No Hit Innings, the most??

[mgervace]

I know Nolan Ryan has 7 no-hitters, but who has the MOST NO-HIT INNINGS pitched?

I'm not sure if we could ever find out this answer....

[CanadianKid]

Harvey Haddix did for 12 innings May 26, 1959 against Milwaukee

[CanadianKid]

Oh I misread it, I thought you meant who had most no-hit innings in 1 game. My bad.

[Gee Walker]

Well, Cy Young has a 1350 inning lead over everybody else in terms of innings pitched, and he was a pretty good pitcher too... just because of this I'm sure Cy Young holds this record. With his career ERA being 2.63, and with him giving up 7092 hits in 7354 innings, it's hard to see how he didn't pitch at least 2000 no-hit innings.

[mgervace]

My Bad as well, I should've been more clear. I am curious to see who's thrown the most NO HIT Innings. And again I dont think we could ever figure that one out....

[flash143817]

Cy Young holds the record for most consecutive no hit innings at 24.

[cbenson5]

I think you answered your own question. I don't think there is anyway to find out. I would guess Cy Young though.

[mgervace]

This may be a question that can never be answered or figured out...

I mean if you do totals, like the Cy Young figures, that wont work... Because a pitcher can throw 9 innings, give up 9 hits, yet all the hits could've been in 1 inning....

So, this pitcher in a game would have 8 NO HIT innings.....but gave up 9 hits in 9 innings....Where can I find box scores and how far will they date back?
Maybe we can get a date of how far back we can go, and each person select a pitcher and see what we come up with....

I'd really like to knwo, but I'm looking for help/direction on the best way to start?

[CanadianKid]

that would take way too long. Just think how many starts each pitcher would make a year then how many years each pitcher played for. Way too long.

[RuthMayBond]

This may be a question that can never be answered or figured out...

I mean if you do totals, like the Cy Young figures, that wont work... Because a pitcher can throw 9 innings, give up 9 hits, yet all the hits could've been in 1 inning....

So, this pitcher in a game would have 8 NO HIT innings.....but gave up 9 hits in 9 innings....Where can I find box scores and how far will they date back?
Maybe we can get a date of how far back we can go, and each person select a pitcher and see what we come up with....

I'd really like to knwo, but I'm looking for help/direction on the best way to start?You start with Phil Niekro, and let us know when you're done

[Sliding Billy]

This may be a question that can never be answered or figured out...

I mean if you do totals, like the Cy Young figures, that wont work... Because a pitcher can throw 9 innings, give up 9 hits, yet all the hits could've been in 1 inning....

So, this pitcher in a game would have 8 NO HIT innings.....but gave up 9 hits in 9 innings....Where can I find box scores and how far will they date back?
Maybe we can get a date of how far back we can go, and each person select a pitcher and see what we come up with....

Here's a start: The probability of independent events occurring over an interval generally follows a Poisson distribution. Hits in an inning aren't quite independent, since, as we all know to our sorrow, once a pitcher starts getting hit, they keep on getting hit, and if they get hit too much, they get taken out. But considering the large numbers of innings pitched, it's probably close enough.

Specifically, the probability of 0 hits occurring in an inning would be roughly e^-h, where h is the average number of hits per inning, and e is the natural logarithm base, roughly equal to 2.72.

So, Cy Young pitched 7354 2/3 innings and gave up 7092 hits, for an average of .964285 hits per inning. The probability of a hitless inning is e^-.964285, or about 38%. So you could estimate that roughly 38% of his 7354 2/3 innings were hitless, or about 2795.

The next likely candidate, Walter Johnson, pitched 5914 2/3 innings and only gave up 4913 hits, for an average of about .83 hits per inning. e^-.83 is about 44%, so his estimated hitless innings equal .44 * 5914 2/3, or about 2577 innings. So even if the assumptions are a little shaky, I'd bet that Cy Young is your guy.

[mgervace]

Jeff Passan an ESPN.com writter says if I do figure it out, he'll do a story on it.... I emailed him asking where he thinks I should start.... here's his email reply:

Mike --

If you ever do a project like this, let me know. It might take you 10,000 hours, so I'd love to write a story on you.

Go to retrosheet.org. They've got every box score dating back to 1957, plus plenty more into the 1800s.

Good luck,

Jeff
Solon '98

[RuthMayBond]

Jeff Passan an ESPN.com writter says if I do figure it out, he'll do a story on it.... I emailed him asking where he thinks I should start.... here's his email reply:

Mike --

If you ever do a project like this, let me know. It might take you 10,000 hours, so I'd love to write a story on you.That's only 14 months . . .
. . . if you work on it 24/7 :eek:

[RuthMayBond]

Jeff Passan an ESPN.com writter says if I do figure it out, he'll do a story on it.... I emailed him asking where he thinks I should start.... here's his email reply:

Mike --

If you ever do a project like this, let me know. It might take you 10,000 hours, so I'd love to write a story on you.

Go to retrosheet.org. They've got every box score dating back to 1957, plus plenty more into the 1800s.

Good luck,

Jeff
Solon '98This guy works for ESPN, and he doesn't realize you need more than box scores for this project? :crazy :ughh

[mgervace]

Ok, I'm starting with Nolan Ryan and for an FYI, in his first 7 games pitched, with a total of 38.1 innings pitched, he had 23 NO HIT Innings thrown.....
It's 2:19 Monday,28th..... I'll check back in Saturday Morning and tell you where I'm at with the Ryan Express.....

[mgervace]

I might add since I was born in 1969, and Nolan Ryan was my favorite pitcher while I was growing up, I'll start with the year 1969.


Now that I think about it, I cant just start with 1969, I need to start with a Pitcher and His Career Debut......

So maybe I'll start with the top 10 Pitchers in 1969, and go back if they had earlier careers, and go forward from there...

1) NOLAN RYAN..... GIVE ME 9 More Pitchers...
The BOX SCORES go back to 1957, and gives inning by inning STATS....

so we need picthers from say, 1960-present.....
1) Nolan Ryan

[RuthMayBond]

1) NOLAN RYAN..... GIVE ME 9 More Pitchers...
The BOX SCORES go back to 1957, and gives inning by inning STATS....

so we need picthers from say, 1960-present.....
1) Nolan RyanPhil Niekro, Gaylord Perry, Don Sutton, Steve Carlton, Bert Blyleven, Tom Seaver, Tommy John, Roger Clemens and if you can dip into 1959, Jim Kaat

[Utter Chaos]

The data from Retrosheet.org can be downloaded as an event file. Somebody who understands the way the data is stored could write a program to analyze the data and come up with an answer in a matter of minutes. However since the data is not complete you wouldn't get a complete list of pitchers that have the most no-hit innings.

On a seperate note: Which pitcher has the most no-hit games (regardless of innings)? My guess would be Jesse Orosco since he pitched in the most games and toward the end of his career he would often pitch to only one batter.