Edwin Jackson Walks 8, Throws 149 Pitches (and no-hits the Rays)

[HiAndTight]

I don't know how you can say "I don't find them impressive in the least".

 

Anyways, Good for Edwin Jackson.

Because I don't? This was not one of the 30 best starts in baseball this year most likely, it certainly wasn't better than say Gallardo's last game. He had a bunch of balls hit right at guys, just doesn't impress me.

Ok, because ONE no-hitter has a guy who has 8 walks, you discredit the no-hitter entirely?

 

I agree, I don't understand that logic at all. Nobody said that it's more impressive than a complete game 3 hit shutout in which a guy walks 0 and strikes out 12, but it's still a no-hitter. That's always impressive to me.

 

As for the "hitting the ball right at people", didn't watch it, haven't watched every no hitter, but the ones I have always have an element of luck and usually a couple of great plays, so I don't put any stock into that.

[Ennder]

Ok, because ONE no-hitter has a guy who has 8 walks, you discredit the no-hitter entirely?

 

I guess I mean the act of getting 0 hits itself doesn't impress me. I mean someone who goes 9 IP, 4 H, 0 BB, 10 K had a more impressive game than a 9 IP, 0 H, 4 BB, 5 K game. The hits themselves just aren't that big of a deal in that type of line.

[pebadger]

Given the attitude that hitters have towards Ks these days, why is a one-off 10K performance any more impressive than a one-off 0 hit performance?

[HiAndTight]

Ok, because ONE no-hitter has a guy who has 8 walks, you discredit the no-hitter entirely?

 

I guess I mean the act of getting 0 hits itself doesn't impress me. I mean someone who goes 9 IP, 4 H, 0 BB, 10 K had a more impressive game than a 9 IP, 0 H, 4 BB, 5 K game. The hits themselves just aren't that big of a deal in that type of line.

Just have to agree to disagree I guess. With 27 hitters, 35 in this instance who go up there trying to get a hit, and are unable to do so, I find that pretty impressive.

I think anytime you can go through a lineup 3-4 times without giving up one single hit. Not one Texas Leaguer that falls in, not one sharply hit ball that finds a hole....I find that impressive.

It's not the MOST impressive thing in the world. Yes, a 14 K 2 H 0 BB CGSH is more impressive.

The fact of the matter however is that there have been a LOT, LOT more 10 K 4 H 0 ER games than there have been No-Hit games.

 

 

 

By the way, a little trivia(that I'm not certain of the answer). Who was it who threw that no-hitter for the Yanks in the early 90's in which he had a couple of walks and then there was a couple of errors, at least one on a fly ball where an OF'er lost the ball in the sun leading to a couple of runs?

 

I want to say it was the Yankees and the White Sox?

 

 

Anyway, there are varying degree's of "impressiveness" no hitters, but a no-no, is always impressive to some degree in my mind.

[MJLiverock]

Andy Hawkins IIRC

[pitchleague]

yep, Andy Hawkins.

[thebruce44]

Edwin Jackson consistently throws harder as a starting pitcher than any pitcher in the Brewers system, only Jeffress and Manzanillo have enough gas to work 97, 98 MPH and they do it in relief.

 

Jackson has always been effectively wild with his FB, but in less you watched the entire game, spare us the "he got lucky" mantra.

Axford's FB is a full mph faster than Jackson's. Coffey works right around the same speed. I would be willing to bet we have 5-10 minor league pitchers who can work at FB speeds higher than Jackson as well.

 

Regardless, Jackson's velocity as a starter is very impressive, its just that your statement was false.

[joepepsi]

September 19, 1986, Joe Cowley of the White Sox pitched a no hitter against the Angels. He had 8Ks, 7 BBs, and 1 ER. I remember reading quotes from Angels batters after the game they didn't get any hits because he was nowhere near the plate most of the time. His opponent, Kirk McCaskill, a far better pitcher, went 7-1/3innings K'ed 6, walked 1, and allowed 4 ER.

[rluzinski]

There is no debate regarding WHETHER luck played a role, because the laws of the universe dictate that it had to, one way or the other. The question is only, how much of the no hitter can be attributed to skill and how much to luck and other factors outside the control of the pitcher (fielding, skill of the batters, etc…).

 

Even the best pitchers in the league expect some balls in play to find holes. No matter how good their stuff is or how crappy the batter hits the ball, some balls are going to eventually fall. For a particular game, sometimes a pitcher gets more of his share of hits than he deserves and sometimes every ball finds a defender. I think every baseball fan knows this. We see it every game.

 

The league average BABIP is something like .300? (depends on if you are including HRs or not). The lowest qualifying BABIP last year was .257 (Wolf must have really been unhittable last year). Let's pretend that Jackson was just unbelievably "on" and had a true average expected BABIP for that game of .200. Roughly, the odds of having none of those 20 BIPs fall for a hit would be .8^20 = 1.1%. Even with Jackson pitching out of his mind, we'd expect about 4 hits.

 

Even if we assume that Jakson pitched the best game of any starter in the league this year, he still needed a little help from lady luck. There is nothing controversial or complicated about it.

[sheethead]

Of course Jackson got lucky. He's lucky to be in MLB period. It takes plenty of luck to throw a 300 game in bowling. But if you can do it on TV for the big bucks then I'm impressed. Guess I am impressed with people who have good luck, because I don't have much (monetarily anyway).

 

Player skill is developed over a large sample, not a single game.

 

I simply will never get on board with this, because I have seen athletes progress and find something in their skill set that enables them to improve seemingly overnight. The school of thought that you always need three years of data to validate an evaluation of where a player's skill lies will always miss this talent, or will be too late to recognize it and too late to see when the talent is all used up.

[rluzinski]

The school of thought that you always need three years of data to validate an evaluation of where a player's skill lies will always miss this talent, or will be too late to recognize it and too late to see when the talent is all used up.

 

No one is advocating that teams should fire their entire scouting department and use only sample statistics to evaluate players. That is ESPECIALLY true for young players. But if you ARE going to use a player's stats to make a guess on future performance, you are better off using a larger sample. Use too small a sample and the "luck" part of the stats tends to drown out the "skill" part (knowing that a batter is a true .260 hitter .040 isn't very helpful).

[Ennder]

because I have seen athletes progress and find something in their skill set that enables them to improve seemingly overnight

 

Sure, but you don't assume this is what has happened after a single game either. I've seen plenty of players go on a month long heater who 'figured it out' and then went back to being the same old player afterwords.

[ELCABALLO45]

Ok, because ONE no-hitter has a guy who has 8 walks, you discredit the no-hitter entirely?

 

I guess I mean the act of getting 0 hits itself doesn't impress me. I mean someone who goes 9 IP, 4 H, 0 BB, 10 K had a more impressive game than a 9 IP, 0 H, 4 BB, 5 K game. The hits themselves just aren't that big of a deal in that type of line.

In this scenario if you are assuming these are there final line, players A (9ip 4h 0bb 10K) has a better chance to give up more runs then players B (9ip 0h 4bb 5k).

 

 

 

 

[Ennder]

In this scenario if you are assuming these are there final line, players A (9ip 4h 0bb 10K) has a better chance to give up more runs then players B (9ip 0h 4bb 5k)

 

yeah. But again this is looking at results instead of how good the player actually pitched, the two things aren't the same. If player A and player B pitch like this every single night player A is going to end up the better pitcher because Player B isn't always going to get insanely lucky and give up 0 H.