No-Hitters and Perfect Games: What They Are and How Rare They Have Been
What counts as a no-hitter and a perfect game, why the rules matter, the perfect games in major-league history, and how often they happen in each era and why.
A no-hitter is a game in which one team's pitchers allow no hits over at least nine innings. A perfect game is a no-hitter in which no opposing batter reaches base at all, by hit, walk, hit by pitch, error or any other means. The first happens in the hundreds across major-league history. The second has happened only about two dozen times, in a sport that has played more than 225,000 National and American League games according to the historical record.
The difference between the two is easy to say and hard to feel. A no-hitter allows walks, errors and runs. A perfect game allows nothing: 27 batters up, 27 batters out. A pitcher can throw a no-hitter and lose the game, as one Houston pitcher did in 1964, but a pitcher who throws a perfect game has won by definition, because the other team never scored.
This article sets out the definitions, which are narrower than many fans think, then tours the history of the feat by era, shows with a worked example why it is so rare, and explains why the frequency has changed. It names a limited number of pitchers and years, all of them well documented, and it avoids a game-by-game list beyond the perfect games. For the current count and any games after the 2025 season, check Major League Baseball's own records.
What counts, and what the 1991 definition changed
For most of baseball history there was no single definition of a no-hitter, and writers and clubs used the term loosely. In 1991 a committee of Major League Baseball statisticians settled the matter. A no-hitter, in the official sense, is a game of nine or more innings in which a pitcher or pitchers on one team allow no hits. The ruling had two consequences that surprised people.
First, a game shortened by weather or by rule to fewer than nine innings is not a no-hitter, no matter how well the pitcher worked. Second, a pitcher who goes hitless through nine innings of a tied game and gives up a hit in extra innings has not thrown a no-hitter either, because the game continued and the hit came in an official game. Some earlier lists had counted games of those kinds, and the new definition removed them.
The official scorer decides whether a batted ball is a hit or an error, and that judgment matters for no-hitters in a way it rarely does elsewhere. A hit is a safe advance on a batted ball without an error or a fielder's choice. A ball that a fielder should have handled with ordinary effort is an error. When a play is close, the scorer's ruling can end or preserve a no-hitter, which is why controversial calls get argued over for years.
Things that do not break a no-hitter include walks, hit batsmen, errors, dropped third strikes, catcher's interference and stolen bases. A pitcher can walk eight batters and still throw a no-hitter. What counts is hits, and only hits.
The perfect game: 27 up, 27 down
A perfect game demands more. No batter may reach first base by any route. That excludes the walk and the hit batter, but also the error, the dropped third strike that lets the batter run, catcher's interference and a fielder's choice on which the batter is safe. In nine innings, with each team getting 27 outs, a perfect game means that exactly 27 batters come to the plate and every one is retired.
The game must also last at least nine innings. A famous case predates the 1991 ruling: in 1917, Babe Ruth, then a Boston Red Sox pitcher, walked the first batter of a game and was ejected for arguing the call. His relief pitcher, Ernie Shore, retired the next 26 batters after the runner was thrown out trying to steal. For years the game was called a perfect game for Shore, but the modern definition does not count it, because the starter let a man reach base. It is a reminder that the label matters less than the achievement. You can read about Ruth's pitching in the profile of Babe Ruth.
A perfect game is also a no-hitter, so a pitcher who throws one has thrown two kinds of game at once. That is why the lists below overlap: every perfect game in the table is also counted among the no-hitters.
The perfect games, one by one
Major League Baseball recognises 24 perfect games as of the 2025 season by our count. They are listed here by pitcher, year and club. Treat the list as a reference to check against the league's own records, and note that the first two came under rules that differed sharply from today's. In 1880, for instance, a walk took more than four balls, and pitchers threw from a shorter distance than the 60 feet 6 inches that became standard in 1893.
