Perfection
Congratulations Mark Buehrle. Now go buy Dewayne Wise a new car or something.
If you haven’t heard, Buehrle just threw the 18th perfect game in major league history. He was brilliant, putting a powerful Tampa Bay line-up to sleep, 27 up and 27 down. Well, sort of. He got 26 batters out. Wise got Gabe Kapler out.
Inserted as a defensive replacement in the 9th inning, Wise didn’t have to wait long to spring into action. Kapler was the first batter of the inning, and he launched a pitch deep into the left center field gap. Wise took off, got to the fence, and made a leaping stab to pull the ball down from over the top of the wall. Then, he crashed into the wall and a lost handle on the ball, finally bare handing it before he crashed to the ground. Instead of a home run, Kapler was simply out #25. You can see the video here.
Buehrle did the rest, capping off history by striking out Michael Hernandez and getting Jason Bartlett to ground weakly to shortstop. 27 months after he no-hit the Rangers, Buehrle one-upped himself, and wrote his name into the history books, with perfection.
His final line? 9 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 6 K. 76 of his 116 pitches were strikes. His WPA for the game was 0.29, mostly thanks to an early grand slam from Josh Fields that put an end to high leverage situations.
Congratulations to Mark Buehrle. From all accounts, he’s one of the good guys in baseball. You’ll never be forgotten now.
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Fantastic to follow. IM’s, text messages were flying and I finally found a link to the game so I could watch the final three outs without being extorted or shortchanged by Gameday while at work.
Underrated his entire career, yet amazingly consistent throughout. Congrats to Buehrle and the White Sox. What a game.
honestly, i am not very impressed by this
yeah perfect games are for chumps
Agreed. That Dewayne Wise and Mark Buehrle are obvious steroid abusers tarnishes such a remarkable feat.
Boys: Please leave the Internet to us adults, or I’ll tell your moms. Great performance by Buehrle.
Yeah, perfect game and no-hitter in 3 seasons, that’s nothing at all.
i am just saying, he is unlikely to maintain a .000 babip in the long run
I’m not sure how much time you’ve invested in trying to be humorous on the internet, but you should stick to your day job.
Someone should show Wise the first two statements of this article so he can be the only Quad-A guy to roll in a Porsche.
“I bought everyone watches after the last one. That was an expensive no-hitter,” he said. “This one will probably be more expensive.”
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/recap?gameId=290723104
And Wise is now the only guy in baseball who owns an entire Swiss watch factory.
No-hitters and perfect games are two of the most overrated accomplishments in baseball.
Overrated how? Do you mean that individual pitchers get too much credit for an outcome that is heavily influenced by luck? Or do you mean that it’s really not all that hard to do.
I have some sympathy for the former argument, but relatively little for the latter.
A no hitter and PARTICULARLY a perfect game is a relatively rare accomplishment, and should be celebrated on that basis alone. Additionally, while it is possible to pitch a ‘more’ dominant game that is not a no-hitter/perfect game (people always point to Pedro’s 1-hitter with 17Ks in NY in sept. 1999 as an example of this), pitchers who perform such feats are generally dominant (again, this is particularly true of perfect games).
I don’t see a problem celebrating the 18th perfect game in MLB history (19 if one count’s pedro’s 9 perfect innings as an expo) as something special. They are rare enough that they ARE something special, even at the risk of giving a bit too much credit for such an event to the pitcher.
Almost 20 1/2 if you count Haddix and his 12 perfect innings, and 21 if the Giants had something more than a caveman on third, etc.
Overrated how? Because lowly 4+ career ERA guys have them, and the greatest pitcher of the modern era, Clemens, never threw either. You have to be amazingly lucky to throw either, and it doesnt show a players true skill. Celebrate it all you want, but ill be damned if people start calling him the best in baseball.
Almost 20 1/2 if you count Haddix and his 12 perfect innings, and 21 if the Giants had something more than a caveman on third, etc.
Overrated how? Because lowly 4+ career ERA guys have them, and the greatest pitcher of the modern era, Clemens, never threw either. You have to be amazingly lucky to throw either, and it doesnt show a players true skill. Celebrate it all you want, but ill be damed if people start calling him the best in baseball.
