Matt Cain’s Place in History
Matt Cain just threw the 22nd perfect game in baseball history, which is of course an amazing accomplishment. But, through the way he dominated on the way to his perfect game, Cain actually joined an even more exclusive club – guys who have posted a Game Score above 100 in a nine inning game.
Before tonight, only nine pitchers had ever racked up a game score of 100 or better in nine innings. It was more common back when starters kept going when a game went to extras, but we want to compare apples to apples, so those are out. Sorted by Game Score — an imperfect measure, for certain, but one that does okay for this purpose — here are the 10 best nine inning performances of all time.
| Player | Date | Tm | Opp | IP | H | R | BB | SO | HR | GSc |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kerry Wood | 5/6/98 | CHC | HOU | 9 | 1 | Â | Â | 20 | Â | 105 |
| Nolan Ryan | 5/1/91 | TEX | TOR | 9 | Â | Â | 2 | 16 | Â | 101 |
| Sandy Koufax | 9/9/65 | LAD | CHC | 9 | Â | Â | Â | 14 | Â | 101 |
| Matt Cain | 6/13/12 | SF | HOU | 9 | Â | Â | Â | 14 | Â | 101 |
| Brandon Morrow | 8/8/10 | TOR | TBR | 9 | 1 | Â | 2 | 17 | Â | 100 |
| Randy Johnson | 5/18/04 | ARI | ATL | 9 | Â | Â | Â | 13 | Â | 100 |
| Curt Schilling | 4/7/02 | ARI | MIL | 9 | 1 | Â | 2 | 17 | Â | 100 |
| Nolan Ryan | 7/15/73 | CAL | DET | 9 | Â | Â | 4 | 17 | Â | 100 |
| Nolan Ryan | 7/9/72 | CAL | BOS | 9 | 1 | Â | 1 | 16 | Â | 100 |
| Warren Spahn | 9/16/60 | MLN | PHI | 9 | Â | Â | 2 | 15 | Â | 100 |
In terms of raw performance, this matches Sandy Koufax’s perfect game from 1965 as the best perfecto ever, and matches one of Nolan’s Ryan no-hitters where he did most of the work himself. The only nine inning game in history with a higher game score was Kerry Wood’s 20 strikeout one-hitter. It’s pretty amazing that most of us were alive to see both.
Baseball!
Baseball!!!!
MATTHEW THOMAS CAIN!
What a horse.
What’s the record for best two combined game scores from different pitchers in one day? David Wright could have made it two perfect games today…
Dickey’s game score was still a 95 today.
*only* 95 – what a loser!!
And someone wouldn’t have signed him: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/why-i-wouldnt-have-signed-matt-cain/
(And before you say I’m hating, I’m not – I thought the Melky-Sanchez trade was bad for the Giants. We all make mistakes, even the best of us, which you are Dave.)
What a game. What a pitcher. Matt Cain. Matt Cain.
This is such a stupid comment. Leave it where it is.
it’s not stupid at all. some people need to get some humility.
I get the point but the comment is stupid. One game, perfect or not, does not factor into a contract evaluation. Its Cains performance over the entire life of the contract that matters. We can’t even make this call yet.
it’s not even one game, it’s Cain’s entire season and career for that matter. Face it, people make declarations based entirely on certain numerical analyses or precedent and sometimes they are just wrong. Sure, we don’t know if Cain will “earn” his contract yet but he’s well on his way to doing just that.
Had the situation been reversed and Cain had been laying an egg since inking his deal, you don’t think all the propeller heads would be proclaiming how brilliant they are for bashing the deal??
He was already under contract for this year…
I agree completely with Dave Cameron’s analysis in that article. Nobody could reasonably have predicted that Cain would be as good this season as he has been thus far.
And the jury is still out, as that contract has many years to go. If Cain has a serious injury or collapses within the next couple of years, the Giants will be big losers.
Given the past record of pitchers who were excellent to elite for a while, that is not all that unlikely.
