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Almost extinct: the no-walk, no-strikeout game

Posted by Andy
The Steroids Era nearly robbed us of games where the batting team didn't register a single walk or strikeout.
Going back to 1992, here are all of these games:

Rk Date Tm Opp Rslt PA H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO LOB
1 2009-09-12 NYM PHI W 10-9 41 15 3 0 3 10 0 0 4
2 2008-05-17 COL MIN W 3-2 31 8 3 0 0 3 0 0 4
3 2006-05-01 MIN SEA L 2-8 34 9 0 1 1 2 0 0 5
4 2006-04-26 SEA CHW W 5-1 33 9 2 0 1 5 0 0 4
5 2003-08-17 KCR MIN W 5-4 36 12 0 0 2 5 0 0 7
6 1999-08-28 (2) COL PHI W 4-0 33 11 5 1 0 3 0 0 5
7 1999-06-11 CHW CHC W 5-3 29 11 1 1 1 5 0 0 7
8 1994-06-28 SEA DET W 6-4 33 12 3 0 1 6 0 0 3
9 1994-04-24 MON LAD L 1-7 33 7 0 0 0 1 0 0 5
10 1993-06-30 ATL COL W 3-2 34 7 2 0 1 3 0 0 5
11 1993-06-15 NYM ATL L 1-2 33 6 0 0 1 1 0 0 5
12 1992-07-11 KCR MIL L 1-5 39 13 1 0 0 1 0 0 11
13 1992-05-26 KCR DET L 1-8 33 6 2 0 0 1 0 0 5
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 12/17/2011.

Strikeouts and walks both spiked during 1993-2007 and those games were pretty rare. Over the 42-year period of 1950 to 1991, there were 131 such games, an average of just over 3 per season.

In case you're wondering, in the box-score-searchable-era back to 1919, there are only two games where neither team had a walk or a strikeout:

Rk Tm Opp Date PA AB H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO
1 CHW CLE 1924-08-28 (1) 72 71 21 3 1 0 6 0 0
2 BRO BSN 1922-06-30 68 66 16 2 0 0 4 0 0
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 12/17/2011.

Like the bald eagle, as walk rates continue to drop, perhaps the population of such games will revive. Don't count on it, though, as strikeouts continue to get increasingly common.

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