So look at it as a team credit, which it is. Particularly in this case, where Buerhle owes everything to Wise for robbing that home run.
As a team, it’s an impressive feat. The ERA of the pitcher on the mound doesn’t mean squat.
Who was calling him “the best in baseball”? But then, putting words in other people’s mouths and then refuting them is how to look smart on the internet. Oh, wait, no it isn’t.
Oh, and you should learn to use a better stat than ERA when making your argument — especially on this site. (We’ll leave your somewhat disturbing passion towards Roger Clemens for another post)
Overrated? What? So I guess 18 in over 100 years makes them pretty meaningless…
Perfect games are not overrated. They should be celebrated for what they are. However, the media using them as indicators of the quality of a pitch is very overrated.
What, how can you even think this, never mind say it? The fact that there have been so few of either happen indicates that it is in no way overrated.
People might use a perfect game or a no-hitter to overrate a hitter. And they might ignore the masterful defense often required to pull one off. But I don’t see how that changes the fact that it’s so rare, and therefore so exciting.
That should say overrate a pitcher.
Buehrle absolutely destroys the peripheral based prediction systems. It is nice to see exceptions to rules.
Not really. His career ERA is 3.8, his career FIP is 4.16.
He’s also given up a well above average number of unearned runs in his career, which is to be expected with his low K% and FB%. 829 career earned runs, 99 career unearned. That’s 89% of his runs allowed showing up in his ERA. The AL average in 2008 was 93.6%. Add back in that 4.5% of his runs (41.76, round down to 41), and you have a career ERA of 3.97, over half the difference. That leaves less than a quarter of a run, hardly destroying.
Actually, FIP isn’t a projection system. It’s just a way of estimating a pitcher’s ERA based on their peripheral stats. It has a utility, a limited utility, and the fact that it consistently missed Buehrle suggests that there are some flaws in the underlying assumption of FIP. Namely, batted balls are out of a pitchers control.
No, what Buehrle’s performance really obliterates, year after year after year without fail, are projection systems like PECOTA. And the writers at BP admit that they fail on Buehrle annually. PECOTA hates him, thinks he’s a collapse risk every year, and every single year (with the exception on 2006) he beats their projected ERA by .5 to 1 run.
So Buehrle really does destroy projection systems. And he’s all the more fun to watch for it.
No they’re not. Off the top of my head, hitting for the cycle and long hitting streaks seem way overrated compared to no-hitters and perfect games.
Cycle is the silliest of the lot.
Four base hits, three of them home-runs, nothing all that special, Soriono did it 6 September 2008 for example. But if he’d only known he could have skipped touching third base on one of those, and passed a runner between third and home on another, been called out TWICE for silly baserunning errors, and he’d have done something special, he’d have hit for the cycle!
Bah humbug.
While I agree that the cycle is generally overrated, your criticism kind of misses the point: the cycle is celebrated not because it is harder or better, but because it is rarer. It’s like watching your car’s odometer click over to all sevens (or whatever) — it’s not really special, but it’s still weirdly cool.
Pitchers winning 20 games in a season, and all-star selections being used as HOF criteria are also way overrated.
Some people are getting trolled hard right now.
http://www.amazinavenue.com/2009/7/23/960365/dewayne-wises-updated-fangraphs
LOL CHECK IT OUT
Would Granderson of made that catch?
Why is it so hard for people to separate issues? Mark Buehrle is probably overrated in general. Yes, people probably put too much stock into no-hitters/perfect games. Both of Buehrle’s no-hit performances were terrific.
How is he overrated when he is routinely predicted by almost all projection systems to be bad? He outperforms the systems year after year, save one blip in 2006.
I’m not talking about projection systems. I hate to tell you this, but the vast majority of baseball fans (on whom I’m basing my opinion) do not even know what projection systems are let alone what they say about Mark Buehrle. He’s overrated because he wins a lot of games and has a reputation as a “gamer”. Now, thanks in large part to the no-hitter and perfect game, people definitely think of him as one of the best pitchers in baseball, which he is not. He’s a very good pitcher who most teams would love to have, and in my opinion he’s overrated by fans and media. Sorry.