Lots of different opinions here and they all hold merit. 100 million dollar contracts are risky but my thinking when they signed Cain was that it was both the proper move and that they gave the 100 million to the right pitcher. When you look at size and mechanics it’s much more likely that Cain will hold up through his early thirties then Lincecum. We also need to remember that teams have a much better idea as to the actual health of a pitcher’s arm and body then any of us do. They also know exactly what kind of makeup each player has and their have been a couple minor incidents with Lincecum but none that we know of with Cain. One prfect game does not make this contract worthwhile yet I disagre that we had no idea that Cain would be this good this year. He’s been pretty damn good over the last three or four years. That’s usually a pretty good indicator for a healthy 28 year old pitcher as to what you may think his performance might be. Cain has proved it over and over and over again; xFIP and SIERA are useles tools for predicting his performance but even if you want to use those, he’s been trending the right way in both of them since 2006. Well actually xFip is a pretty good indicator of who Cain is as a pitcher; subtract about a run from his xFIP and you have his ERA. By the way as far as 100 million dollar contracts are concerned Matt Cain’s looks like it might work out much better then Ryan Zimmerman’s.
Isn’t this the same dude who said the Mariners are/were the #6 organization in baseball.
his xPerfectGame tells me he is a third starter at best. AT BEST!!!
.102 WPA? Good game, but not great.
WPA is irrelevant to starters. He was pitched with a 5+ run lead for almost the entirety of the game
daniel, you new to the internet?
First thing I thought about was where he ranked game score wise. Thank you Fangraphs! Yay statistics!
Ha the first thing I did this morning to see if the gamescore was posted too!
His gamescore and WPA in this game are at best mildly interesting trivia, as those statistics have little, if any, value.
NO ONE is citing game score like it means anything besides being completely trivial, but its still fun to look at nonetheless, ya raging douschenozzle.
Buzz, I gave you a +1. I agree with the “its still fun to look at nonetheless,” but I disagree with the “NO ONE is citing game score like it means anything besides being completely trivial,” as almost all of the commenters seem to be taking it very seriously.
The +1 is for your epithet. I am taking it as a complement.
“almost all of the commenters seem to be taking it very seriously”
I think your misreading them, then; I think it’s more “man that was one awesome performance, and look, his game score just further underscores that point!” not “game score is the be-all, end-all of pitching metrics” or anything of that sort. People are just amped for having seen one fine performance, not making game score out to be anything more than it is [at least that's how I've read it].
Yes that was one fine pitching performance last night. One fine performance…two. TWO fine pitching performances, that’s all, just the two…THREE. Three fine pitching performances in one night…
What an amazing performance we just witnessed! The best game I have ever seen pitched. We must all appreciate these kind of special moments in baseball.
Well done Matt Cain.
Yeah, not really. I’m an Astros fan, and I thought this game totally sucked.
Flah, some kindof. I’m a Feathers fan, and I felt this day was pretty much alright.
It would be hard watching this and being an Astros fan!
it would be hard being an astros fan, period.
Blanco’s catch is one of the greatest defensive plays ever.
That was some serious defensive leverage.
It was a very good play, but don’t go overboard.
The play was, however, a good illustration of how important the play of the rest of the team is for a complete game or perfect game.
Wow… this is way better than a 1600! And I only got a 1510, 10 points lower than Ross Ohlendorf. I am still better than him at pitching though.
Good job Matt Cain.
I bet most people at FanGraphs are losers who could only score in the mid 1300s (low 700 math/ mid 600 verbal) and they don’t get the women (and I am married to a hot wife). They all wish they can be like me, bewildering hitters and making millions.
I got the exact same score, including the breakdown, as Hamels. How come I’m not an ace pitcher?!
Intangibles. There are some things that metrics can’t measure, Todd.
Your joke is bad and you should feel bad
Why should he feel bad? Are you serious? Hot girls are way, way, way better then owning incredible math skills.
Well speak for yourself there, sailor…
^ha. who knew the fangraphs crowd has such 70s pop culture knowledge.
