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Naddafingah! Bakerses
A pitcher, cruising along through six innings in game four of the World Series, with a no-hit shutout going, was taken out of the game without even the chance for the complete game shutout no-no. Without at least waiting until the first hit was given up. What kind of soulless anti-baseball monster would do such a thing? Oh. Dusty Baker. Naddafingah! Bakerses!
Here’s the kicker: now I have to hear all the raving about the “combined” no-hitter as if that’s a thing now. A no-hitter is a term applied to a pitcher. Singular. Also, it’s only applied to a complete game, otherwise the proper terminology is to refer to the number of no-hit innings that a pitcher threw. Words have meaning, Basesball.
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They might need to use him as a reliever later in the series.
I think Curt Schilling lost a no-no in the 9th when a guy bunted for a base hit. I’m pretty sure the next batter got it in the ribs on the next pitch.
That’s the right play all around. Good stuff right there.
I just looked it up and it’s worse: that bunt single mucked up a perfect game. I didn’t see any report of retaliation (even the following week when Schilling faced the same batter again).
I’m going from memory. As time goes by the memories become hazier. Schilling is a pretty old school guy. I would be surprised if he didn’t get some kind of retaliation.
I’m not too knowledgeable on the conditions that warrant the 100% of the time use of the pitch count. I grew up in a different time. The guy I always look at when these discussions come up is Dick Donovan because he pitched for the Atlanta Crackers (AA) before Atlanta had a major league club. That was in the early fifties. Donovan went up and pitched for several teams, was an all-star several times, and had several years of complete games in the high teens. Pitchers used to finish games and no one would ever be taken out like happened here.
I am thinking of the season more than just a game. Baker probably ruined easily 3-4 arms (Wood and Prior being most obvious) on that staff.
Yup, so true. Neither of those guys ever recovered, although Zambrano went on to have several more good years and Wood had a coupla years as a closer I think.
In 1980, Billy Martin’s starters on the Athletics pitched 94 complete games. 1981 was a strike year–but 60 more. Rick Langford pitched 46 (!) complete games in those two years, had a mediocre year in ’82, and then was gone.
Me, too. I favor cutting down on the sizes of rosters.
Even better, if they went so far as to cut the roster sizes so that one pitcher had to pitch the whole season, maybe even I could get a hit off him now and then. I’d have to figure out how to get on the field, but maybe deception and corruption would help.
Or more likely with such rosters the players wouldn’t be able to specialize so much, each would have to play more than one position, and the game wouldn’t be so over-engineered and would become more like a game than an industrial assembly-line.
I have reconsidered my opinion and changed my mind. I now agree with Dusty Baker’s decision. Javier threw 97 pitches through six innings. That’s over 16 pitches per inning. If Baker had left Javier in the game to pitch his no-hitter, Javier, at the rate he had been throwing, would need 145 pitches to complete his no-hitter. Baker calculated that his pitcher would not last that long anyway. I think it was a probable guess. Baker pulled him and preserved the win for the Astros. Calling the game a no-hitter requires a huge asterisk, however.
A complete game shutout by a single pitcher should have the same status as a “combined no-hitter”.
I spent my previous life consumed by stats and statistical oddities. First off, combined no-hitters have always been a thing. They are also rarer than single-pitcher ones. There have been 298 instances where a pitcher has thrown 9 or more hitless innings. There has only been 19 where the bullpen chipped in.
No-hitters are both an accomplishment and a failure. Sometimes it’s a double failure. In May of this year the Reds’ Hunter Greene and Art Warren n0-n0’d the Pirates – and lost 1-0. (That’s happened twice.) But because they were the road team and the Pirates didn’t bat in the 9th it didn’t qualify as a no-hitter under baseball’s current definition (and rewriting of the record book) adopted in 1991.
The win wasn’t in danger at that point. It risks nothing to wait at least until he gave up a hit or a walk. It’s pointless soullessness.
Reasonable people will disagree. (with you)
Just kidding, but seriously, a no hitter has always been an individual pitcher accomplishment. I understand that a combined is even rarer (probably because of the relatively recent increase in relief pitcher innings pitched), and it’s an accomplishment too, but let’s not give an inch on the terminology or the moderns will take a mile.
But to what end? He had done a magnificent job, but he used himself up to get there. He would almost certainly not have made it through the 9th inning. Putting Javier back out would only be setting him up for failure. BTW, didn’t the Phillies come back from five runs down in the first game?
To what end? The chance for greatness!
Or as Tom Kelly said when Jack Morris refused to come out after pitching 9 scoreless innings in Game 7 of the 1991 World Series: “What the hell, it’s just a game.”
See Harvey Haddix, 1959. 12 perfect innings against the Braves, only to lose it in the 13th.
I was working night shift at a job in Rochester, NY and I listened to that game on the radio. I was a Braves fan.