Your argument makes no sense. Calling Buerhle overrated based off fans and media, the same fans and media who only associate greatness with power and ks is just silly. Buerhle is certainly underrated.
I’m sure Buehrle has a reputation in some parts for being better than his stuff implies, and the fans who use these achievements to say he’s one of the best pitchers in the game, well that’s their problem.
He most certainly is under appreciated in the sense that people ask the same questions about how he is an effective major league pitcher year after year, and don’t seem to grasp the concept of pitchers who don’t have overpowering stuff that win games. Some comments here make it seem like a perfect game is only perfect depending on who threw it, as if Mark’s accomplishment is lower because he’s not Tim Lincecum or Roy Halladay.
Buehrle is most certainly underrated.
When you talk about something that has only happened 18 times in the history of baseball, that is REALLY something. Each team plays 162 games a season and with 30 teams in today’s MLB, there are a LOT of chances and yet this has happened only 18 times ever – that’s nuts!
As far as the most dominant pitched baseball game I have ever seen, I have to go with Rookie of the Year Kid K (Kerry Wood) with his 20K, 1 “hitter” back in 1998. The one “hit” he gave up was in the 3rd inning and should have been called an error by a lousy 3B named Kevin Orie. Only 7 other putouts in the field kind of limits the luck factor with great plays saving your bacon like Wise did today for Buehrle.
In case anyone else is lazy and doesn’t wanna look it up, here is the list (revised of course):
Lee Richmond (6/12//1880)
John Montgomery Ward (6/17/1880)
Cy Young (5/5/1904)
Addie Joss (10/2/1908)
Charlie Robertson (4/30/22)
Don Larsen (10//8/56)
Jim Bunning (6/21/64)
Sandy Koufax (9/9/65)
Catfish Hunter (5/8/68)
Len Barker (5/15/81)
Mike Witt (9/30/84)
Tom Browning (9/16/88)
Dennis MartÃnez (7/28/91)
Kenny Rogers (7/28/94)
David Wells (5/17/98)
David Cone (7/18/99)
Randy Johnson (5/18/04)
Mark Buehrle (today!)
Dennis MartÃnez (7/28/91) roids
Kenny Rogers (7/28/94) roids
David Wells (5/17/98) roids
David Cone (7/18/99) roids
Randy Johnson (5/18/04) roids
Mark Buehrle (today!) gene doping
Vodka is not a steroid!
What an interesting and insightful response.
You are probably one of the most annoying people on the internet. Shouldn’t you be hanging out on Reddit or something similarly lame
Can the MLB not afford a decent streaming video set up?
Does anyone have a list of those games with the number of strikeouts? Seems to me that a perfect game with so few strikeouts is rarer yet.
not rarer than a perfect game with a ton of walks
The pre-’56 numbers are from baseball-almanac.com, after thats it’s retrosheet:
Lee Richmond (5)
John Montgomery Ward (2)
Cy Young (3)
Addie Joss (3)
Charlie Robertson (6)
Don Larsen (7)
Jim Bunning (10)
Sandy Koufax (14)
Catfish Hunter (11)
Len Barker (11)
Mike Witt (10)
Tom Browning (7)
Dennis MartÃnez (5)
Kenny Rogers (8)
David Wells (6)
David Cone (10)
Randy Johnson (13)
Mark Buehrle (5)
I believe Buerhle struck out six.
All the hate is ridiculous. Must be Rays fans (or Cubs fans). You look at that list of perfect games, and you’re looking at a lot of legends and hall-of-famers. These are all guys who were at the top of their game when they threw their perfect games. Not only that, Buehrle’s had two no-nos now, and some on that list only have one.
Yet, Buehrle has never been called future hall-of-famer. He’s not a pitcher people generally think of as today’s elite. He’s the definition of underrated… a guy who wins games and does his job but doesn’t flash with high strikeout totals or wicked stuff.