Yes, but let’s not gloss over that Cain threw 125 pitches, which is the most ever thrown by a pitcher in a perfect game. So that makes this the least efficient perfect game ever. He could have been better.
That’s a clown comment, bro.
what would be a pitcher’s score if he struck out 27 in 9 IP perfect game on 81 pitches?
It would be 114.
50 points + 1 point per out (27 points) + 2 points per inning completed after the 4th (10 points) + 1 point per strikeout (27 points) = 114
What would we call it? A hyper-perfect game?
Steve Nebraska!
@trent phloog
We would call that a HOLY SH*T THAT WAS AWESOME Game
But what about his xFIP?
Is that you Heyman?
If it were Heyman, his comment would have said, “Cain got only 1 win for his effort, so this performance is equally impressive as every other pitcher victory.”
Matt Cain did not pitch to the score.
Wood’s game should be put into context too. Look at the lineup he face. HOFers in Bagwell and Biggio plus guys like Bell and Alou. That team won 102 games.
The one hit probably should have been an error on Orie too.
Yeah, but he got a lot of borderline calls and even admitted as much recently on the Dan Patrick Show. Watch the strikeout montage from that game, the strike zone was massive.
Not that this takes away too much from the performance, but if we’re looking at context with things like lineup strength, then it’s worth mentioning.
Wood’s pitches were so ridiculous that day, I think the ump was just guessing.
He might have had a few walks, but he was unhittable. I don’t recall any hard hit balls in that game.
That .000 BABIP is clearly not sustainable over the long haul.
But that 0.0% HR/FB rate is an outlier too. Matt Cain is, yet again, the exception to the rule.
But Babip takes 8 years to normalize. Oh wait; 05, 06, 07, 08, 09, 10, 11, 12. Well it’s quite clear he should have a Babip around .557 the rest of the year.
The winning percentage in perfect games is an unsustainable 1.000, too. It will regress to the mean eventually.
I will look back at this fondly.
Bad night for BABIP, FIP, and xFIP.
I know it’s already been posted once, but…..
Matthew Thomas Cain!
Don Larsen, Yankees, 1956 World Series: Perfect game, 7 K’s.
How can throwing a perfect game in the World Series not even make this list?! It has to be one of the greatest performances ever.
It didn’t make it because this is a list pitchers with a particular stat. None of the guys who have hit 4 home runs in a game are on it either.
Larsen had a gamescore of 94 that game: http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYA/NYA195610080.shtml
That’s a really good score, but it speaks to just how ridiculous Cain’s performance was.
It would be nice if game score (or some alternate equivalent) made any effort to incorporate the opposition. Might put Larsen’s game into better perspective.
Or wasn’t so heavily weighted to award high strikeout games. In a sense, that’s all game scores are: great games with high strikeout totals. I think accomplishing a no-hitter or low-hit shutout with a minimum number of pitches should be taken into account into game score.
Cain now one of the NL CY Young Frontrunners? He has improved every year hes been in the League, but now his FIP is at an amazing 2.59 for the year, to go along with his even better 2.18 ERA. Matt Cain’s ERA almost always has out performed his FIP though. The giants haven’t seen pitching like this since Lincecum in his prime.
Cain, Dickey & Stras would have to be the top 3 candidate for the award thru this point in the schedule. Others a half tick back include Gio, Lynn, Kershaw, & McDonald.
$20 to whomever had Dickey in that group at the beginning of the season
I’m not sold on Lynn. I think Stras and Gio need to get more love though. I think a lot of people are just forcasting Stras to have less innings, which is really likely. However, Strasburg Ks a ton of guys and doesn’t walk many, does all the FIPish stuff we like and also gets a lot of wins like everyone else likes. Plus he’s on a contender which somehow means something to the voters it seems. Plus he pitches in the best division, which should mean something. He’s not seeing the Padres, Rockies, or Astros and Cubs all the time.
