Talk:Doubleheader (baseball)

Day-Night Doubleheaders
I added that The Elias Sports Bureau does not include "Day-Night" doubleheaders in their record books as real doubleheaders. This came up after one played on August 18-19, 2006 when the New York Yankees and the Boston Redsox played the longest nine inning game by time in major league history, 4 hours and 45 minutes. It was the back end of a day-night doubleheader. The first game went 3 hours and 55 minutes which would have meant the two teams played a total of 8 hours and 40 minutes of baseball. Had this been considered a real doubleheader it would have shattered the record of 7 hours and 39 minutes set by the Texas Rangers and Chicago Whitesox in Chicago on May 24, 1995.

Elias does not consider a doubleheader two games in which the park is cleared in between games.

Jny 13:15, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Are these still prohibited by the current collective bargaining agreement? I note the Diamondbacks and Rangers are playing in a day night doubleheader on 5/27/13. This was in the original schedule - it is not a makeup game. --Rickscholz (talk) 15:33, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

Swept doubleheaders
If roughly 50% of doubleheaders are sweeps, that's exactly what you would expect if the teams were equally likely to win each game, and each game is viewed as an independent event. Basically there's nothing interesting about 50% of doubleheaders ending in a sweep. Jhhays 17:51, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

"double-headers are more often swept as opposed to being split, which is against the common thought"

Clearly nonsence, given the fact that the "better" (objectively speaking) team are more likely to win any given game, slightly more than 50% of double headers should be swept. Edited accordingly --Andyk 94 (talk) 15:48, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

This is not true. The probability of winning an individual game is not the same as the aggregate probability of winning two straight games. The Phillies, for example, are a better team than my Nationals. They play each other 18 times a year. There is a better than 50 percent chance that the Phillies will win any given game against the Nationals. By the logic above, there should be a better than 50 percent chance that the Phillies will win all 18 games, which is of course virtually impossible. In fact, if there is a 60 percent chance that the Phillies will win each game, the aggegate chance that they will sweep a doubleheader is only .6 X .6 or 36 percent. Keith A. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Keacla1 (talk • contribs) 12:27, 5 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Ah, but you must also include the chances that the Nationals sweep a doubleheader, despite being the objectively inferior team.  0.4 x 0.4 = 16 percent.   36%+16%=52%.  Therefore, the presence of a "superior" team skews the chances of a doubleheader sweep slightly above the 50% that would be expected between teams of identical winning odds.    True, the odds of the Phillies sweeping is greater than the chances of the Nationals sweeping (36 to 16 percent), but the odds of a split are greater than the odds of either team sweeping, individually (but less than the odds of either sweeping, combined).   If a team were to somehow play its exact clone, the odds of either squad sweeping would be 25% each, with a 50% chance to split.  The odds of a sweep (by either team, combined) are a minimum of 50%, realistically 51% to 53% (given that some teams are better than others, and that skews the distribution, as in the Phillies-Nats example), with extreme outlyers possible (imagine the Phillies playing a squad from a retirement home) of course, but with usual talent distribution between the teams in the majors (Winning over 120, or less than 40, in a 162 game season, is almost unthinkable), I'd be pretty comfortable with the 51% to 53% range.  Perhaps even 50% to 52%.   --VegasHombre (talk) 03:11, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

In aggregate, all teams collectively have a 50% probability of winning a game. Call a individual game a trial and a double header two trials. If both trials are independent, using the binomial distribution function, then the probability of 0 success is 25%, 1 success (a split double header) is 50%, and 2 successes is 25%. A sweep therefore has a probability of 50% (0 success = being swept, 2 successes = sweeping the opponent). It is very unlikely that seeps only happen 25% percent of the time. It is possible, but it would mean that not only are trials correlated, but that they negatively correlated so that a team is more likely to lose following a win.

Notes and references
Cited references This is not true. The probability of winning an individual game is not the same as the aggregate probability of winning two straight games. The Phillies, for example, are a better team than my Nationals. They play each other 18 times a year. There is a better than 50 percent chance that the Phillies will win any given game against the Nationals. By the logic above, there should be a better than 50 percent chance that the Phillies will win all 18 games, which is of course virtually impossible. In fact, if there is a 60 percent chance that the Phillies will win each game, the aggregate chance that they will sweep a doubleheader is only .6 X .6 or 36 percent. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Keacla1 (talk • contribs) 12:22, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Apologies. The above comment was placed in the wrong section but I cannot figure out how to delete it. Keith A. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Keacla1 (talk • contribs) 12:28, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Why the decline?
If you look at the MLB schedules from the early 1960s, you find that Sundays and holidays usually had doubleheaders. I assume that the reason for no longer scheduling doubleheaders was the transition from propeller to jet as the standard passenger plane. Or is there another reason? Dynzmoar (talk) 00:44, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Iron Joe McGinnity
Seems to me that [Joe McGinnity]'s feats deserve mention under this topic. McGinty pitched both ends of five doubleheaders in his career. In his first two attempts, both for Baltimore in 1901, he had split decisions: against Milwaukee on September 3 and Philadelphia on September 12. Then in 1903, while playing for the Giants, he swept six games in the three doubleheaders he threw in a single month: against Boston on August 1; against Brooklyn on August 8; and against Philadelphia on August 31. This is far more notable than home-and-home doubleheaders which are simply a scheduling aberration, whereas what McGinnity did is not likely to ever be repeated.Allreet (talk) 15:57, 15 June 2015 (UTC)


 * Here's the record of all iron man stints: https://prestonjg.wordpress.com/2009/09/12/a-thorough-account-of-pitchers-who-have-started-both-games-of-a-doubleheader-in-the-major-leagues/. As for a source on McGinnity's performance: [//books.google.com/books?id=IJrTTNlrXyIC&pg=PA76&lpg=PA76&dq=last+pitcher+ironman+stint+double-header&source=bl&ots=ttNZu4pVqg&sig=fwpoWjpsQ7l35lpzQFzx5EM4D5Q&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAWoVChMIhciH3faRxgIVTg2SCh2pLAB9#v=onepage&q=last%20pitcher%20ironman%20stint%20double-header&f=false Doubleheaders: A Major League History] Allreet (talk) 18:45, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

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One-Day Stats
Does anyone have access to single-day stats? Most hits, RBIs, KOs, etc? DOR (HK) (talk) 22:11, 20 September 2022 (UTC)