| Year | Pitcher | Club |
|---|---|---|
| 1880 | Lee Richmond | Worcester |
| 1880 | John Montgomery Ward | Providence |
| 1904 | Cy Young | Boston Americans |
| 1908 | Addie Joss | Cleveland |
| 1922 | Charlie Robertson | Chicago White Sox |
| 1956 | Don Larsen | New York Yankees |
| 1964 | Jim Bunning | Philadelphia Phillies |
| 1965 | Sandy Koufax | Los Angeles Dodgers |
| 1968 | Catfish Hunter | Oakland Athletics |
| 1981 | Len Barker | Cleveland |
| 1984 | Mike Witt | California Angels |
| 1988 | Tom Browning | Cincinnati Reds |
| 1991 | Dennis Martinez | Montreal Expos |
| 1994 | Kenny Rogers | Texas Rangers |
| 1998 | David Wells | New York Yankees |
| 1999 | David Cone | New York Yankees |
| 2004 | Randy Johnson | Arizona Diamondbacks |
| 2009 | Mark Buehrle | Chicago White Sox |
| 2010 | Dallas Braden | Oakland Athletics |
| 2010 | Roy Halladay | Philadelphia Phillies |
| 2012 | Philip Humber | Chicago White Sox |
| 2012 | Matt Cain | San Francisco Giants |
| 2012 | Felix Hernandez | Seattle Mariners |
| 2023 | Domingo German | New York Yankees |
A few of these carry special weight. Don Larsen's came in Game 5 of the 1956 World Series, which makes it the only perfect game in a postseason game. Cy Young's in 1904 came for the Boston club in the American League's early years, and Young also holds the franchise record for wins tied with Roger Clemens. Randy Johnson's came in 2004, when he was 40 years old. Roy Halladay's in 2010 was followed that October by a no-hitter in his first postseason start, making him the second pitcher to throw a postseason no-hitter. Three came in 2012 alone.
The pitcher's era, the live ball and the long gap
The history of the feat divides into eras that match the changes in the way the game was played. In the 1880s and 1890s pitching rules changed repeatedly, and the pitcher's distance moved to 60 feet 6 inches in 1893. In the first two decades of the twentieth century, the dead-ball era, offense was weak. The historical record shows league batting averages of .253 in the 1900s and .255 in the 1910s, with about 3.5 strikeouts per team game. Two perfect games came in that period, by Cy Young in 1904 and Addie Joss in 1908.
Then the ball changed, and the 1920s and 1930s were years of heavy hitting. The league batted .285 in the 1920s and .279 in the 1930s, and strikeouts fell to 2.81 per team game in the 1920s. Only one perfect game came in the entire stretch from 1909 through 1955: Charlie Robertson's in 1922. No-hitters did not disappear, and Johnny Vander Meer of the Reds threw consecutive no-hitters in 1938, a feat that has not been repeated. But the sheer number of base runners in those years made hitless games harder.
The era of the 1960s was a different story. League batting average fell to .249 in the decade and strikeouts rose to 5.72 per team game. Three perfect games were thrown in 1964, 1965 and 1968, by Jim Bunning, Sandy Koufax and Catfish Hunter, and 1968 was the season in which the league batted .237 in the historical totals. Koufax threw four no-hitters in four straight seasons, from 1962 through 1965, with the last of them a perfect game against the Cubs in which the opposing pitcher allowed only one hit. The era is discussed further in the lowest ERAs in baseball history.
Strikeouts, bullpens and the modern gap
After 1968 the mound was lowered and the strike zone changed, and offense recovered. But two other trends began working for the pitcher at once. Strikeouts kept rising, from 5.36 per team game in the 1980s to 7.82 in the 2010s and 8.52 in 2020 through 2025. A strikeout is the safest out for a no-hitter: it cannot become a hit, and it cannot become an error. A pitcher who strikes out 12 batters needs only 15 other outs from balls in play.
| Decade | League batting average | Strikeouts per team game |
|---|---|---|
| 1900s | .253 | 3.50 |
| 1920s | .285 | 2.81 |
| 1930s | .279 | 3.32 |
| 1960s | .249 | 5.72 |
| 1980s | .259 | 5.36 |
| 2000s | .265 | 6.56 |
| 2010s | .254 | 7.82 |
| 2020 to 2025 | .245 | 8.52 |
The second trend works against the individual no-hitter. As starters throw fewer innings, the complete game has almost vanished, and a no-hitter needs a complete game unless several pitchers combine. In 1950 about 40 percent of team games included a complete game; in 2025 the historical totals put it at 0.6 percent. Managers often pull starters who are throwing a no-hitter, usually because of pitch counts, and combined no-hitters, in which two or more pitchers share the game, have become a larger part of the total. The story is told in more detail in the disappearing complete game and the evolution of the strikeout.
The champion of the long career is Nolan Ryan, who threw seven no-hitters between 1973 and 1991, the last at the age of 44. No other pitcher has more than four. The record is a combination of velocity, wildness that kept hitters off balance, and a career that lasted 27 seasons.
