Baseball and Last Names

[Jasper109]

In the Dodgers game tonight the first 4 pitchers to appear were Billingsley, Beimel, Broxton, and Baez.

I'm thinking that 4 pitchers with the same last name appearing consecutively for the same team in one game is an extremely rare event.

So what are the chances of it happening?

To make things slightly easier, lets ignore the issue of starters and relievers on a staff.

Here is what we have.

30 teams
11 pitchers on each team

minimum of 1, and maximum of say 7 pitchers appear every game

I think the first hurdle to overcome is to calculate the chances of even having 4 or more pitchers on the same staff with last names beginning with the same letter.

As of today, only the Dodgers even had 4 on the same staff.

Any ideas?

[hawk59]

This was already calculated in the Baseball Prospectus Handbook. 1 in 6.3 million.