One of the cruelest/funniest ironies in baseball history was that the New York Mets had the longest no-hitter drought in baseball, yet they where the franchise that drafted and developed Nolan Ryan, who threw a no-hitter every other week or so. It was amazingly unlikely for the Mets to have a no-hitter drought and have developed pitchers like Nolan Ryan, Tom Seaver, and Dwight Gooden.
Baseball Prospectus: The Odds Of The Mets’ No-Hitter Drought
Craig Glaser of Bloomberg Sports did some research for his guest spot on Baseball Prospectus to see just how unlikely. The best part: He did it earlier this week, before Johan Santana threw the first no-hitter in Mets history. Glaser's findings:
Each model predicts five as the most likely number of no-hitters for the team. Additionally, to match the low probability of zero no-hitters, we’d have to go pretty far out on the distribution, with 11 no-hitters (.83%) being slightly more likely than zero by the naïve model and 13 no-hitters (.38%) being slightly more likely than zero by the “out percentage” model.It was more likely for the Mets to throw 13 no-hitters than it was for them to throw zero. That says it all. And this seems almost prescient:
I thought that after presenting my data and writing this article, I would go back to wholeheartedly rooting for the Mets to throw a no-hitter, but now that it’s done, I’m not so sure. The Mets could throw a no-hitter tomorrow, and for a week, we’d have something to celebrate. We’d also lose a piece of our identity—a statistic and a feeling that makes the franchise and its fans unique. We’d become just another team with one no-hitter. I’m not sure I can get behind that.I have a feeling he’s doing juuuuuuust fine with all of this. Congratulations to Mets fans, and congrats to Craig Glaser. The whole article is even better after a Mets no-hitter. Now you don’t feel like a voyeur feeding on the misery of others.
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