Graphic: Perfect games. Part one.

Of course, I'm a little late on this, seeing as how it's been a month since Mark Buehrle threw his outstanding perfect game (incredibly followed up by another six perfect innings in his next start). However, perfect games are so rare, I couldn't help but take an opportunity to do a bit of research on the feat. More isotype graphics to follow about how rare Buehrle's game is.

Interesting to note that the first reference of a perfect game came in 1908 from I. E. Sanborn in the Chicago Tribune. Concerning Cleveland pitcher Addie Joss's perfection against the White Sox, Sanborn described "an absolutely perfect game, without run, without hit, and without letting an opponent reach first base by hook or crook, on hit, walk, or error, in nine innings."

In addition, being from Pittsburgh, I've long been aware of the incredible 12 perfect innings pitched in a loss by Harvey Haddix. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has a great write up about the game known as a "perfect loss." For a listing of more perfect and near-perfect games, check out the graphic below.

Graphic: NFL Teams of the Decade.

Today I saw an article on Sports Illustrated prompting a preliminary discussion what NFL team takes the crown for Team of the Decade. In the article, Don Banks postures that if Pittsburgh can repeat as Super Bowl champions, then they can stake a legitimate claim to the crown. He then goes on to rank the teams from 1-32. I wasn't quite sold on the order of his rankings (at least at the top) and was curious to see if Pittsburgh could make any statistical claim to the crown so I played with the numbers.

Banks took into consideration regular season records, playoff records, winning seasons, playoff seasons, and Super Bowl records. So rather than guess at the rankings, I threw the numbers into a pretty simple formula. The points awarded for each category are listed beside the color label. I graphed the top ten and got slightly different rankings than Sports Illustrated.



According to the formula, it's also impossible for the Steelers to get more points than the rival Patriots even if they win it all and New England reocrds a losing season.

Weekly Graphic.