Ian Kinsler & Early MLB Storylines Follow Up

The recent Ian Kinsler: Historic Fantasy Games & Innings post and the Early MLB Season story lines posts from earlier in the week led to a fair amount of follow up emails.  So I thought I would speak to a few of those follow ups.

Dedicated reader The Commish, who wrote out first guest post, asked what the best single game pitching performance was.  A little digging led to this helpful little wikipedia page that lists all 17 perfect games in MLB history.  As standard fantasy leagues give an extra 10 points for perfect games, above and beyond the 20 for a no hitter, these are the only games in contention for best outing ever.  The very best?  Sandy Koufax’s perfect game in 1965, when he racked up 14 Ks, the most ever in a perfect game.  Count all 96 points in one outing – 27 for the outs, 14 for the Ks, 10 for the W, 5 for the complete game, 10 for the shutout, 20 for the no-no, 10 for the perfect game.

As a follow up to the Fernando Tatis most points by a batter in one inning, I searched for the most points by a pitcher in an inning.  The always amazing 4 Ks in one inning leads to 7 points as long as there are no other baserunners.  It has been done a handful of times as researched by Baseball Almanac.  Among others, both Octavio Dotel and Kaz Sasaki completed the 7 point trick in the last several years.

New Reader Beantown Bob pointed out many believe the wind tunnel effect causing all of the homeruns in the new Yankee Stadium may be reduced or eliminated once the old Yankee Stadium is torn down.  SF Gate has an interesting article on this point.

Finally, as part of the chitter chatter around the Marlins hot start – and subsequent two losses to the Pirates – I found this old Baseball Prosectus article examining hot starts and their relavence on winning records and playoff births.  The goal was to figure out this magic number of games.  Their conclusion was that 30 games was that number.  Win 21 of your first 30 games, and you have a 50% of making the playoffs.  Start 22-8 and your playoff chances bump to 70%.  The Marlin must go 11-5 over their next 16 to hit the 22-8 level.  Better keep the winning going, fellas.

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