According to data from Twitter scientists, we owe Martha Stewart an apology.
Earlier this season, Yankees pitcher Michael Pineda was on his way to a no-hitter when Stewart sent out this tweet:
Three minutes later, Evan Longoria ended Pineda’s no-hitter bid and we blamed Stewart for her ill-timed tweet.
Martha, we’re sorry.
Twitter has informed us that mentions of no-hitters on Twitter show little correlation with the completion of a no-hitter. The company measured the number of mentions of “no-hitter” from the start of the game through 40 minutes from the final pitch (which cuts out the celebration tweets once a pitcher does complete a no-hitter) during the 2015 season. This is what they found:
Courtesy of Twitter
The traffic surrounding Edinson Volquez’s no-hitter is also included in that graph.
They even compared data of one pitcher’s two no-hitter bids from that season and showed a huge spike in mentions after the fifth inning of the successful bid:
Courtesy of Twitter
Of course, the idea of curses aren’t logical anyway so even if Twitter has pretty specific data on that there is no such thing as a Twitter curse on no-hitters, we advise you to continue to follow the illogical side of your brain that comes out strong when you’re a fan of a team and blame your favorite pitcher’s no-hitter bid failing on other stupid fans cursing it.
Read more over on Twitter’s blog.