If the season ended today it really wouldn’t be much of a debate, would it? Cain leads the majors in innings and just to underscore how dominant he’s been, if Dickey (the only other NL pitcher with a <1.00 WHIP) pitches a perfect game next time out his WHIP would still be higher than Cain's. The only interesting thing to me would be to see how many people buy into in FIP and fWAR so much that they'd actually try to argue for Greinke. (Not many, I suspect.)
“The only interesting thing to me would be to see how many people buy into in FIP and fWAR so much that they’d actually try to argue for Greinke.”
Kind of an ironic statement, no?
are you kidding?! Cain and Dickey have nearly identical stats. Saying it wouldn’t be much of a debate bc Cain’s WHIP is a tick lower isn’t a convincing argument.
Spike, the stats may be close but when they all point in the same direction then what’s to seriously debate? They’ve both been tremendous so far but when Cain has more innings and better WHIP, ERA, FIP, K/9, BB/9, BA/OBP/OPS against, then what exactly would be the argument for Dickey other than W-L record?
when they are so close in peripherals, you can look at who they’ve each faced. Cain’s last 3 opponents – Astros, Padres & Cubs (the worst 3 teams in the NL) and he feasted on all of them as expected.
Dickey last 3 were Tampa, Washington & StLouis (3 of the NL’s best teams) and he whitewashed all 3.
When they are this close, there’s no way to call it clear for anyone as of now. It’s a meaningless exercise anyway since there is no mid-season award.
Only pitcher to look like Bobby Hill AND throw a perfect game, wow!
Do you mean the embonpoint David Wells?
lol, now that was funny.
I think Matt Cain added more WAR from this one game then I have in the whole last three seasons combined.
I have a better chance getting a Fields Medal with my 740M (and I am bad at math) than Chone getting an MVP.
Maybe so, but I sure as heck wish I hadn’t picked you on Fangraphs: The Game yesterday. You sucked my ass- and cost me $10 for the privilege.
is that the old SAT with 1600 max? i heard its supposed to translate roughly over to IQ if you divide by 10. i always thought hamels was a prick but 151 IQ would be pretty good.
Nah, it’s more like the low 140s. I heard that formula only applies to the pre-1995 SAT.
Chin up Chone!
That -0.06 FIP is surely unsustainable over the long term.
LOL XFIP
Can we track the percentage of called strikes off the plate in a game? Should that not factor into a pitchers “luck” in some way?
The same ump was behind the plate for this game and Cone’s perfecto back in 1999. Too bad Pitch F/X wasn’t around back then, I’d be curious to compare the strikezones. Though as I recall, Cone was mostly getting swinging strikes against a young, hacking Expos team that featured the ultimate bad-ball hitter, Vlad Guerrero.
Overpaid.
As long as we’re talking game scores, this must rank as a first-class stomping as measured by the difference between game scores of the two starting pitchers. Happ got a 10, for difference of 91. Has there ever been a worse stomping?
I wonder if anyone here got a perfect 1600 (just ignore the writing) or a 36?
I did.
I got a 16
I don’t believe in the SAT.
You’re a birther… ha ha… I bet you’re below an 1100.
Am i the only one wondering all these no-hitters/perfect games are because of a watered down MLB? Santana is probably the only guy who did it against a real team in recent memory.
ya,,,,bring back roids so that cain can pitch to a real team
and you arent the only one…olbermann was wondering the same thing too…after pimping dickey for the as game
why dont you go back in the archives and check the rosters of the teams in the “good old days” you may be surprised how many stiffs played the game
Santana’s game wasn’t even that impressive (5 walks), we just all love it because of the narrative.
The Astros are lousy primarily because their pitching sucks. They’ve actually scored more runs per game than the average NL team, which I would say makes them “real enough” offensively whether or not the average fan can name anyone in their lineup. Not to say that they are a good hitting team but let’s not make them out to be the Pirates either.
Well, that was fun. Especially because, as I’m on the road planning a move from NC to NY, I didn’t get my pick in for The Game until 10:14 p.m. ET.