A no hitter or perfect game does not depend on luck… thats a misnomer. It does depend on having a good defense behind you, as Wise showed. But to say that a perfect game is lucky… that denies that the pitcher has any ability to limit hitters with his pitches. If you believe that, then why not get rid of pitchers and just put the ball on a tee? Obviously, the people on the perfect game list had the stuff to get batters out. Maybe its time we realize that Buehrle’s got it too.
Hell, I’m a Cubs fan and I’m happy for him. A perfect game is an amazing achievement, and it’s his second no-hitter. That’s pretty damn special. I agree that he’s at least somewhat underrated, so it’s nice to see a good pitcher get his due.
That said, Wood’s 20 strikeout game is still the most dominant performance ever, and I find it somewhat amusing that Zambrano had a higher game score for his no-hitter.
Great day for baseball when something like this happens, though.
The hate isn’t because these people are Rays fans or Cubs fans. It’s that there is ALOT of stupid stupid commenters on this site.
Which is astounding considering what this site is. I fail to understand how these people even end up at a place like Fangraphs.
Rays fan and i didn’t hate. I see it as a push for FM to make a move. I was just wondering if anyone thinks if Granderson would of made that catch
Damn you Uribe, could have been two perfect games. That would have been incredible.
Damn you Pirates offense of decades ago, you could have had the Perfect game that put everyone else’s to shame.
I agree that the media overrates perfect games. Obviously Buehrle was pitching well today (6/0 K/BB), but the gushing that Olney and Vina were doing on Sportscenter about his stuff was embarrassing. Sure, he probably had better stuff than he did in his last start, but it was likely only marginally better. The point people are making when they say that perfect games are overrated is that giving up no hits on 21 balls in play, as Buehrle did, is considerably more luck-based than skill-based.
The BABIP gods must be raging up there.
Interesting how Buehrle’s WPA today was only .270. I’d be curious if any of the other perfect games had a lower WPA.
Oh, nevermind. re-read the post…
I don’t see what the big deal is, Buehrle only had a .270 WPA score on the day. Performances like that happen all the time.
Just because his team was on top early does not make it any harder to record 27 straight outs. Know what your stats mean.
I think(hope) he was being sarcastic.
Geez, tough crowd.
I thought this would be a Garrett Jones article.
hahhaha oh my god…this is amazing.
buehrle is grape. i don’t know how anyone wouldn’t think of this as exciting and fun. lots of luck, of course, but what a performance. buehrle has retired all 27 hitters faced three times in his career, i really wonder if that’s ever been accomplished.
Great article!
I knew a ton of people would downgrade a perfect game by Buerhle. If this was Roy Halladay or CC Sabathia with the same stats, people would be stroking them like this has never happened before. Couldn’t have happened to a better guy.
Only on fangraphs could I hear “WELL HE ONLY HAD A .270 WPA!” to shrug off one of the rarest one game feats in baseball.
For those that are kidding, well played.
For those that are serious, congrats, you are why so many people in the media hate us.
I’m pretty sure they were all kidding, since Dave pointed out in the piece why it was so low.
And so many people in the media still hate us without needing more reasons. But they’re old, and progress marches on.
Good for him for doing something “flashy” to remind people that he’s a pretty damned good pitcher. I do tend to forget about him. He’s not on my team, and he’s not in my team’s division, and generally he’s just quietly good. Anyway, bravo.
Not sure I understand why your tone towards Buehrle is a little bitter. You seem to concentrate on Wise’s catch more than the fact Buehrle pitched an immaculate game. What perfect game doesn’t have a great play to keep it intact?
To say that Buehrle was mostly devoid of “high leverage” situations is ludicrous. Every pitch after the 6th inning should be considered a high leverage situation, especially with the lineup Tampa Bay sports every day.
Is it bitter to shine some light on an outstanding play that will be a fuzzy memory in a few years but without it the perfect game is toast? Wise is never going into the record books with Buehrle, give him his moment. Ending the piece noting that one of the good guys will now never be forgotten doesn’t sound bitter to me.
And to the naysayers talking down perfect games as overrated as they don’t reflect pure pitching brilliance; that’s exactly why perfect games are so great. It doesn’t matter how good the guy on the mound is if the rest of the team can’t play enough defence to make the outs. It should almost be a team stat, with the pitcher MVP of the perfect game. If anything its underrated.
