Thursday, August 13, 2009
0-0 Extra inning games
Posted by Chris JaffeTonight, (this morning? - whatever, the game began on August 12) the White Sox and Mariners played a game where no runs were scored until the 14th inning. Five days earlier, on August 7, the Yanks and Red Sox went until the 15th until a run was scored.
How often does that happen?
Well, I don't have info on 2009 (yet), but here were recent games that went to the 14th inning before a run was scored:
July 20, 2004: Oakland 1, Toronto 0 (14)
June 8, 2004: Brewers 1, Angels 0 (17)
August 13, 2003: Indians 5, Twins 0 (14)
May 31, 2003: Cubs 1, Astros 0 (16)
May 29, 2001: Diamondbacks 1, Giants 0 (18)
March 31, 1998: Mets 1, Phillies 0 (14)
September 29, 1993: Mets, 1, Cards 0 (17)
July 23, 1992: Indians 1, Royals 0 (14)
August 8, 1991: Tigers 4, Blue Jays 0 (14)
May 17, 1991: Phillies 1, Cubs 0 (16)
August 23, 1989: Dodgers 1, Expos 0 (22)
July 27, 1986: A's 1, Blue Jays 0 (15)
From 1980-3, there were 9 other games, but from 1984-2008 - a full quarter-century of baseball, it happend only a dozen times. Yet it just happened twice in less than seven days.
Cool.
Last time it happened twice in one week? Um . .. . it almost happened in 1972: on July 6, 1972 the Padres beat the Mets 1-0 in 14 innings. Eight days later, the Indians topped the Rangers 2-0 in 14 innings.
Before that, this happened in 1918:
May 15, 1918: Senators 1, White Sox 0 (14)
May 22, 1918: Yankees 1, White Sox 0 (15)
That sure was some week the Sox had! They won the world championship the year before and threw the Series the next year. 1918 was a rough season for them, though.
Even there, the Sox games were seven days apart. Both came on Wednesday, and last time I checked a week doesn't have two Wednesdays. The 2008-twsome came five days apart, not seven.
Well, having put all retrosheet gamelogs from 1871-2008 into excel, I can find no examples of two such games coming so closely together as the recent NYY-BOX and SEA-CWS games. To be fair, it may have happened - retrosheet gamelogs don't always list extra-innings for the earlier years (at least they didn't went I exported the info), but unless someone can prove me wrong, I'm guessing this quarter of AL teams just made history this week.
History instructor by day, statnerd by night, Chris Jaffe leads one of the most exciting double lives imaginable; with the exception of every other double life possible to imagine. Despite his lack of comic-book-hero-worthiness, Chris enjoys farting around with this stuff. His new book, Evaluating Baseball's Managers is available for order. Chris welcomes responses to his articles via e-mail.
Modern baseball breaks a record for not scoring runs. That’s really unlikely.
Though, I guess the fact that there are 90+ games a week instead of less than 50 in the 16-team era is a factor.