Few accomplishments in sports are as dominant as a no-hitter, but given the way baseball is now managed, the days of one man owning the mound for nine full innings are likely close to over.
AP Photo/Matt Slocum
PHILADELPHIA — Through six innings, Houston Astros starting pitcher Cristian Javier was untouchable.
Just 24 hours after the Philadelphia Phillies took his teammate Lance McCullers deep for a World Series record-tying five home runs, Javier shut down the red-hot offense, striking out nine batters through six innings without giving up a single hit.
But after the Astros took a 5-0 lead in the fifth inning, Astros manager Dusty Baker decided to make a move. Despite having a no-hitter still going through six innings of baseball, Javier got pulled after 97 pitches.
"It's baseball in 2022," Baker explained after the game, noting that Dodgers' manager Dave Roberts had lifted Clayton Kershaw earlier in the season just six outs away from completing a perfect game.
"Especially a young player, you think about his health and his career as much as you think about that game," Baker said. "And like I said, we had a real fresh bullpen, extremely fresh bullpen, and one of the best bullpens around, so I had full faith that they could do the job."
Baker's bullpen did just that, with Bryan Abreu, Rafael Montero, and Ryan Pressly following Javier's brilliant effort with hitless appearances in relief.
"It was a situation where he was approaching that 100 [pitch] mark," Baker said of the decision to pull Javier. "Before every game we have kind of an unwritten limit on where a guy should be in the ball game. His limit was 100 pitches and I think he was at 93, and if we had sent him back out there the next inning, he would have surpassed that maybe in the first hitter."
Chasing records is fun, but to state the obvious, wins are more important, and none moreso than games in the World Series.
On Twitter, some fans expressed frustration that a combined no-hitter doesn't count the same as a single player's dominant performance.
—Nick Tyrell (@nicktyrell) November 3, 2022
—Will Manso (@WillManso) November 3, 2022
—Rudi Riet #Repeal2A #ClimateEmergency #SafeStreets (@randomduck) November 3, 2022
Factually, the argument that a combined no-hitter doesn't count immediately falls flat. But the spirit of the debate is understandable. The traditional, one-man no-hitter, is a feat of endurance as much as dominance. Seeing a player in their prime, pushed to the brink, and refusing to relent even once to a team of opposing professionals doing everything they can to scrounge any hit, is a transcendent experience, unmatched by a team that is working matchups out of the bullpen.
Still, the combined no-hitter is likely the more common version of the feat we'll see moving forward. Between stricter pitch counts and a drop in romanticism in favor of pragmatism across the majors, a one-man no-hitter will have to be something of a perfect storm, as the days of one guy going 120+ pitches are likely coming to an end.
In 2012, 29 major league pitchers averaged at least 100 pitches per start, with Justin Verlander, then on the Detroit Tigers, leading the way with 114.6 pitches per outing.
This season, just two pitchers — Sandy Alcantara and Luis Castillo — averaged a triple-digit pitch count when they took the mound, and just 31 pitchers averaged more than 90.
With the days of the one-man no-hitter waning, it's likely time to give the combined no-hitter its due. Baseball is a team sport, and a starter and his bullpen coming together to completely shut down an opposing offense is still quite a feat.
And while from afar, the accomplishment may feel a bit diminished, watching a combined no-hitter in person will hit you hard enough to realize that it's just as dominant a performance, no matter how many pitchers a team uses.
Just ask anyone present in Philadelphia for Game 4.