Just to synthesize, yes, there is a lot of luck involved in such a feat. Think of all of the dominant SPs in just the past 30 years (Clemens, Pedro, Ryan, Guidry, etc. etc.) and most with the exception of Randy Johnson are hugely improbable candidates. David Wells? David Cone?? Tom Browning??!! Mike Witt???!!! All good pitchers and I’m not selling them short but if you had a list in front of SPs over the last 30 seasons and you could win a million dollars for one guess, those are not guys (Buerhle included) that would not make you rich. Sure, they’re all NICE SPs with good careers, but perfect? Improbable at best. There is little control that the pitcher has over if someone boots a ball or even if the defense is set in the right place to begin with. The fact that Wise was even IN the game means that Ozzie deserves a Rolex! If Kapler hits that another foot or if Wise is not where he started makes this all moot. Yes, there is skill involved on the part of the SP, but it is THE ultimate TEAM effort and all of the stars have to line up. Mike Mussina should have made this list had it not been for Carl Everett’s “skillful” bloop . If Knoblach is playing back a little more, he makes the catch. Shoulda, woulda, coulda. Didn’t. No one talks about it. You missed out on history by that much. Good pitcher, nice career, just another near brush with greatness. Welcome to the list – next!
Minor quibble. It hurts to access the ‘ole memory banks on this one, but as I recall Everett’s bloop landed in shallow LCF, and frankly nobody was anywhere near it. Clean single. No amount of Jeter (not Knobby) playing back would’ve changed it. I fantastic defensive left fielder probably doesn’t catch it.
Such was Mike Mussina’s luck. He was utterly dominant that day.
Buerhle is the real deal. The only time i can recal him missing a start was two years ago when a comebacker bruised his bone something purple. He didn’t even miss the start, just had it postponed. The guy is good for 25+ quality starts a year and has a sub four era in an AL jokepark. I’m a die hard sox fan and have enjoyed watching him at home openers for the past decade. The best part is, given his rubber arm, he can probably pitch till 40. Big ups 56. Your era plus is better than Peavy, and so is your durability. recognize.
Congratualtions Mark Buehrle. Whatever you did the rest of your career beeing seperate, a perfect game is quite a feat.
Well, not overrated, but the credit for it is WRONGFULLY given directly and (most times) completely to the pitcher, which is bullshizm, in my humble.
For a perfect game to happen, EVERYBODY HAS TO BE PERFECT, not just the pitcher. Keeping all 27 batters from reaching base is hardly all on the pitcher, and it shouldn’t take great plays like Wise’s for the other guys to get due credit. Buehrle only struck out 6, so his teammates had to assist on 21 of those 27 outs, NOT TO MENTION, the catcher Castro had never even caught Buehrle before.
Of course it’s a great accomplishment for a pitcher, but he’s got one guy in front of him and 7 guys behind him that do plenty to achieve The Perfect Game. While I agree the pitcher undoubtedly has the largest part in it, he’s not the only one making plays and he’s not the only one dealing with the pressure, especially when the ball is put in play. Nobody wants to be the goat that screws up a no-no or perfect game, and it takes focus from everyone on the field to get it done.
It’s a huge team accomplishment that is portrayed as an individual accomplishment. The catcher has to catch every ball not tip-fouled, popped up into his range, or put into play, and the 7 guys behind the pitcher have to make every throw and grab count (21 times, give or take, in the case of the Sox).
A whole helluva lot has to happen to complete a perfect game and although it begins with the cat on the bump, I think it ends with the 8 guys around him.
I don’t agree with the fact that it’s interpreted as a one-man accomplishment. Nothing could be further from the truth.
As an individual accomplishment? Overrated
As a team accomplishment? Severely underrated
Where can I find a plot of all the pitches he threw that were called balls/strikes? I’m just curious to see how much help he did or didn’t get from the homeplate umpire.
When people talk about “stuff” they forget that good or great “stuff” doesn’t always mean high velocity and/or strike outs. Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine both had great “stuff” but didn’t throw hard. Movement is a huge part of the “stuff” factor.