Pssst… I know that! Just taking the OP’s premise to its (il)logical conclusion.
But more seriously, a lot of stat-heads now argue (correctly) that pitchers are only in control of a few things: Strikeouts, walks and homers allowed. Everything else involves other players. That is, a fly ball might be caught, or it may fall in for a hit. A cheap grounder may be an easy out, or it may dribble between two infielders and turn into a base hit.
Point being, if the batter does ANYTHING but strike out, the pitcher wasn’t truly perfect. He allowed the ball to get into play, meaning there’s a certain amount of luck involved as to whether a base hit results.
And why do they call it a “base on balls” when the player never touches the bag with his… err, never mind.
In the 2001 Little League World Series, Danny Almonte pitched a perfect game with eighteen strikeouts (a standard little league game is only six innings.) A few weeks later, it was discovered he was actually 14, two years older than the cut-off age for little league. Oops!!!
Sorry. Now that I’m at my computer at home (instead of on the phone at the airport), I can post a link to the story here. I also got the date wrong. It was not late 90s, but 1990.
Close to 27 strikeouts but none were really close to being a perfect game. The Clemens 20 strikeout games (vs the Tigers and Mariners) allowed 5 and 3 hits respectively (The Tigers getting a hit int he first inning). Kerry Wood’s was close being a 1 hitter, but that was allowed in the 3rd.
Randy Johnson also had a 20 strikeout game over 9 innings, but the game went into extra innings. So, despite him pitching “just” 9 innings, he doesn’t get to go into the record books with Clemens and Wood.
The only bit that bothers me: I can understand why it’s important to keep track of “hits that improved the field position”. But calling those “hits” uses up that word. What do we call it when the batter makes contact with the ball, regardless of outcome? It seems like there ought to be a word for that, too.
It’s called “making contact” if he gets wood on it and “putting the ball in play” if it stays in fair territory. But those aren’t measured stats so it’s not as formalized.
Actually you can get that information - there are sites where you not only can find out a hitter’s contact percentage, but his contact % in and out of the strike zone, and even within sections of the strike zone. They aren’t official stats, though.
Well, a HALF-inning, sure. If you google it you’ll find game recaps and youtube videos documenting it; it doesn’t seem to be something anyone’s obsessed on enough to document all the times it’s happened.
Exactly. And “balls in play” is actually used quite a bit in advanced statistics these days, since quite a lot of research has been done on the effect pitchers and hitters (and defense) can have on BABIP (batting average on balls in play). A extremely high or low BABIP can be a sign that a pitcher’s or hitter’s true talent level is perhaps not reflected in their current traditional statistics.
Then you can dig in to the contact rates mentioned, as well as batted ball profiles (things like ground ball %, line drive %) to see if a low BABIP is primarily due to poor contact (e.g. lots of pop-ups) or just bad luck (crushing the ball right to the defenders).
If you google it you’ll find game recaps and youtube videos documenting it; it doesn’t seem to be something anyone’s obsessed on enough to document all the times it’s happened.