The (Thrice) Updated List of Catchers Who Have Caught Perfect Games (Now With More Powell and Ruiz (and a Dash of Pierzynski))

(Updated 4-21-12: Woke up from a nap this afternoon, checked Site Meter, and noticed an unusual amount of activity. Put two and two together, checked Yahoo, and saw that congratulations were in order for Philip Humber. Since this post was getting a small bit of attention, I wanted to update right away. I always added the box score link for Roy Halladay‘s perfecto and made note of Armando Galarraga‘s near miss in 2010.)

(Updated 4/22-12: I added the home plate umpire for each game and made the list into a table. For games where Baseball-Reference didn’t have a box score, I used the box scores at Baseball Almanac.

I put together a list last season of the eighteen men who caught perfect games in the major leagues and intended to update it after Dallas Braden‘s gem earlier this month. Apparently I’m not working fast enough for the Baseball Gods, however, because they sent me a clear message tonight: start updating, or we’ll have so many perfect games that you’ll NEVER be able to update.

That’s right, Roy Halladay, you can thank me for your place in history.

Okay, maybe not.

Regardless of whether or not it was my insolence toward the Baseball Gods or Halladay’s unbelievable talent that resulted in tonight’s perfect game (probably the latter), the list has been updated to include the two game’s from this season:

(Reminder: this list is taken from the Encyclopedia of Baseball Catchers and fact-checked against Baseball-Reference.com when possible.)

Some additional notes:

1) To update the Hall of Fame numbers mentioned in the original post, I count eight Hall of Fame or likely Hall of Fame pitchers on the list (Ward, Young, Joss, Bunning, Koufax, Hunter, Johnson, Halladay) and four Hall of Fame or likely Hall of Fame catchers (Schalk, Berra, Rodriguez, Posada). Note that I changed my vote on Posada in the last ten months. Still, unless Landon Powell or Carlos Ruiz suddenly develop super powers, no Hall of Fame catcher has ever caught a perfect game from a Hall of Fame pitcher. (The closest would be Rogers-Rodriguez and Wells-Posada.)

2) The fact that there have been two perfect games and a no-hitter already this season should be used to once again prove that most commentators need to pause and think before opening their mouths. Just a few short years ago, there was a lengthy gap without a no-hitter and people started freaking out. No-hitters are a random occurrence, people. A lot has to go right for them to happen. I’d like to think that the first two months of this season proves that there will always be games in which the right conditions fall into place.

3) Seven of the twenty perfect games in major league history have been pitched in May, including four of the last six. The last eight have been pitched in either May or July, the last thirteen in either May, July, or September.

4) Detroit’s Armando Galarraga should have pitched a perfect game on June 2, 2010, but first base umpire Jim Joyce blew a call on the final batter. He later admitted he was badly wrong, he cried, Galarraga forgave him, I think they wrote a book together. It turned into a whole “thing”. Galarraga’s catcher in that near-miss was Alex Avila.

5) Tim McClelland and Ted Barrett worked second and third base, respectively, on Phil Humber’s perfect game. Several previous perfect games involved one other umpire who either had a perfect game on his resume or would add one, but I think this is the only time that two such arbiters took the field for an eventual perfecto.

6) The home plate umpire for Humber’s perfect game was Brian Runge. Runge’s grandfather, was the rightfield umpire for Don Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series.