Tainted Perfection

Derek Zumsteg

David Cone just threw a perfect game and people can't stop writing about it. Frozen Moment: The Last Pop-Up. Con-ey Con-ey. Wells says Cone 'deserved it'. Yankee Magic. It killed the joy for me. While I will freely admit that there is little I love more than looking at a box score like that and seeing columns of zeroes like that, it's not a perfect perfect.

It's tainted. David Cone didn't toss a perfect game against the Astros, or the Braves -- he threw it against the weakest team in the NL, the Expos. The Expos are dead last in scoring runs, by thirty (30) runs. The difference between second-last and third-last is 7 runs. Of the 150-run gap between first and last in runs scored, including Planet Coors, the Expos alone account for 20% of it! They cannot walk to draw a paycheck (do they pay 'em in Montreal) - their amazing 236 walks to date is the NL's worst (second worst? 264!), and they don't hit for power, third-worst ahead of Florida ("The Other AAA team") and San Diego.

The Expos are so bad they're begging to be shut-out, dying to be no-hit, and someone this season was going to make their wish come true. This is not Yankee magic, and it's not a frozen moment. The Expos are a disgrace, a team that hasn't even pretended to contend in years, a shell of a team. At least Herk Robinson tries, as painful as it is to watch him flail. Jim Beattie's been working the margins of the game for half a decade and for what? To be the stomping ground for others like this?

This is what happens when a good pitcher faces the worst teams (and on Sunday scrub-day, no less). The Expos have a stellar .320 on-base percentage, which means that, in an average inning, there's a pretty good chance they're not going to put anyone on base (say, a 70% chance the first guy, 70% the second...).. works out by my calculator to be a little shy of a third of all innings. Chance of a no-hit inning? 41%

And that's for an average pitcher. With odds like that, how long until somebody strings nine together? It's nearly like flipping a coin at that point every inning until you get nine strung together. And since the Expos don't draw walks, it's not that much harder to imagine stringing together perfect innings to boot. What happens when they run up against the Pedro Martinez-David Cone-Jeff Suppan (Suppan? Where'd he come from?) super-low-on-base-allowers?

They're destroyed. The Expos may as well have not played for all the good it did them. And what about Cone? He's having a great season, and I respect him. But I don't think picking up perfect games against the weakest competition possible should be the measure of his season. This shouldn't be a great moment for baseball; it should be an eye-opener. The Expos need to get better, not give freebies away, and if that means they move, then so be it. And if the Twins have to move too before they give up two cheap perfectos to Yankees, that's what has to happen.

This isn't baseball, it's a slaughter, and it's no fun to watch.

about the author

Derek Zumsteg was the third alternate at the Washington Miss Congeniality competition.

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