Flirting with Perfection

Have you heard enough about Mark Buehrle’s feats of perfection? (Nah, probably not.) The perfect game, 5.2 perfect innings in his next start, 45 batters in a row retired?  Amazing stuff, but here’s something new.

Back on May 7, all but forgotten now, Mark Buehrle threw 6.1 perfect innings against the Tigers before yielding a double to Placido Polanco.  That makes three starts of at least five perfect innings in the same season.  A five-inning perfect start is a significant achievement -- on average, only about 1 in every 300 starts reaches this milestone, or about once every ten years for the average pitcher.  Many pitchers go a whole career without ever taking a perfect game into the sixth inning.  So three in one season, well, that’s some serious hurling.  Has anyone else ever accomplished that?

It turns out that since 1953 (the Retrosheet era, for which we have play-by-play data), only four other pitchers have flirted with perfection, here defined as a start of 5+ perfect innings, three times in the same season. 

Juan Marichal of the Giants made four such starts in 1966 (25-6, 2.23, .859 WHIP, 6.5 K/9):

            6.0 inn., vs. Chicago, 4-12-1966
            5.1 inn., vs. Cincinnati, 4-28-1966
            5.0 inn., vs, Pittsburgh, 7-25-1966
            5.2 inn., at New York, 8-4-1966

Chris Short of the Phillies had three in 1966 (20-10, 3.54 ERA, 1.195 WHIP, 5.9 K/9):

            5.1 inn., at Chicago, 4-30-1966
            5.1 inn., vs. Los Angeles, 7-17-1966
            6.1 inn., at St. Louis, 8-10-1966

Doyle Alexander of the Yankees had three in 1976 (13-9, 3.36, 1.169 WHIP, 2.6 K/9):

            7.0 inn., vs. Cleveland, 6-24-1976 (second start after trade to Yankees)
            5.0 inn., at Baltimore, 7-28-1976
            6.2 inn., vs. Detroit, 8-2-1976 (next start)

Nolan Ryan of the Rangers had three in 1989 (16-10, 3.20, 1.086 WHIP, 11.3 K/9):

            6.2 inn., at Milwaukee, 4-12-1989
            5.0 inn., vs. Cleveland, 6-25-1989
            7.1 inn., at California, 9-30-1989

And now Buehrle, so far in 2009 (11-4, 3.45, 1.095 WHIP, 5.3 K/9):

            6.1 inn., vs. Detroit, 5-7-2009
            9.0 inn., vs. Tampa Bay, 7-23-2009
            5.2 inn., at Minnesota, 7-28-2009 (next start)

Interestingly, only one of these 16 efforts went the distance; none of the rest were completed even as no-hitters.

Marichal’s 1966 season was one of the best of all time, and with the sixth lowest season WHIP of the Retrosheet era, he would have been a top candidate to throw a perfect game.  (The lowest WHIP of the era was Pedro Martinez’s .737 in 2000; Bob Gibson in 1968 came in at .853.)  Amazingly, Marichal had only one other 5+ perfect start in his career, and it came in his major league debut, 6.1 innings against Philadelphia on 7-19-1960.

Ryan was regularly unhittable, but his high walk totals (3.7 per nine innings in 1989, compared to Buehrle’s 1.7 this year) made him less likely to throw a perfect game.  In the 23 previous major league seasons prior to 1989, he threw 5+ perfect innings on only three occasions, so the 1989 season doubled his total.  Perhaps at age 42 he had finally gained the composure necessary to maintain a perfect game.  The 7.1-inning effort against California was the longest of his career.

Short, with the highest WHIP figure on the list, is perplexing.  He had his best season in 1966, but in a decent 15-year career never flirted with perfection before or after.

Alexander caught fire after being traded from Baltimore to New York.  His run of perfect game bids came in his second start as a Yankee (7 innings), then his eighth start (5 innings) and ninth (6.2 innings). With a well-below-average strikeout rate, he relied on the men behind him to produce outs, making Alexander the most unlikely name on this list.  He pitched for 19 seasons and won 194 games, but on only one other occasion (8-23-1980) did he throw 5+ perfect innings.

And now Buehrle.  We’ve heard a lot of talk about how he pitches to contact and therefore has no business pitching a perfect game.  His strikeout rate (5.7) is below the league average (6.8), but his low walk rate helps negates that effect when it comes to being perfect. Something more is at work here, though, because perfect game bids are nothing new to Buehrle. He had three such starts early in his career (5.1 at Oakland on 5-20-2001, 5.0 vs. Tampa Bay on 8-3-2001, 6.1 at Cleveland on 7-21-2004).  With six now to his credit, he ranks second on the all-time list, one behind Nolan Ryan, in almost 500 fewer starts.

Most Perfect Starts of 5+ Innings, Career

# Complete game shortened by rain.  *ALCS game.

Nine-inning perfect games are so fluky and make up such a small sample that they can’t be used to predict who’s likely to throw one.  Perfect starts of 5+ innings are more plentiful and allow us to identify the habitually perfect.  How do you think Buehrle compares with the rest?

One thing is certain.  Whether or not he is the type of pitcher who ought to pitch a perfect game, he IS the type of pitcher who can.