-hitter, as he often said he probably never would.
Here’s are some questions I’ve wondered about for some time:
1) How much more prevalent is a one hitter over a no hitter?
2) Unless someone has sneaked by me, Johnny Vander Meer is the only one with two no hitters in a row. I’m fairly certain Whitey Ford pitched two one hitters in succession back in 1955 or 1956. How often has that been done?
Here’s where I bow to you stats experts.
B-Ref’s Play index shows 189 complete games pitched since 1918 in which the pitcher allowed no hits, and 808 such games in which the pitcher allowed only one hit. That’s 4.3 complete game one-hitters for every complete game no-hitter. Limiting the search to more recent years, 2000-2011, shows 78 complete game one-hitters and 25 complete game no-hitters, or 3.1 such one-hitters for every no-hitter. Managers are probably less likely today to allow a pitcher who has already given up one hit to finish a complete game than they used to be, but remain just as reluctant as always to take a pitcher out who has a no-hitter going. That would explain the reduced prevalence of complete game one-hitters relative to no-hitters.
Thanks, birtelcom.
Anyone willing to go after question #2? I looked up Ford’s game logs and found what I remembered: Sept 2 and 7, 1955, with a save in-between.
These were must-win games, by the way. The Yankees were in 2nd place, dueling the Indians, a half game ahead, and the White Sox, a game behind, in a race that went into the last week of the season. There is a retrospective illusion that the Yankees waltzed into the World Series in the Casey Stengel years. Actually, 5 of those 10 races were won by 5 games or less: 5, 3, 3, 2, and 1. In 1955 the margin was 3.
No stat, very nice checking on the status of the Yankees’ pennants during Casey’s watch!
Now that has to be some kind of record. Two consecutive one-hitters sandwiched around a save?
Obviously, two one-hitters in consecutive starts is way more rare than a no-hitter.
From 1918-present, there have been 9 instances of consecutive CGs allowing 1 hit or less:
— 1988, Dave Stieb
(These are among the most famous near-no-hitters, both broken up with 1 out to go. Stieb did finally get his no-no, two years later.)
— 1966, Sudden Sam McDowell
(Both one-hitters, with the hits coming in the 6th and 3rd innings.)
— 1955, Whitey Ford (as you noted)
From before the play-by-play era:
— 1944, Jim “Abba Dabba” Tobin (no-no second)
— 1943, Mort Cooper
— 1938, Johnny Vander Meer (two no-hitters)
— 1934, Lon Warneke (one-hitters on Opening Day & game 5)
— 1925, Dazzy Vance (no-no second; first game was a 1-0 win with no walks and 27 BF)
— 1923, Howard Ehmke (no-no first)
JA, thanks for the heavy lifting on the boxscores.
Interesting that you should mention Dave Stieb’s lost no-hitters in the context of luck vs. skill on the part of the pitcher.
The ground ball that literally jumped over Manny Lee’s head into center field in the bottom of the ninth on Sept. 24th, 1988 was truly an act of God. It had to be scored a hit, but what on earth did the ball hit in the infield dirt of the Mistake by the Lake?
Random aside:
Sandy Koufax never had consecutive CGs of 2 hits or less, nor even consecutive CGs allowing 3 hits in one and less than 3 in the other. He did have three straight 3-hit shutouts in ’63.
Bob Gibson had consecutive 2-hitters … in 1965. He had three straight 3-hitters … in ’62. During his 5-shutout streak in ’68, he allowed 3, 5, 4, 5, and 4 hits. Of his 13 shutouts that year, he had one 2, one 3, five 4’s, three 5’s, two 6’s and one 7-hitter.
nostat @ 27: Besides Vander Meer’s two no-nos in a row:
–In April, 1944, Jim Tobin of the Braves pitched a nine-inning one hitter and in his next start pitched a nine-inning no-hitter. In June that same season, Tobin also pitched a complete game no-hitter but that one lasted only five innings (called for darkness after the first game of the double-header that day had gone into extra innings). Tobin’s three homers hit in one game in 1942 is a record for most homers hit by a pitcher in one game. The guy was a stat-fact producing machine.
–Howard Ehmke of the Red Sox pitched a no-hitter in 1923 and in his next start pitched a complete game one-hitter. And in 1925, Dazzy Vance of the Dodgers followed a no-hitter with a complete game one-hitter.
–Two complete game one-hitters have been pitched in consecutive appearances by Dave Steib (1988), Sam McDowell (1966), Mort Cooper (1943) and Lon Warneke (1939).
Thanks again, birtelcom:
I was replying (above) while you were doing the work.