What is sad is when the pseudo experts run to their stat box to tell them if this is a great game. 9 innings, 14 k’s. Tell me you can go look at the box score, and marvel at a great feat. Tell me you can put your FIP in your pocket, your crystal ball fortune telling garb away, and enjoy, and relish an amazing athletic feat.
OK, Jon, time to go and do some work at CBS now.
Honestly, looking down a box score filled with zeros did give me a feeling of awe. Seriously!
i +1′d this because i laughed so hard
The best game ever pitched, executed by a guy whose demise you’ve predicted essentially since he stepped on a major league field. Too rich! You don’t mind pointing out when you’re right; only seems fair to admit when you whiff Casey-at-the-bat-style.
“You don’t mind pointing out when you’re right; only seems fair to admit when you whiff Casey-at-the-bat-style.”
Yes, this single game definitely did that. I like to glean lots of meaningful conclusions from a sample size of one. Hope he doesn’t give up like 6 ER in any start or his career, nay, his life, will be an utter failure!
Actually the most unsavory part of Dave’s reaction (for those without Twitter: major defensiveness) is that he and his ilk couldn’t just enjoy the game. The players were still on the field and you’re thinking about FIP and game score? For all the criticism that the metrics crowd takes for their arrogance, it’s the inability to just enjoy the damn game that is most unappealing.
Not everyone needs to enjoy the game the same way you do. I actually do not enjoy watching baseball at all, but I love listening to it and reading statistics about it.
I was listening to the game in the 3rd and 4th, but went to bed since Cain was at 66 pitches at 4 IP. I figured he wouldn’t get to 9 IP after that, but he worked pretty efficiently after that.
“For all the criticism that the metrics crowd takes for their arrogance, it’s the inability to just enjoy the damn game that is most unappealing.”
You think these guys don’t love baseball?!?! A lot of them eat, drink, sleep, and breathe the stuff. They talk about it and ponder on it more than many of us can imagine. I guess they need to enjoy it in the exact same way that you do for it to count.
C’MON OUT OF YOUR MOM’S BASEMENT AND PUT DOWN THE PROTRACTORS AND T-SQUARES, DORKS! *Giggle snort* #originality
How is game score calculated?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_score
In terms of throwing perfect games that didn’t rely on great plays from the fielders, David Wells threw an amazing game back in 1998. The closest thing to a hit was a hard-hit ball directly at Chuck Knoblauch. So even though Wells “only” had 12 strikeouts that game, any MLB defense not making an error that day should have been able to preserve his perfect game.
That being said, great game from Matt Cain!!! That was awesome!!!
Paul O’Neill also made a diving catch in the outfield early in Wells’s game. Now, O’Neill never struck me as the rangiest outfielder, so maybe he made an easy play look hard, but I remember after the game the recaps were showing that highlight as a game-saving play, even though it was in the 2nd inning or something.
Cain’s xIP in this game was far higher than 0.00. As usual, Cain gets lucky by overperforming his xIP…
Don’t you just love the haters buoyed by obscure stats that try to diminish this great achievement?? Congrats Matt Cain for a great game and a great memory.
Sarcasm, hurt. Hurt, sarcasm. I don’t believe you two are acquainted…
wow, and RA Dickey posted a 95 GS last night. I wonder if there have ever been to 90+ Game Scores on the same night.
First day that sprang to mind was the same-day no-nos in 1990. After checking, Dave Stewart posted a 96 and Fernando Valenzuela a 91 that day (June 29), so there’s one. I would bet it’s not super-rare.
Now, two 95′s on the same day? That probably hardly ever happens.
Also, standards of rare/common in all the above are relative.
Awesome.
BTW, Bill James created game scores before Voros McCracken’s discovery about BABIP. In the world of FIP, why do walks only subtract one point while hits subtract 2? Seems like it should be the other way around — or else they should both be minus 2.
Likely because a walk only allows a runner to reach first base, and a hit can be a double or triple, more damage and less dominance.
But a hit is minus 2 even if it’s a single. And a single can be a bloop or a routine ground ball that happens to find a hole, which is less the pitcher’s fault than a walk.
