Jake Arrieta’s no-hitter impressive on many levels

The excitement about Cubs ace Jake Arrieta’s 16-0 no-hit victory against the Reds on Thursday has yielded some fun facts, such as Arrieta being the second pitcher in baseball history to have no losses between no-hitters. (Johnny Vander Meer was the first when he threw no-hitters in consecutive starts for the Reds in 1938.)

Let’s look a little closer at Arrieta and the no-hitter, by the numbers:

υ In terms of game score, Arrieta was slightly less dominant than he was in his 2-0 no-hitter against the Dodgers on Aug. 30. He allowed four baserunners this time, all on walks, and struck out six. Against the Dodgers, he struck out 12 and walked one.

The game-score method starts from a base of 50 points and adds or subtracts points from there. In both games, Arrieta got one point for each of his 27 outs and two points for each of the five innings he completed after the fourth.

That took him to 87 points. Against the Reds, a point was added for each of his six strikeouts and a point was subtracted for each of his four walks. His game score was 89.

Against the Dodgers, the plus-12 for the strikeouts and minus-1 for the walk left him at 98. That’s a Cubs record for a no-hit game, with Carlos Zambrano second at 96 against the Astros in 2006. The major-league record for a nine-inning game is 105 by the Cubs’ Kerry Wood in his one-hit, 20-strikeout dominance of the Astros in 1998.

More of the outs recorded by Arrieta came on balls in play this time, but he might be a rare pitcher who can induce weak contact consistently. Opponents have a .176 batting average on balls in play against Arrieta this season; the National League average through Sunday was .302.

There will be a good deal of regression to the mean during the season, but a BABiP of .247 against Arrieta in 2015 also was far below the league average of .303. And in 2014, when Arrieta was 10-5 with a 2.53 ERA after a call-up in May, his opponents’ BABiP of .277 was 36 points below the league average of .313.

In a Fangraphs.com article in October, Tony Blengino pointed out that Arrieta last season was the only ERA qualifier with average velocity more than two standard deviations below the league average in all three

BABiP categories — flyballs (86.8 mph), line drives (89.6) and grounders (82.4).

It’s almost a side note that in Arrieta’s latest gem the offense exploded for five home runs, including two (with a grand slam) by Kris Bryant.

The only wider margin of victory in a no-hit, no-run game in the majors came on Aug. 4, 1884, when Pud Galvin and the Buffalo Bisons crushed the Detroit Wolverines 18-0.

In the expansion era, which began in 1961, the widest no-hit victory margin before Thursday was 11-0 (the Cardinals’ Bob Gibson over the Pirates in 1971 and the Marlins’ Al Leiter over the Rockies in 1996).

The Cubs took offense/defense dominance in a no-hitter to a new level.

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