u/Anonymous-USA

Energetic bidding made history during S.I. Newhouse’s private collection followed by the 20th Century Evening Sale, on the opening night of Christie’s marquee week in New York. Selling for $181,185,000, Jackson Pollock’s Number 7A, 1948 was the top lot of the first night of Christie’s 20th and 21st Century Art sales week in New York, setting a new auction record for the artist.

We saw two improbable events last night: three “reached first on dropped 3rd strike”, and 4 strikeouts in one inning. Here are the odds:

I can’t remember specifically the last time I’ve seen a batter steal 1st on a dropped 3rd strike, but I know I have a few times, so it’s uncommon but not rare. But I doubt any of us has ever seen it 3x in one game! So I ran the odds since this isn’t a statistic MLB tracks:

Analyses of play-by-play data suggest there are roughly 50–60 successful “reached on dropped third strike” plays league-wide per season.

Now we can apply some probability statistics. There are 30x162/2 games per season (2430). So the probability of one in a game is 55/2430 (2.263% chance). So the probability of 3 in one game is 0.001159%. There have been 150 seasons of MLB and \~362,220 games regular and post-season. So we can estimate this has happened 4x in MLB history.

That’s more rare than 20 strikeouts in a game (5x), and not quite as rare as 3 hits in one inning (3x). Way more rare than a perfect game (24x).

As for Mason Miller’s 4 strikeouts in one inning, MLB does track that. It’s happened 100x. That’s more rare than a no-hitter (325x) but less rare than a perfect game (24x)

UPDATE: Now for even more fun — let’s combine the two! There is a 30-35% chance of a strikeout of any one batter. Striking out 4x is ~1%. With 3 opportunities for that, the odds are 3% chance of that happening in such a game. So the odds of 4K in a row _and_ 3 stolen 1B in dropped 3rd strike is about 0.00003477%, or 1 in 2,876,042 games. That’s 1,183 seasons!!!

I can’t remember specifically the last time I’ve seen a batter steal 1st on a dropped 3rd strike, but I know I have, so it’s uncommon but not rare. But I doubt any of us has ever seen it 3x in one game! So I ran the odds since this isn’t a statistic MLB tracks:

Analyses of play-by-play data suggest there are roughly 50–60 successful “reached on dropped third strike” plays league-wide per season.

Now we can apply some probability statistics. There are 30x162/2 games per season (2430). So the probability of one in a game is 55/2430 (2.263% chance). So the probability of 3 in one game is 0.001159%. There have been 150 seasons of MLB and ~362,220 games regular and post-season. So we can estimate this has happened 4x in MLB history.

That’s more rare than 20 strikeouts in a game (5x), and not quite as rare as 3 hits in one inning (3x). Way more rare than a perfect game (24x).

As for Mason Miller’s 4 strikeouts in one inning, MLB does track that. It’s happened 100x. That’s more rare than a no-hitter (325x) but less rare than a perfect game (24x).

UPDATE: Now for even more fun — let’s combine the two! There is a 22% chance of a strikeout of any one batter. Striking out 4x in a row is 0.23%. With 3 opportunities for that, the odds are 0.69% chance of that happening in such a game. So the odds of 4K in a row _and_ 3 stolen 1B in dropped 3rd strike is about 0.0000079971%, or 1 in 12,504,532 games. That’s 4,824 seasons!!!

DISCLAIMER: I did not post the original story, nor do I have any skin in the Bob Ross game. I just have my personal opinions on both the artistic merit and art market for these, but am curious as seasoned collectors, what do you think?