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.
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.