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),
Pitching machine Pitching machine A pitching machine is a machine that automatically pitches a baseball to a batter at different speeds and styles. Most machines are hand-fed, but there are some that automatically feed. There are multiple types of pitching machines; softball, baseball, youth, adult, and a combination of both softball and baseball. In 1897, mathematics instructor Charles Hinton designed a gunpowder-powered baseball pitching machine for the Princeton University baseball team's batting practice. According to one source it caused several injuries, and may have been in part responsible for Hinton's dismissal from Princeton that year. However, the machine was versatile: it was