DiMaggio, Hitting Streaks, and "At This Rate"

A recent op-ed contributor to the New York Times uses computer modeling to demonstrate that a hitting streak like the fifty-six-game job Joe DiMaggio put together is really not that extraordinary. Indeed, the computers suggest, we shouldn't be surprised at Joltin' Joe's performance at all.
With all due respect to this writer, I have to observe that computers do not play baseball. I did a similar study, albeit without aid of complicated computer modeling. What I discovered was that perfect games, that rarest of pitching accomplishments, should actually happen more often than they do. If the odds of getting a single hitter out are about 3/4 for a good pitcher, then the odds of getting 27 hitters out in a row are 3/4 to the 27th. That comes out to a .000432 chance of a perfect game. That's 4 in 10,000. Given that there are 2,592 games per year with two sides pitching or 5,184 possibilities, there ought to be something like two perfect games each year. Even crummy pitchers, the sort that allow runners to reach base 30% of the time, ought to get a perfect game every six years or so.
This goes along with my irritation at comments like "at this rate" when it comes to sports or anything else. For example, at the rate they are hitting home runs this year (after one game) the Kansas City Royals will hit 162 homers this year. I'd be fairly certain that the Royals will not hit 162 home runs this year. At the rate they're winning games, the Royals will go 162-0. "At this rate" is an absolutely meaningless comment, since rates rarely stay the same.
If housing values continue to decline at the present rate for the next ten years, houses will be worth nothing. I'm pretty sure that isn't going to happen. At the rate my son is playing Wii, he'll have put 5,000 hours on the machine by the end of the month. That isn't going to happen either.
Let's just be clear. Computers don't play baseball and the future cannot be boiled down to a mathematical formula. To write and think intelligently about such things, we have to go beyond such functions.