Sooooo close to perfection!
Posted by Chris J. on November 16, 2007
Here's a thought: use the pitcher game finder to find times when a pitcher:
- Allowed no hits
- Allowed no walks
- Faced 28 or more batters.
In other words, did the toss trickiest parts in pitching a perfect game, but didn't pitch a perfect game.
It's happened 6 times since 1957.
At first I assumed it meant errors, but no. Kevin Brown plunked Marvin Bernard in the 8th to screw himself over.
Bob Forsch had a HBP and an error by a defensive player in his game.
Bill SInger plunked Oscar Gamble. And there were some errors as well.
Joe Horlen hit Bill Freehan.
That leaves two games: Dick Bosman's 1974 game and Jerry Reuss in 1980. Bosman has no one to blame put himself. He made the error.
Jerry Reuss has a ready-made scapegoat. Shortstop Bill Russell made the error that cost him perfection. That's the only time in the last 51 seasons a pitcher lost his shot at a perfecto when one of the defenders behind him made an error.
November 16th, 2007 at 1:11 pm
You know...we've made nearly 400 posts so far, and it amazes me how many cool new things there are to come up with STILL after all those posts.
November 16th, 2007 at 1:50 pm
By setting the BF to 28 you're eliminating 2 games:
http://www.bb-ref.com/pi/shareit/u6tp
Terry Mulholland threw a perfect game except for an e5 erased by a dp : http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/PHI/PHI199008150.shtml
Lew Burdette only allowed a HBP erased by a dp
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/MLN/MLN196008180.shtml
November 16th, 2007 at 2:08 pm
... unless you're looking for pitchers who retired 27 batters, in which case Horlen shouldn't count.