Possibly because runners can advance further on a single than they would on a walk. Now, in a game where there’s never any runners on that makes little sense, but it’s hard to go from first to third or second to home on a walk – doable, but very hard.
Props to Big Daddy Cain! I would rate his performance ahead of Koufax’s since the latter pitched with the benefit of a raised mound.
But fair point re Wood. It’s remarkable to think he pitched most of his 20-strikeout game without even needing a defense behind him.
Now THIS is what i consider a conpletely dominating no hitter.
This list also once again points out, holy crap, Nolan Ryan was good. Three of the top 10, and separated by almost 20 years.
And yet again, Cain is sporting a sub 7% HR/FB. And, yet again, I am left wondering why xFIP doesn’t take into account home parks for its HR/FB. AT&T supresses home runs. The Giants as a team have a 8.0% HR/FB. Why should we expect it to be league average?
Maybe because it has been shown over and over that their road splits are the essentially the same?
I’ve never read anything saying that, and Google isn’t helping. But looking at the 2011 splits, I will admint there is support for that. The Giants and Padres, for wxample, both had favorable splits on both the home and road. The Reds, Rangers, Blue Jays, Orioles, and Rockies were all amoung the highest for HR/FB at home (and the Astrlols), but only the Blue Jays and Orioles (and Astrlols) were near the top on the road. The Rangers had a much higher HR/FB at home. The Tigers and Mets also, as you could expect, gave up more HRs on the road.
But if it is a general rule that HR/FB stays the same at home and on the road, is there an explantion?
Dave Cameron has written extensively on this site about the Giants ability to suppress HR/FB and has shown that they do it just as well on the road.
At this point, Dave has not come forth with a hypothesis or theory of why. He even interviewed Righetti about it(I haven’t seen the transcript because it’s behind a pay wall), and Rags professed to know nothing about it.
MY theory is twofold:
1. The Giants scout, draft, sign and develop pitchers are able to work up in the strike zone with excellent command of the fastball on both sides of the plate, thus reducing hard contact.
2. The Giants pitchers don’t give in to hitters. While they have low HR rates year in and year out, they also tend to be near the bottom of the league in BB/9. It’s not that they are purposely pitching around hitters, although some of that does happen at times(not often enough, IMO). They are trying to get the batter out and are confident enough in their command that they don’t think they ever have to come down the pipe with challenge fastballs. It’s referred to as “nibbling” in some corners but it is effective in suppressing HR’s.
I don’t think Dave Cameron buys my theory, but from watching hundreds of Giants games, that is the conclusion I have come to and I’m sticking to it until someone shows that it is due to something else.
DrB beat me to it. Here are the Cameron pieces he mentions:
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/can-matt-cain-sustain-his-low-hrfb-rate/
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/matt-cain-isnt-that-unique-after-all/
At first, it looks like there’s a park effect, but it turns out the Giants staff as a whole does almost as good a job of limiting HR on the road.
Would be interesting to look at some stats and try to get an idea of which league has better pitching overall, this year.
…given that the AL is once again very likely the superior league (p = .15 from binomial distr. on 119 inter-league games to date, AL leading 65 to 54)
Not even psychology papers accept a p of .15. About 15 times higher than even marginal significance.
Interleague play is a pretty dumb way of evaluating it. There are what? 15-21 interleague games played by a team, so 9-13% of their season? Plus you don’t play every team so you would get a bias if say it happens that more good AL teams play the bad NL teams? Or if there are injuries to some teams. Using interleague play makes about as much sense as looking at the stats in April to make conclusions about the rest of the season.
I was able to watch the last two innings of Cain’s performance on the MLB Network last night. I remember watching the end of Ryan’s no-hitter versus Detroit on TV (local station broadcast in L.A.) And I attended Ryan’s 1-hitter against the Red Sox in 1972– the only hit being an infield single in the first inning by Carl Yastrzemski. In the same game, Ryan struck out eight batter in a row at one point and struck out the side on 9 pitches in one inning.
this cameron guy knows nothing about the game.