Orioles Pitcher Pulled During No-Hitter

The potential advantage to the team is minimal, while the possible downside is extreme. For the player, the potential upside is tremendous, what will be the highlight likely of that person's entire career, while the downside is identical, career-threatening injury. After 82 pitches is early but then the season just started. He should have given him a chance to end it under 110.

There is so much random luck with pitching no hitters. No hitters usually occur when multiple screaming line drives are hit directly to fielders.

more good fortune than skill wrote:

There is so much random luck with pitching no hitters. No hitters usually occur when multiple screaming line drives are hit directly to fielders.

True, there's an 80-90% chance he would have lost the no-hitter before 9 anyway

more good fortune than skill wrote:

There is so much random luck with pitching no hitters. No hitters usually occur when multiple screaming line drives are hit directly to fielders.

Yeah, a no-hitter is about 99% luck. There have been many great pitchers that never threw one while some guys had one during a short career. It's very similar to a hole in one; same swing as a thousand before, but one bounced in right place.

Hardloper wrote:

MeHereYouWhere?! wrote:

82 pitches thru 6 and 1/3 really is not very many. I could see pulling him if it was 100 pitches at that point OR it was a close game (it was 5-0 at the time).

If he goes all 9 innings, he's probably looking at 120 pitches max. If he gives up a hit and starts getting in trouble and is near the 100 pitch mark, then pull him.

This... But the manager's justification was that he threw 40 pitches 3 days prior. Not sure why he threw 40 pitches in relief on opening day when he was starting 3 days later.

Short answer: Injuries and lack of arms.

O's fan wrote:

Hardloper wrote:

This... But the manager's justification was that he threw 40 pitches 3 days prior. Not sure why he threw 40 pitches in relief on opening day when he was starting 3 days later.

Short answer: Injuries and lack of arms.

O's fan- you aren't going to enlighten us with Earl Weaver's wisdom? He said something about making his pitchers run their ba!!s off during spring training so their legs could handle the season. I don't believe many of his 4-man rotation guys ever had arm problems, that's for sure.

I guess this is obvious but the game is just different now. Starting pitchers are getting more and more used to throwing only 5 or 6 high effort innings, mixing a ton of high stress sliders and curves and trying to throw 95 MPH fastballs all day. So going out there for 120-130 pitches or whatever is much more stressful than for the guys in the old days who were planning on doing that anyway and were better at managing their effort level in the early innings to get to the point where they could go 7-8 and throw a ton of pitches.

Obviously it depends on the guy. Jacob DeGrom or Max Scherzer you could probably be comfortable with letting them go forever. They are old school workhorses. If you got a young guy who has had major injury and hasn't thrown a ton, you're gonna be careful with him and you would be dumb to just say "He's got a no hitter working, can't take him out Bob, let him throw 180. This is special."

Walker Buehler had a no hitter going vs. the Padres last year and was pulled. Wound up being a combined no hitter, but they did the right thing. He was 22 or 23 or whatever, had TJ already, never pitched a full season, and they had a plan for exactly how much and when they wanted him to pitch and stuck to it. So far he is still happy and healthy and ready to lead the Dodgers to a third place finish in the NL West.

Even if you don't get hurt it can mess with you. Check Sean Newcomb's stats line after he threw something like 140 pitches trying to no hit the Dodgers last year. He lost it with two outs, two strikes in the ninth, and it would have been great if he did it, but after that he went from statistically being one of the better pitchers in the NL to one of the worst. His ERA was close to six after that if I remember right.

Injury/burnout concerns. 158 games left to be played.

Most elite pitchers aren’t going 8/9 innings at this point of the season - why let this rando? Let the SP warm up to the season and let the RP get their groove.

Excellent managerial decision.

Macdaddy wrote:

Injury/burnout concerns. 158 games left to be played.

Most elite pitchers aren’t going 8/9 innings at this point of the season - why let this rando? Let the SP warm up to the season and let the RP get their groove.

Excellent managerial decision.

I think the obsession with metrics, to the degree that it deprives a pitcher and a team of a once in a lifetime opportunity, worsens the game on the possibility the pitcher could squeeze out an extra win in August. Makes the game too clinical and bloodless.

Throwing a complete game with more than 17 strikeouts is evidence of skill. I do not believe any pitcher who strikes out more than 17 batters is benefiting from random good luck. No hitters are luck. Stop acting as if no hitters are skill.

