The Playing Field

Sport and Culture Through the Lens of Science

Steven Kotler is the author of West of Jesus: Surfing, Science and the Origins of Belief. His magazine writing has appeared in more than 31 publications. See full bio

July 28, 2008, Sport and Competition

The Mathematics of Baseball's Rarest Feat

A little math, a little baseball, and the rarest of the rare.

The Poisson distribution is a term borrowed from statistical analysis, a way for mathematicians to compute the probability of the highly improbable. The typical use of the distribution is in broad based surveys that attempt to discover the possibility of a rare event happening-like, say, a no-hitter in baseball.

How rare is a no hitter? Well, pitcher Nolan Ryan is the undisputed king in this category. Ryan played in a major league record 27 seasons (Mets, Angels, Astros and Rangers from 1966-1993) and managed seven no hitters along the way. And his total is three more than the next closest contender.

So considering the rarity of the event, using statistics to predict such a thing seems no small task, but actually-according to recent work done by mathematicians at West Point-the Poisson distribution works quite nicely in this kind of prediction.

Also known as "the law of large numbers," the Poisson distribution has been used to determine everything from how diseases spread through populations to how many insect body parts are likely to turn up in a randomly selected candy bar. Truns out, applying it to baseball is not too big of a deal.

While the percent chance that a given pitcher will throw a no-hitter on a given day is really minute, determining that probability is no big deal because both length of the season (162 games ) and the long history of record keeping (meaning lots and lots of stats) gives mathematicians more than enough ammo to puzzle this out.

So what did those West Pointer puzzle out? That there should be four no-hitters this season, two in the National League and two in the American league. Even better, they have so idea of when this will happen.

According to Lt. Col. Huber, on of the mathematicians involved, a no hitter should have arrived in late May or early June. And, as it turned out, one did. That was Boston Redsox ace Jon Lester, who threw clean this past May 19th.

As far as those other three no-hitters-well, we'll just have to wait and see.