A 1 in 402 Chance

For those not paying attention to box scores, Curtis Granderson had a tremendous game tonight.  The New York Yankees beat the Minnesota Twins 7-6 tonight largely behind the production of Granderson at the plate.  Granderson went 5-for-5 at the plate with 3 home runs and 4 RBIs.  Better yet, those three home runs came in the first four innings of the game, leaving the door open for a fourth.

The magical number in baseball is four home runs in a game.  It's a feat that doesn't necessarily go overlooked, but is rather underrated.  The Perfect Game is the holy grail among pitchers, and has occurred only twenty times in history.  A four home run game has occurred only 13 times in the history of the game, and only 10 times without the game going to extra innings.  While some might want to point to rise of power hitters in recent decades, only four of those occurrences have been within the last 25 years.

Using Baseball-Reference.com's total number of games played (200,250 dating back to 1876), we can track the odds of the events listed above. The odds of seeing a 4 home run game:

13 Four Home Run Games

200,250 Games Played

13 / 200,250 = 0.000649

So there is rough a 0.006% chance of seeing a four home run game the next time you go to an MLB game, or roughly a 1 in 15,404 chance.  Let's say you have season tickets to the Yankees.  You would have to attend 190 seasons worth of games (assuming 81 games) just to tilt the odds in your favor, and even then you're talking about a 50/50 shot.

Even if you managed the impossible feat of attending every MLB game for an entire season, a grand total of 2,430 games, the odds of it seeing it are merely once every 6.339 seasons.  All of that said, this May will be the ten year anniversary of this occurring not once, but twice.  As if the odds are not low enough then Seattle Mariners center fielder Mike Cameron and Los Angeles Dodgers right fielder both completed this feat a mere weeks apart.  Cameron accomplished it in Chicago against the White Sox while Green accomplished it in Milwaukee against the Brewers.  If that was not enough, a little more than a year later, Carlos Delgado of the Toronto Blue Jays completed the feat at home against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.  It has not occurred against since September 2003.

Now let's not forget about Curtis Granderson just because he only hit three home runs tonight.  This has occurred much more often, but maybe not as much as you think.  Based on the sources I use, this would be the 498th game a player has hit three home runs in a game.  Using the same math as above, the odds of it occurring are 1 in 402.  Not nearly as rare, but still pretty remarkable overall.  Props to you Mr. Curtis Granderson.