No-Hitters Remain Incredibly Rare, Except for One Odds-Defying MLB Team

Astros pitchers have now accomplished the feat five times over the past five seasons.

The Houston Astros have developed a knack for throwing no-hitters in recent years. | Jerome Miron-Imagn Images

How one feels about no-hitters is personal. It might be fair to say that they've lost a bit of their luster. And it's definitely fair to say that combined no-hitters don't quite hit the same as when a starter takes the ball and goes wire to wire. Yet it is slightly strange that one of the first impulses when a Major League Baseball team throws one is to seek out ways to diminish it. Because no matter how impressed or otherwise a fan is by the hitless feat, no-hitters remain remarkably rare.

The Astros captured just the 327th in MLB history on Monday night as Tatsuya Imai, Steven Okert and Alimber Santa combined to miss Rangers bats in a 9-0 victory. This is the first no-hitter since the Cubs combined for their own in 2024.

Baseball Reference's current tally of MLB games to this point is 243,942 which, unscientifically, is quite a lot! That means 243,615 games have not ended in a no-hitter. So the odds of having a game end in a no hitter are at .00013%. Yet crucially—and this often gets overlooked—there are actually two opportunities for a team to toss a no-no in any given game so any conceived notion of how regular these are is completely undervaluing the novelty.

But I'm not here to convince you to respect no-hitters more. This post is about the Astros being complete outliers in the department. No franchise in the history of the sport has been more efficient at holding opposing hitters to zilch.

Houston now has 18 of these in franchise history. That's tied for third most behind only the Dodgers and White Sox, which is incredibly impressive considering that the Astros have only been in existence since 1962. Improbably, Houston has thrown five of the last 11 no-hitters across baseball and are responsible for seven since 2019. That means they have been on the victorious end of 2.1% of all MLB no-hitters ever thrown just over the past seven seasons.

That is really, really hard to believe and there's no great explanation for it. No-hitters continue to prove themselves to be a bit random and arbitrary. Some of the greatest arms in the game went their whole careers without one while guys you've long forgotten about are forever etched in history.

Houston, for whatever reason, is doing it at an unreal pace.

The @astros have now thrown 5 no-hitters over the last 5 seasons, including playoffs (3 combined and one each by Justin Verlander and Framber Valdez).

That's the most no-hitters by any team over any 5-year span in MLB history. pic.twitter.com/7HZc69nFvb

— OptaSTATS (@OptaSTATS) August 2, 2023

Baseball is a funny game and one never knows what they're going to see when they tune into a game. With the Astros, it's the propensity to accomplish one of the sport's rarest feats with shocking regularity.

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