When Felix Hernandez struck out Tampa Bay's Sean Rodriguez on Wednesday, the Seattle Mariner completed a remarkable achievement, just the 23rd perfect game in 15 decades of major league baseball.
What might be equally remarkable is three of those 23 perfect games have been tossed this year, with a quarter of the season left to play.
In June, the San Francisco Giants' Matt Cain frustrated 27 straight Houston Astros in a 10-0 victory.
And in 2012's first perfect game, the Chicago White Sox Philip Humber breezed past 27 straight Mariners. Like Hernandez's, Humber's completed gem came at Seattle's Safeco Field.
Add to the perfect games, three other no-hitters this season, and you have even the most casual of baseball fans asking, what makes 2012 so perfect for pitching?
After Cain's perfect game in June, SI.com's Jay Jaffe offered up a few theories: more games, more than twice as many as each team once played; lower batting averages leading to a major league average that's at a four-decade low; record-high strikeout rates; and better defense as teams use an avalanche of statistics to position their fielders more effectively, as with an infield shift.
SI.com baseball columnist Tom Verducci made a few similar points and added another, the effect on pitching of baseball's Steroid Era, the time when hitters were bulking up with performance-enhancing drugs. Baseball now tests for steroids, but Verducci says the Steroid Era in a way benefited those on the mound.
"The need and emphasis on pitching development was a response to the wild offensive years of The Steroid Era," Verducci wrote.
And just look at how pitchers have developed. ESPN.com baseball writer Jayson Stark put forth this: The number of pitchers with an average fastball velocity of 95 mph or more as has more than tripled in the past five seasons, from 11 in 2007 to 35 in 2011.
And they're getting faster at younger ages, according to Stark's report.
"Just about every guy (on a scouting director's radar) throws 90, and most of them throw 92. And you never saw amateur guys throwing in the upper 90s. Now you see it all the time. It's unbelievable," Stark quotes John Mirabelli, the Cleveland Indians vice president of scouting operations, as saying.
Writing on BigLeadSports, Jason Lisk points to better defense, i.e., fewer errors, as one reason behind the wave of perfection.
"Error rates are also much lower now, and you can’t have the ingredients for a perfect game if a fielder commits an error," Lisk says.
In a blog post after Humber's perfect game, the number-savvy publication The Economist looked at the math behind the increase in no-hitters and perfect games.
"The first reason baseball is seeing more perfect games than ever before is because it is playing more games than ever before. From 1904 to 1960, Major League Baseball had 16 teams playing 154 games a year. It now has 30 teams playing 162 each. All other things equal, that should double their frequency.
Another is that after years of high (offense), pitchers as a group have regained the upper hand over hitters of late. In 1999 and 2000 batters reached base 34.5% of the time. Last year this ratio fell to 32.1%. That decline alone makes perfect games 2.6 times more likely now than they were a decade ago.
The Economist blog also notes that Humber pitched his perfect game in Safeco Field, as did Hernandez on Wednesday, and the effect Safeco has on hitters, using the Mariners' 2011 season as an example.
Last year (Mariners) hitters reached base a mere 28.9% of the time when playing at home. That means that an opposing pitcher would be 3.5 times more likely to throw a perfect game at Safeco than he would facing an average lineup in an average stadium.
Of course, if you think The Economist has some baseball numbers clout, you need to see what the Society for American Baseball Research has put together on the math behind no-hitters and perfect games.
There are actual equations and graphs in this report as scary as those you saw in high school trigonometry.
But after all that math and countless computations, the report gives this:
"Those who have pitched no-hitters and perfect games had, in general, far superior pitching ability than the average pitcher in baseball history."
I guess that's just baseball.
© 2012 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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The cause can only be global warming.
Maybe the umpirers should check the ball more, years ago they would ask so see the baseball more,,, Maybe the pitchers arescuffing up or putting a touch of a substance on the Ball.......or maybe we have a shortage of sluggers & inhanceing on drugs has dropped drasically.....(IMO)
More like, the pitchers today grew up during the Steroid Era (as mentioned in the article), where the only way they had a chance of developing and succeeding was being able to get past the overpumped steroidal freaks.
