Why was Braden perfect?

How did A's pitcher Dallas Braden throw a perfect game against the Rays yesterday? Well, he gave up no runs, no hits, no walks, no errors, and he didn't hit any batters. But, why did was he perfect? Let's look at the stats.

Besides all those zeroes, Braden had some other key stats. He threw 109 pitches, 77 of them for strikes and 32 of them for balls. If you divide the strikes by the balls, it equals about 2.41. Let's put that into prespective. He had thrown 368 strikes in the starts before the perfect game and 163 balls in those starts. Divide the strikes by the balls in those starts, and it equals 2.26. So, his strikes/balls ratio was .15 better in the perfect game than in his other starts. That's a big difference.

Braden had 6 strikeouts. It doesn't look like anything special until you realize that he only had 6 strikeouts combined his last 3 starts. Braden had 21 strikeouts combined his previous 6 starts before the perfect game in 37 IP. Braden had a 5.1 K/9 going into his perfect game and then posted a 6.0 K/9 in his perfect game. That's a full strikeout more.

Braden gave up 7 ground ball outs and 14 fly ball outs during the perfect game. The 7 ground ball outs are his third-lowest of the year. His lowest were only 6 ground ball outs on April 6th against Seattle and April 22nd against the Yankees. He gave up only 1 run on April 6th and only 2 runs on April 22nd. Add in the perfect game, and Braden has been very successful when he hasn't give up many ground ball outs. In all his starts where he gave up 8 or more ground ball outs, Braden only has 1 start where he gave up 2 or less runs, April 16th against the Orioles. He has posted a 1.23 ERA in the 3 starts during which he got 7 or less groundouts, and a 5.04 ERA when he got 8 or more groundouts. In those 3 starts where Braden had 7 or less ground ball outs, of course he had quite a few flyouts, with 13 flyouts on April 6th, 14 on April 22nd, and 13 during the perfect game. But, he had 15 flyouts on May 3rd and gave up 3 runs, so whenever Braden gets a ton of flyouts, it isn't necessarily that great for him.

Dallas Braden obviously had everything working for him during the perfect game. As a pitcher, you have to be pretty lucky for opposing batters to have a .000 BA on balls in play, even in one game, but Braden was that lucky.

Screw 209, this is how we post in the 201!