Novice baseball fans (myself included when I was nine years old) sometimes have trouble with the concept of a hit, especially when someone mentions a no-hitter. That’s because over time we reduce two concepts, hitting the ball and collecting a base hit into one word, hit. You still hear announcers say, “There’s a base hit to left.” When I first talked to my wife about a no-hitter, she thought that none of the batters physically hit the ball. That happens because we shorten, “No base hits allowed game,” to, “no hitter.”
The novice idea of a no-hitter is possible if the pitcher strikes out 27 in a game. (We wouldn’t count foul balls as hit, I guess.) Could this happen? Watching Strasburg pitch last night made me wonder if it was possible. From experience, the upper limit on strikeouts in a game seems to be 20, but the best pitchers are getting better at perfecting multiple pitches, and as we saw last night, a great pitcher can make the ball dance in many directions. Imagine Strasburg facing a team after they just flew in from the west coast and are still jet lagged. It’s a free swinging, high strikeout team and Strasburg has all his pitches working that night. What might he do, strike out 24? Why not 27?
If someone did that, if someone retired all 27 batters he faced on strikeouts, what would we call that? Would we have to redefine the term no-hitter? Would it be an “Ultimate Perfect Game?” The term no-hitter or prefect game just doesn’t seem to say enough about a game like that.
And “ultra-Necciain” game, perhaps?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Necciai
I’ve daydreamed about this happening, but I don’t know if it’s actually possible on a major league level. I could Strasburg doin’ it, especially with a smart catcher behind the plate.
Wow, I never heard of Ron Necciai! That’s awesome!
Steve Nebraska throws a no-hitter like that in The Scout. A friend and I were talking about this the other day and I thought that eventually Nebraska would start having his catcher drop the ball on swinging third strikes so that Nebraska could theoretically have a 54 strikeout no-hitter.
Will never happen. Nobody has even come close. Even if you sent Strasburg to Double A he couldn’t do it.
Heck, until this year even a perfect game was a rarity.
Even if a pitcher were to get close some batters would try to bunt their way on in the middle innings.
Of course, with a big enough strike zone, and a bad enough team made up of hackers, I could see Strasburg topping 20 some day.
I try not to get too high on young pitchers though, they are so fragile. I had similar high expectations of Liriano at 22. Manager got greedy, sent him out in the 9th in a 8-1 game, he ended up throwing 111 pitches (season high) and a couple of games later he was on the DL with TJ surgery on the way.
@ptodd: I think Liriano would have ended up with TJ sooner or later. I remember the Twins announcers, probably Blyleven, talking about Liriano’s violent delivery. He just put too much behind each pitch.
@david. True, it probably was not just that one game, but it was still foolish to send him out for the 9th.
At least Strasburg is not doing the bullpen/starter shuffle. That also may have been a factor with Liriano, although some pitchers are just prone to injury (mechanics-Liriano, genes, whatever). Maybe Strasburg will have Clemens durability, time will tell.
@ptodd: Clemens did have a shoulder injury early, but once it was fixed he came back and won his first Cy Young award.
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A foul isn’t a hit, nor is a fly out or a put out or anything other than a single, double, triple, or home run.
I think a better term would be a “no-contacter,” although that would require no fouls, I guess.
Anyway, a 27-strikeout game in and of itself wouldn’t be the Platonic form of a perfect game. That would be an 81-pitch outing where each pitch was a called or swinging (but not foul) strike.
I meant ground out, not put out.
And actually, the Platonic form, I think, would be 81 swinging strikes in a row, since an umpire could easily call a pitch outside the zone a strike, thus ruining the sublimity of the outing.
Pluperfect game. That’s what you could call it.
@Slideshow Bob: I like that.
I don’t think you would need to give it a special name, because it would be remembered as “The Greatest Game Ever Pitched”.
Yeah, by everyone except the team that strikes out 27 times.
@Slideshow Bob: I love pluperfect. But would a more perfect game have only 27 pitches, each producing a dribbler back to the mound?
@bureaucratist: How about 27 weak liners/pop-ups back to the pitcher? That way you avoid involving another fielder.