MarisFan61
.....but probably a few of them will go up to John and whisper to him about it. I can't imagine they won't.
Call it a prediction. :-)

He might then take the article down and re-do it.​
11:39 AM Jun 10th

MarisFan61
.....Well, I did something else to sort of check out the "walks" thing -- and now I'm even more at a loss to fathom where the article is coming from on that.

I looked at the actual 'Walks' records of the pitchers who have had no-hitters since 2010.
All of them.

Well there's an asterisk on that.
I looked at all of them, but I didn't include all of them in what I considered.

I excluded the pitchers that are known as 'great' or 'near great.'
Because, they're obviously among the pitchers who are most likely to have no-hitters, and almost without exception of course they have low walk-rates -- but using that data as in indicator of likelihood to throw a no-hitter is a logical red herring, because by far the dominant factors are that they have low hit-rates and that they're likely to be in their teams' regular rotations and far more likely than other pitchers to pitch deep into games.

So I ignored them -- guys like Kershaw, Arrieta, Scherzer, King Felix.

I'll digress for a moment.....

I'd guess that that's something very few serious sabmetricians would do -- to their detriment, I'm saying. I can imagine that someone like Bill might, but I doubt most would. They'd be inclined to do it more systematically, without such subjective judgment; they'd look at the walk rates of all of the pitchers who had no-hitters.

What I try to do in such things is to focus on what's really relevant, and eliminate things that only dilute what we're looking for, even if technically they're part of what we're looking at. BTW, that seems to me to be one of the hallmarks of the construction of the Win Shares system, far more than what I've seen of other systems, and a big reason that I find it so appealing.

Back to the subject...
Looking at those other pitchers who've had no-hitters since 2010:

There isn't any overall tendency toward low walk-rates.
If I were one of those serious sabermetricians I'd present the data. I'm not, because I didn't write it down, and I know that this may keep you from believing it, and I don't blame you.
I wasn't doing it to convince anybody, just to see for myself, and I'm sharing it with you. If some of you are interested enough to ask for the data, I'll get it together.

Those pitchers as a group probably did have a better-than-average walk rate -- but very little better than average. A couple of them had very good walk rates, but most were about average, and two or three had poor walk rates. Several had worse walk rates than Volquez has had for the last few years.
(BTW, John was talking about Volquez's walk rate just for this year, which arguably wasn't the best kind of sample to look at anyway. What I looked at was for the couple of prior years for each pitcher as well as the no-hitter year, unless the guy didn't have prior years or something like that.)

The walks thing in the article remains a mystery.
11:32 PM Jun 8th

izzy24
Just curious if I am understanding this correctly. This is saying that Scherzer, Kershaw, and Sale have a 36%, 34%, and 31% chance to throw a no hitter this year. That would mean there is a 71% chance that one of the three throws a no hitter this year. That seems very high, doesn't it?
10:17 PM Jun 8th

pbspelly
In some circumstances, more walks may signal fewer chances for a hit, if you have a power pitcher who would rather walk people than compromise. I recall Bill talking about Nolan Ryan one time, and how Ryan--for better or worse--adamantly refused to throw an easy strike even with three balls, with the result that Ryan had lots of walks but also lots of strikeouts and no-hitters.
8:10 AM Jun 8th

steve161
While we're at it, who was most likely to have the next four-homer game?
9:22 PM Jun 7th

Mike137
MichaelPat wrote: "The method attempts to estimate the likelihood of predicting a no hitter in the rest of a pitcher's career."

So the table has very little to do with who is most likely to throw the next no hitter. It looks like the method is saying that, of the people on the list, Scherzer is by far the most likely to get a no hitter this year, since he is older than most of the rest. Followed perhaps by Santana. But of course, the next no hitter will almost certainly be by someone not on the list.
3:45 PM Jun 7th

enamee
Is this probability table implying that there's roughly a 100% chance that one of Scherzer, Kershaw, and Sale will throw a no-hitter this year? And another ~100% probability that one of Strasburg, Darvish, Martinez, Straily, Keuchel, and Santana will also throw a no-hitter? That seems kind of extreme... how many expected no-hitters does this add up to, for 2017? Or am I misunderstanding what these probabilities represent?

- Matthew Namee
11:53 AM Jun 7th

3for3
As against that, the more walks, the more DPs.
7:59 PM Jun 6th

MichaelPat
So you are saying that the chance of giving up a hit is the same whether a pitcher faces 30 batters or he faces 27.
The only way I can see that being true is if the three extra batters are waved to first base.
If you pitch to more batters, the chance that you will give up a hit increases.
I don't see how this cannot be true....
7:13 PM Jun 6th

MarisFan61
OK, I'll try. :-)

Walks do increase the number of PA's, but that's largely irrelevant to likelihood of a hit, because:
-- There are always exactly 27 outs, and
-- Likelihood of a hit within any number of outs depends simply on batting average.

You pointed out the rate of hits per PA. That's completely misleading, because if the number of PA's is elevated by there being more walks, it won't result in more hits -- because of that second reason up there: Likelihood of a hit within any number of outs depends simply on batting average.

The operative denominator isn't "plate appearances"; it's outs.

====================

That said, I'd add that there are reasons, relatively subtle ones, that could decrease the chance of a no-hitter if a pitcher walks more batters rather than fewer. I mentioned one of them before; bhal mentioned another. And also, when a pitcher gives more walks, it adds to his pitch count, which perhaps makes it less likely for him to continue being effective for 9 innings.

But I'm doubting that John meant those things in bringing up the walk rate. Too bad he doesn't usually reply to comments......
5:29 PM Jun 6th

MichaelPat
Delete 'of predicting' in the second sentence, please. It should read...

The method attempts to estimate the likelihood a no hitter in the rest of a pitcher's career. It's a little like the Favourite Toy.

4:44 PM Jun 6th

MarisFan61
BTW, anyone get those "percentages"?
3:21 PM Jun 6th

bhalbleib
MarisFan, well given pitcher usage nowadays, the more walks the more pitches thrown, thus increasing the likelihood you will be pulled before getting 27 outs, no-hitter or not
1:29 PM Jun 6th

MarisFan61
......What you said is pretty much exactly like a thing that Bouton talked about in "Ball Four," about whether a pitcher tends to get more strikeouts in a high-scoring game.

Some of his bullpen mates were arguing that you can get more strikeouts in a high-scoring game because more guys come to bat, and you can get more strikeouts it you face more batters. Bouton argued back that there were just 27 outs per game regardless, and there was no reason to think that the proportion of K's vs. other kinds of outs would be greater in a high-scoring game. I agree with Bouton. They didn't. :-)​
12:25 PM Jun 6th

MichaelPat
More walks = more batters = more opportunities for a hit
11:59 AM Jun 6th

MarisFan61
What does WALK RATE have to do with likelihood of throwing a no-hitter?
I would have thought, almost nothing.
11:32 AM Jun 6th