And that is a first. No other perfect game has followed that bad of a performance.
I answered my own question with the first suspect, Dallas Braden. His perfect game was also his first complete game (he had four more CGs in 2010.)
To the point that complete games are an endangered species in MLB, for a variety of reasons.
Last season, there were a grand total of 36 complete games thrown in all of MLB; the Marlins led with 6 CGs (all of them thrown by Sandy Alcantara), and thirteen teams didn’t have any at all. Only four pitchers had more than one complete game, and Alcantara accounted for one-sixth of the entire MLB total.
There were four no-hitters in 2022 (including the Astros’ no-hitter during the World Series); only one of those four was a complete game.
https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/majors/2022-standard-pitching.shtml
It’s crazy how many perfectos were thrown by otherwise ordinary pitchers. For every Randy Johnson or Sandy Koufax on the list there are two or three who were never remotely the best pitcher in the game, or even on their own teams.
Then think about all the truly dominant pitchers who never threw one. It takes a lot of luck to retire 27 straight MLB hitters.
Indeed. I suspect that it’s just a matter of having “it” on that particular night.
For example, in April of 2012, a journeyman pitcher named Phillip Humber threw a perfect game for the White Sox. It was the first complete game of his career, and only his 29th MLB start (2012 was his seventh season in the majors).
After that shining moment, the rest of his season was forgettable: in his next three starts he gave up 20 runs (in 13 1/3 innings), went 5-5 for the season as a whole, with an ERA of 6.44, was dropped from the rotation in early August, and was waived by the Sox at the end of the season.
For his career, he was 16-23, with a 5.31 ERA, and a cumulative bWAR score of 1.0 over an eight-season career (i.e., he was barely better than “replacement value”). But, that one afternoon put him in the history book.
Humber threw 96 pitches.
Of the 21 games with pitch counts, 11 were under 100 pitches (a “Maddux”) and 1 was right at 100, 2 more were under 110.
That is certainly the case for Germàn. His out pitch is a curveball. If he’s off and can’t throw that for strikes he’s done. If the batter can ignore the curve and sit on a fastball he’s toast. In this game 20 out of 27 outs were on a curveball. It was nasty as hell during the game. Next game if the curveball isn’t working there will be a much different outcome.
I don’t follow baseball closely, so I’m curious. Why can’t a pitcher be more consistent with his best pitch? I know a curveball is a finely honed action that may depend on things like humidity that are beyond the pitcher’s control, but for all the millions of dollars and experienced coaches involved, how can his mechanics be so different game-to-game?
Why can’t a bowler bowl a 300 game every time? They know how to throw strikes, why can’t they do it every time?
They are human. Throwing the perfect curveball is difficult or they wouldn’t pay people millions to do it. Every physical and mental factor you can think of goes into it.
I think it’s no different than any high-level athlete: it’s incredibly difficult to be that consistent in an athletic activity. Even with hundreds of hours of practice, and access to the best training and technology to study your game, it’s simply not possible, in most cases, to precisely and perfectly repeat the same motion again and again.
Think about Tiger Woods, when he was absolutely the dominant player in golf: even then, he still didn’t win every golf tournament he was in. In 2000, when Woods was at the top of his game, he won nine tournaments, including three of the four majors…and even then, he played in 11 tournaments where he did not win.
Back to baseball: breaking pitches, such as curveballs, have very little room for error. If a curve is thrown right, it’s a maddening pitch to try to hit, and many promising minor-league batters never make it in the majors, specifically because they are unable to learn how to hit MLB-quality curveballs. But, a curveball that isn’t thrown just right winds up not curving very much (if at all), and becomes a pitch that hitters can feast on.
My understanding is also that breaking pitches rely on what is essentially an unnatural throwing motion, and that, too, may be part of why they are difficult to throw consistently.
What happens if a pitcher carries a perfect game into the 10th inning? How is the ghost (little league) runner accounted for?
That runner doesn’t count against the pitcher if he gets the outs. So if he pitches 10 perfect and his team finally scores, Perfect Game!
If it looks like a perfect game – or even a no-hitter – is in the offing, a lot of managers will allow their starter to go a lot deeper into the innings than ordinarily.
What if the runner steals third and home, but no other runners reach base? Can the pitcher have a perfect game but lose 0-1?
Why not? It’s the idiots at MLB who put the runner on base.
No, they no longer consider games that are lost to be no-hitters. So as stupid as that result would be, it would somehow not be a no-hitter.
So they put a runner in scoring position and screw the pitcher?
Like I said-idiots.
Agreed.
It’s a dumb rule. I really despise the phantom runner in extra innings.
Not so much anymore. I believe there have been a few games this year alone that a pitcher has been taken out with a no-hitter going. Germàn ended the game with 99 pitches. Knowing Boone if he had a higher pitch count he might not have made it to the 9th. A perfect game is different since by definition they would have to have a low pitch count.
In 1996 David Cone had surgery to repair an aneurysm in his arm. In his first game back he threw 7 no hit innings (against the A’s). Joe Torre took him out of the game because he had a strict pitch limit. He threw his perfect game in 1999.
The players union agreed to it. In a 162 game season they don’t want to play 18 inning games and wipe out their bullpen for days. When it started I felt this would greatly favor the home team. Statistics have not shown that at all.