Why it is so rare: a worked example
Even on a good night, the odds are long. Suppose that every batter has a 24.5 percent chance of getting a hit, about the league batting average in recent seasons. The chance that 27 straight batters fail to get a hit is 0.755 raised to the 27th power, which is about 0.0005, or one chance in roughly 2,000. If the batting average is .285, as in the 1920s, the same calculation gives about one chance in 8,600.
For a perfect game, the bar is the chance of not reaching base. If a typical batter reaches base about 31.5 percent of the time, the chance that 27 in a row do not is 0.685 to the 27th power, about 0.00004, or one in roughly 27,000. Across the 450,000 or so team games in the historical record for the National and American Leagues, that model would predict about 16 perfect games. The actual count of about two dozen is somewhat higher, which makes sense, because the pitchers who throw them are better than average and the dead-ball years had far fewer base runners than the model assumes.
The model is a simplification. It treats every batter as the same and every plate appearance as independent, which they are not. It ignores that a pitcher who has good command that day is a different pitcher from the season average. But it gives the right order of magnitude: a perfect game is a once-in-many-thousands event even for a good pitcher, and a no-hitter is a once-in-a-couple-of-thousand event.
Close calls, lost perfection and what the stat leaves out
The sport has many near-misses. In 1959, Harvey Haddix of the Pittsburgh Pirates retired the first 36 batters he faced, 12 perfect innings, and then lost the game in the 13th. Under the 1991 definition his performance is not counted as a no-hitter, because a hit came in extra innings. It is often called one of the greatest games ever pitched.
In 2010, Armando Galarraga of the Detroit Tigers retired 26 batters in a row against Cleveland and appeared to have a perfect game, until the first-base umpire Jim Joyce called a runner safe on a close play that replays showed was out. The call stood, and Joyce later apologised publicly. The game was not recorded as a perfect game. Video review of this kind was expanded in 2014.
Other near-perfect games ended with a single hit or a walk in the ninth inning. These are the games that stay in memory because a pitcher can be one out away and the result can still change. That is part of the appeal of the feat: it is the rare accomplishment in sport that can be lost in the last batter and yet leaves the pitcher with a story people tell.
The statistic also leaves things out. A no-hitter does not say how many batters hit balls hard and had them caught. It does not account for the defense: a spectacular catch can save a no-hitter, and a bad hop can end one. And it ignores the opposition: a no-hitter against a weak lineup on a cold night is not the same as one against a strong lineup. The count is a record of what happened on the scoreboard, not a ranking of the pitchers.
The Negro Leagues and the record
The historical record through 2025 includes statistics from the Negro Leagues for the years 1920 through 1948, treating them as major-league data. That coverage is partial, and the box scores for many games were never fully preserved. No-hitters and perfect games in those leagues are part of the history, but a complete and authoritative list is difficult to build from incomplete newspaper accounts. Readers who want the context should see the history of the Negro Leagues and the all-time batting average leaders and the Negro Leagues update.
For that reason the table of perfect games above is a list of the games that Major League Baseball's own records recognise as of the 2025 season. The league has worked since 2020 to fold Negro Leagues records into its official database, and the lists may change as that work proceeds. Check the league's site for the latest.
Common questions
Is a perfect game also a no-hitter? Yes. Every perfect game is a no-hitter, but a no-hitter allows walks, hit batters and errors. A perfect game allows none of them.
Can a pitcher lose a game while throwing a no-hitter? Yes, if runs score without hits, for example on walks and errors. It has happened, as with Houston's Ken Johnson in 1964.
Does a no-hitter have to be pitched by one pitcher? No. Several pitchers can combine to throw one, and combined no-hitters count in the official list. A perfect game can be combined in principle, though the usual examples involve a single pitcher.
Why was a rain-shortened no-hitter removed from the list? Because the 1991 definition requires nine or more innings. A game called after five or six innings is not counted.
Which postseason game was perfect? Don Larsen's in the 1956 World Series is the only perfect game in a postseason game. Roy Halladay threw a postseason no-hitter in 2010. For how the October bracket works, see how the MLB postseason works.
Where to go next
If you want the pitchers' side of the story, start with the evolution of the strikeout, then read about the low-scoring eras in the lowest ERAs in baseball history. For the context of Negro Leagues records, see the history of the Negro Leagues. The history and Hall of Fame topic page collects more stories from the game's past, and the leaders pages hold the career totals for strikeouts and shutouts.