Secret Base - How to be better than perfect
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Secret Base - MLB has a triples problem
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A perfect game in Major League Baseball is defined as a pitcher tossing a complete game of at least nine innings while allowing zero baserunners by any means whatsoever. And that "whatsoever" is carrying an awfully big load there, because this means that there are ways that a batter could reach base -- such as, for instance, a fielding error -- that have nothing to do with the pitching performance which nevertheless undermine the endeavor for perfection.There's no rational reason why if one pitcher happens to have teammates in the field who don't mess up, and another pitcher happens to have teammates in the field who do mess up, the former remains eligible for a moniker related to pitching, and the latter does not. You could theoretically have two carbon copy pitching performances wherein one is considered perfect and the other isn't, with the sole reason for the discrepancy stemming from the quality of ... the fielding performance? Cuckoo.Articulating a justification for that would be a seemingly impossible task when we're talking about pitching perfection, not fielding perfection. But maybe that's a good thing -- because the fact of the matter is that a pitching performance in which the only thing preventing "perfection" is a fielding error is indeed greater than (the current official definition of) perfection. And we oughta start identifying them as such.
A perfect game in Major League Baseball is defined as a pitcher tossing a complete game of at least nine innings while allowing zero baserunners by any means whatsoever. And that "whatsoever" is carrying an awfully big load there, because this means that there are ways that a batter could reach base -- such as, for instance, a fielding error -- that have nothing to do with the pitching performance which nevertheless undermine the endeavor for perfection.There's no rational reason why if one pitcher happens to have teammates in the field who don't mess up, and another pitcher happens to have teammates in the field who do mess up, the former remains eligible for a moniker related to pitching, and the latter does not. You could theoretically have two carbon copy pitching performances wherein one is considered perfect and the other isn't, with the sole reason for the discrepancy stemming from the quality of ... the fielding performance? Cuckoo.Articulating a justification for that would be a seemingly impossible task when we're talking about pitching perfection, not fielding perfection. But maybe that's a good thing -- because the fact of the matter is that a pitching performance in which the only thing preventing "perfection" is a fielding error is indeed greater than (the current official definition of) perfection. And we oughta start identifying them as such.
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