Cameron: Epic pitching performances on the same night
From Dave Cameron at FanGraphs on June 14, 2012:
Last night, Matt Cain and R.A. Dickey combined to allow one hit in 18 innings, striking out 26 guys in the process. It was two of the very best performances of the year, and they happened on the same night. So, that got me thinking – how often do we get two stellar performances on the same day?
To answer the question, we’ll turn back to Game Score (again, not perfect, but good enough for this exercise), and look for dates where two pitchers both posted a Game Score of 90 or higher. Because this is kind of labor intensive and the game is a bit different now than it used to be, I’m only going back 20 years, but that should still give us a pretty good idea of how rare it is for two pitchers to be that good on the same day.
<snip>
13 times in 20 years, two guys have put up 90+ game scores on the same night. But, in most instances, one or both guys just barely clears the hurdle – only the Johnson/Schmidt duo in 2004 and the Nomo/Wood pair in 2001 featured both pitchers with a game score of 95 or higher, as we saw last night.
Read the full article here: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/epic-pitching-performances-on-the-same-night/
Originally published: June 14, 2012. Last Updated: June 14, 2012.