Is Pitching More Dominant?

Someone tell Maddux that pitching is better now than a decade ago.

After Armando Galarraga’s performance Wednesday, articles started to pop up questioning whether three perfect games in 25 days meant that pitching had risen to dominance in Major League Baseball. While it certainly is possible that pitchers are better now than they ever have been, those suggesting that the numbers or specific performances from the first third of the season have a larger meaning are using flawed logic to make their case. For a look at one aspect of this argument, let’s explore the claim that there have been an abnormal number of dominant performances so far this season.

First, three perfect games did not occur in a 25 day span, because Armando Galarraga did not throw a perfect game. In order to make 27 straight outs, a pitcher must get very lucky in a multitude of ways. In a game against the Padres last season, Jonathan Sanchez was just about perfect, retiring every batter he faced except for Chase Headley who reached on an error by the third baseman. Sanchez did everything right, and a little bit of bad luck turned his perfect game into a mere no-hitter. An analogous situation happened with Galarraga. He did everything right, but some bad luck took his perfect game away. Just as the error behind Sanchez prevented a perfect game 13 days before Mark Buerhle’s for the White Sox, a blown call for Galarraga prevented a third perfect game in 25 days this season.

Good mullet, great fastball: unhittable.

There have been plenty of other dominating performances this season. Baseball Reference’s pitching game finder turns up 20 complete game shutouts already this season. Johnny Cueto, Mat Latos, and Matt Cain have all thrown one-hitters. Ricky Romero struck out 12 Rangers in a five-hit shutout. Jamie Moyer, at 47, threw a two-hit shutout. But do all these great performances in the first two months of 2010 mean anything? Before making any claims, we need, at the very least, to see how 2010 stacks up against recent years. There were 63 complete game shutouts in 2009, 54 in 2008, 43 in 2007, and 63 in 2006. Against these numbers, 20 in one third of a season does not appear out of line.

Just for fun, let’s go back a decade and look at 2000, when balls were flying out of parks like they never have, before or since. Major League batters hit 5,693 home runs that season, 165 more than in any other season in history, and about 600 or 700 more than they have in recent years. In 2000, there were 71 complete game shutouts (I am discarding a five-inning, one-hit, rain-shortened complete game by Gil Meche). There were six one hitters, 13 two hitters, and 14 three hitters. Pedro Martinez and Mike Mussina struck out 15 twice each, Ron Villone K’d 16 Cardinals, and Pedro lost a 1-0 game to Tampa Bay in which he set down 17 batters on strikes. And some of the season-long performances were just as impressive. Pedro put up a 1.74 ERA in 217 innings, Randy Johnson was in the middle of four straight 300-strikeout seasons, and five pitchers threw at least 240 innings. There were dominating pitching performances at both the single-game and full-season level all over the place in 2000, despite hitters absolutely pounding the ball.

Sure, in 2010, home runs are down and scoring is down. Does this necessarily mean that pitchers are better relative to hitters than they have been in the recent past? No. As Tom Tango remarks, we need a lot more evidence before we can come to that conclusion. Most importantly, we need to wait until we have more than one third of one season of data. A handful of dominating performances is woefully insufficient for making the case.