Now that they're facing mere mortals, the balance has shifted back to the pitchers over the past few years.
Also, I think, more important than the number of pitchers who pitch fastballs in the upper 90s are the control and movement of their non-fastball pitches...THOSE are the ones that strike you out. Anyone can watch and catch up to any speed fastball...but when a change-up that's 15-20mph slower comes across afterwards, or a breaking ball comes in and literally bends the laws of physics, that becomes a deadly combo.
Alongside that, you've had 2 decades of intense scientific study of the tiniest of stats and details to promote the best overall pitching and game plan.
The momentum will swing back to the hitters as they respond to the pitchers' talent levels...it's that way with everything.
It's a "roid" bump. Just you wait and see...
More like a "response to roid bump"...ie, they became good pitchers when they were facing beasts.
Now that they're back to facing mere men, the pitchers have become the beasts (even without drugs).
Ever since baseball has been more aggressive towards players using enhanced drugs. I wouldn't be surprised this is a big chunk of the reason. Also a nice way to keep fans in their seats 9 innings.
perhaps pitchers are now using roids.
Steroid has nothing to do with the perfect games we have been seeing, as some of the comments on here are saying. It has to do with a steady focusing by every team in baseball to get pitchers who focus on ball control and ball movement, instead of just pure speed. The days of pitchers like Nolan Ryan throwing 100+ mph are over, instead being able to throw a ball 88 mph over the very corner of the plate to get a batter looking is more sought after. Its precision over power. And these pitchers are not wearing themselves out in games throwing this way.
Keith did u bother to read the part that talks abt the tripling of power pitchers?
It's the poor quality of umpiring today. The strike zone varies so much from umpire to umpire, league to league, that balls 6 inches off the plate become strikes. The ability of umpires to determine a "checked" swing for a strike or not has played a hand in two of the "perfect games". Don't forget the perfect game in Detroit where the umpire called a runner safe -
The umpires are no longer "out of sight(as we were taught in the 60's) but believe they are part of the game.
The strike zone for every player is different. From the bottom of there chest where the lettering would be on there jersey while there starting to swing to the tops of there knees. They use missile taking technology to track the ball anyways, so an umpire really isn't even needed. Plus they get a copy of every pitch with the k-zone compared to there call. I just used term k-zone, they actually use military missile tracking technology made for/by the military
What are the best sites and also sites specializing in looking through and also brochures? man air max 90
I don't think anyone is on steroids now (very risky with more testing) as much as before. So I'm thinking now these hitters aren't endowed to do the hitting they used to on steroids. Now we are seeing the undrugged athletes really playing who they are. Pitchers are pitching to normal guys who can't hit balls sometimes. So perfect games are possible. Maybe it's that way
Steroids...
So, where is the followup article which includes the graph of perfect games, no hitters, and hitting average over the past 70 years or so? This article jumps to conclusions.
What a boring game to play or watch. Pointless. I wonder why people waste their time
Try cricket. Try soccer. Hardly anythign goes on in a baseball game. swing miss swing miss, swing catch
It's as bad as NASCAR. They're making a left turn. Ooooh they're making another left turn. Ooooh they're making another left turn.
Leonardo - the beauty of baseball is its subtlety. An it's the most difficult game to play - you need multiple skills, and great hitters succeed only 3 times out of 10. Plus it's the only game not played by the clock. Not to mention overall strategy.
You want boring...you've got boring in soccer. Up and down, up and down, and ... nothing.
yea soccer is action packed.... got to love a 90 min game that could very easily end up 0-0.
Baseball? Aren't they still on strike?
What's behind it is steroids.
This doesn't sound at all like the result of performance enhancing drugs!
The number of pitchers with an average fastball velocity of 95 mph or more as has more than tripled in the past five seasons, from 11 in 2007 to 35 in 2011.
And they're getting faster at younger ages, according to Stark's report.
"Just about every guy (on a scouting director's radar) throws 90, and most of them throw 92. And you never saw amateur guys throwing in the upper 90s. Now you see it all the time. It's unbelievable,"