Preston: Pitchers’ performances before and after a no-hitter
From SABR member J.G. Preston at The J.G. Preston Experience on September 7, 2015:
I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, earthquake country. Earthquakes are literally unpredictable. You have no way of knowing in advance when or where they will happen. I have the feeling baseball no-hitters are the same way, so I thought I would investigate the games that pitchers threw before their no-hitter, to see if there is anything that can be teased out that might be of some predictive value. While I was at it, I decided to look at games pitched after a no-hitter as well, to see if pitching a no-no has any implications for the next start.
The tool I’ll use in my analysis is “game score,” a measure developed by Bill James that I’ve written about earlier.
<snip>
I’m giving you this context because I’m going to look at the game scores of pitchers in games before and after throwing their no-hitter, going back to 1914, the period for which Baseball-Reference.com has game scores in its database. I’m using the definition of “no-hitter” for this purpose as a complete game of nine innings or more, and I’m excluding the five no-hitters in the Federal League of 1914 and 1915, so American and National League games only. Jake Arrieta’s no-hitter on August 30, 2015 was the 206th such no-hitter during this time period, thrown by 176 different pitchers (here’s the complete list). Not all of them have “before” and “after” game scores, as 12 came in the pitcher’s first start of the season and nine came in his last start of the year.
Read the full article here: https://prestonjg.wordpress.com/2015/09/07/looking-at-pitchers-performances-before-and-after-a-no-hitter/
Originally published: September 7, 2015. Last Updated: September 7, 2015.