Shutouts in baseball a winning home team will not bat (and the visiting team will not field) in the bottom of the ninth if they are winning, and the game will end with only 8½ innings played. In 1991, Major League Baseball changed the definition of a no-hitter to require that a pitcher throw at least nine full innings for the no-hitter to be official. With that change, there have been four no-hit performances ruled ineligible despite the pitcher pitching an eight-inning complete game in a losing effort: Silver King (June 21, 1890), Andy Hawkins (July 1, 1990), Matt Young (April 12, 1992),
Defense independent pitching statistics was in the game. Since most outs rely on fielding, the results from calculations using innings pitched are not truly independent of team defense. While the creators of DICE, FIP and similar statistics all suggest they are "defense independent", others have pointed out that their formulas involve innings pitched (IP). Innings pitched is a statistical measure of how many outs were made while a pitcher was pitching. This includes those made by fielders who are typically involved in more than two thirds of the outs. These critics claim this makes pitchers' DICE or FIP highly dependent on the defensive play