This single post about baseball is richer in history, tactics, hero worship, and more interesting than a month of the usual LetsRun stuff.

Chico E. wrote:

Baseball be very very goofy to me wrote:

Jon Edwards now leading majors with 2 wins!!

Tied.

Only because Seattle played a week early!!

OP, Mikeh, are you an Os fan? We should hang out and go to a game. Email me.

Anyway, I was watching the game (can't believe I somehow missed this thread) with my wife. We used to watch virtually every Os game from start to finish but with a baby that doens't happen so much anymore. But I told my wife she might want to watch as I saw he had a no-no in the 5th.

When he got pulled, I've never seen her that mad. She said she'd never watch another game.

Now, she didn't watch opening day as she was at work and I had forgotten he had pitched on opening day. When I heard he'd pitched on opening day, I was sort of fine with it.

I mean as I was watching the game, I was thinking to myself, "It's the 1st game of the season. Is he going to be able to finish this ? He's average like 12.5 pitches per inning so you are going to be over 110."

If I'd known he was on 3 days rest, I'd probably have realized the answer was, "Not likely."

What schocked me the most however was how the guy handled it post-game. Check out this interview. Hess seems like the most mature interviewee ever. He was praising the manager for yanking him as he says he now really respects him as it shows he cares about him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik62g6YUNwQ

Here is shorter version where you hear both the manager and pitcher give their thoughts:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7S9LPCrMjYw

I think given he was on short rest, it was actually smart to pull him when he did assuming you aren't going to let him finish no matter what (as long as the no-hitter is in tac)t. This way, you avoid having to make a really tough call. He'd already thrown 8 pitches in the inning for 1 out. Let's saya guy walks and it takes him another 15 pitches to get out of the inning and then say the 8th is a 20 pitch inning. You'd be at 117 pitches heading into the 9th. Now that's pretty much worst case scenario but then the manager would be in a real bind.

So if you are going to pull him in a situation like that , pull him early before you wear out his arm as the reality is he most likely isn't going to get the no-hitter.

My co-worker. Finding it hard to concentrate

https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=Sv11TV9E&id=CFB696F4ED11C0C7318A75837A88FBCC1414E3C4&thid=OIP.Sv11TV9ELgbnTWxdWf6k5QHaMW&mediaurl=https%3a%2f%2fs-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com%2f736x%2f49%2fdb%2fd8%2f49dbd8f50e18bdb221ac26dab1f8fd98.jpg&exph=800&expw=480&q=long+legs+in+black+leggings&simid=607989478885884927&selectedIndex=3&qpvt=long+legs+in+black+leggings&ajaxhist=0

Nationals reliever has an ERA of infinity after three starts :

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/apr/3/trevor-rosenthal-maintains-era-infinity-through-tw/

psyentist wrote:

The world has become soft.

Just imagine if you could sub out when you fell off WR pace (pausing your time no less) and have someone else run for you. You still get record.

Not sure if you know baseball but relief pitchers have been around for a long time.

psyentist wrote:

The world has become soft.

Just imagine if you could sub out when you fell off WR pace (pausing your time no less) and have someone else run for you. You still get record.

A better analogy would be to imagine that running is a team event with a manager. Now imagine you have run twenty miles at a great clip. Would you be "soft" if the manager wanted to put in fresh legs to run the last 6.2?

killermike wrote:

psyentist wrote:

The world has become soft.

Just imagine if you could sub out when you fell off WR pace (pausing your time no less) and have someone else run for you. You still get record.

A better analogy would be to imagine that running is a team event with a manager. Now imagine you have run twenty miles at a great clip. Would you be "soft" if the manager wanted to put in fresh legs to run the last 6.2?

But what if the runner was on sub 2 hour pace at 20 miles? Would you replace the runner at that point or wait until the first sign of a problem?

Kai Hansen wrote:

A better analogy would be to imagine that running is a team event with a manager. Now imagine you have run twenty miles at a great clip. Would you be "soft" if the manager wanted to put in fresh legs to run the last 6.2?

But what if the runner was on sub 2 hour pace at 20 miles? Would you replace the runner at that point or wait until the first sign of a problem?[/quote]

A sub two hour has never been done, so that's not analogous to a no hitter. It would be more like 2:05 pace. But either way, I would do whatever I thought was best for the team. To be clear, I would have left the guy in. But I don't it indicates that he is soft because the manager pulled him.