The Houston Astros ace pitched five no-hit innings against the Philadelphia Phillies on Tuesday before manager Dusty Baker ended his night. The Astros bullpen failed to bring the no-hitter home as Will Smith allowed three hits in the ninth. But the Astros ran away with a 10-0 win and a stellar effort from their Cy Young favorite with their postseason slated to start on Oct. 11.
Verlander had his best stuff in his brief stint while recording 10 strikeouts and a single walk as his only baserunner allowed. But with the postseason looming and the AL’s No. 1 seed secure, Baker declined to tax his ace’s arm. He pulled Verlander after 77 pitches, 51 of which went for strikes.
Justin Verlander was in postseason form against the Phillies. (Troy Taormina/Reuters)
Hunter Brown and Hector Neris took over on the mound and kept the Phillies off the hit column through eight innings. But Phillies catcher Garrett Stubbs broke up the bid with a leadoff single off Smith in the ninth.
The effort puts an exclamation point on another stellar season for Verlander that ends with an 18-4 record, 1.75 ERA and 185 strikeouts in 175 innings pitched. If he does win the Cy Young at 39 years old, it will be the third of his career. And he’s probably not too upset about losing out on the combined no-hitter. He has three of his own already.
ANAHEIM, Calif. — Shohei Ohtani has provided Angels fans with plenty of highlights this season. He almost topped them all Thursday night.
Ohtani, the Angels’ two-way phenom and the reigning AL MVP, pitched no-hit ball into the eighth inning and extended his hitting streak to 14 games as Los Angeles pushed its winning streak to four with a 4-2 victory over the Oakland Athletics.
“Every time he takes the mound, you can anticipate something special happening,” Angels interim manager Phil Nevin said. “He had everything working. When he got through the seventh, I thought it was going to happen. Unfortunately, we’ll wait until next time.”
Ohtani said through interpreter Ippei Mizuhara that he was surprised he got through eight innings. He said he wasn’t happy with his fastball and went with more breaking balls than normal.
“To be honest, the velocity on my fastball wasn’t as fast as normal,” he said. “But my slider was doing its thing and was working. I’m kind of surprised with my stuff today.”
Ohtani allowed two hits and struck out 10 in eight scoreless innings to match his longest outing of the season.
In his final home start of the year, Ohtani (15-8) issued a leadoff walk to Tony Kemp before retiring the next 22 batters in order. Conner Capel broke up the no-hit bid with a sharp grounder that deflected off sliding shortstop Livan Soto’s glove and into left-center field with two outs in the eighth.
Even if Soto had been able to field it, he would have had trouble throwing out Capel.
Dermis Garcia followed with a clean single to left before Ohtani retired Shea Langeliers on a grounder to third to end the inning.
“It was going to take a special at-bat, and Conner stayed on a ball away and put a good swing on it,” Oakland manager Mark Kotsay said. “There’s always that exhale, and then Garcia gets ahead and we get some momentum.”
Ohtani ran his hitting streak to 14 games — the longest current streak in the majors — by going 2-for-4 with an RBI. He has 26 hits this season in games he also pitched.
After winning the American League MVP award last season, Ohtani is a leading contender again this year — probably the top challenger to New York Yankees slugger Aaron Judge, who hit his 61st home run Wednesday night to match the AL record set by Roger Maris in 1961.
“I feel like you guys are more of an expert on the voting. I’ll leave it up to you guys,” Ohtani said of the MVP race. “I enjoy watching Judge and saw him hit his 61st.”
Ohtani is at 161 innings pitched, one inning shy of assuring he will qualify among the league leaders when the season ends. Ohtani is likely to pitch in the season finale at Oakland next Wednesday so he does.
On the mound, Ohtani’s 15 victories are tied for third in the AL, his 213 strikeouts are third and 2.35 ERA is fourth. At the plate, he is fourth in the league with 34 home runs and sixth with 94 RBIs.
“I know I got MVP last year, but I’m having a better season this year, which is just leading to a lot more confidence,” he said.
Ohtani had a perfect game through 5⅓ innings at Houston on April 20 before Jason Castro lined a single to left field in the sixth. It was Houston’s only hit in the game.
ATLANTA — Here it comes, the ultimate analytics move, another egregious attack on the heart of the game. After five no-hit innings in Game 3 of the World Series, manager Brian Snitker walked toward Ian Anderson in the Braves’ dugout and informed his starting pitcher that he was taking him out before he could face the top of the Houston Astros’ order for the third time. Gather ’round, all you nerd-haters — this one was shaping up to be a classic of the genre.
Except the man who made the decision said it was nearly the exact opposite. Snitker, showing he has zero interest in the human condition’s bottomless desire for drama, trampled on the storyline not because of a spreadsheet but because of a very human feeling in the pit of his stomach. Anderson would not get his no-hitter, and the world would not get its preferred storyline, and there was a simple reason for that: It just didn’t feel right.
“Ian was like, ‘Are you sure? Are you sure?'” Snitker says. “But I was just like, ‘Ian, I’m going with my gut right here. Just my eyes, my gut.’ It would have been real easy to let him go back out.”
Snitker is disarmingly folksy — Nobel-level folksy — and it can serve to take the sting away from his bluntless. “The no-hitter thing,” he said, tossing it out there like he’d just remembered. “He wasn’t going to pitch a nine-inning no-hitter.”
Snitker talked a little bit more, sounding like someone who was still trying to convince himself, before finally saying, “I don’t know. It could have backfired, I guess. I just thought at that point in time, in a game of this magnitude, that he had done his job.”
In the dugout, Anderson, a 23-year-old with an impenetrable demeanor and a short history of phenomenal postseason pitching, could feel Snitker making his way toward him. And he knew why, too, because Snitker makes that trip only when it’s accompanied by a handshake and a compliment.
“He walked down and said, ‘That’s it. Heck of a job,'” Anderson said. “You feel a little bit of, I had more to give, but it’s something that you understand and move forward.”
Anderson stared into Snitker’s round face, that face that has given nearly 50 years to Atlanta Braves baseball, and he pleaded his case without a lot of conviction. “I knew he wasn’t going to budge,” he said. “We’re very fortunate to have him, and the way he treats us is phenomenal. He’ll shake your hand after every outing, good or bad, and that goes a long way.”
The Braves won 2-0 to take a two games to one lead over the Astros, and if that outcome had been different, the questioning — and the answers — would have had a different tone. The no-hitter was lost in the top of the eighth, when — facing Tyler Matzek — pinch-hitter Aledmys Diaz hit a fly ball to short left field that fell at the feet of Eddie Rosario.
And so ended what would have been one of the game’s least ostentatious — almost polite — no-hitters ever. There weren’t any memorable defensive plays. Anderson was really, really good, but he put together five of the messiest no-hit innings you could imagine. He walked three, hit one, went to a full count to five hitters in five innings, and, on a cold and rainy night, nearly as many of his 76 pitches were balls as strikes. He had gone to full counts twice to Jose Altuve, who was leading off the sixth, and twice to Alex Bregman, who was up third.
It didn’t feel in any way momentous until Snitker decided to end it. Anderson seemed fine with it at the time, laughing with Snitker in the dugout after the handshake. Asked to describe the expectant air that undoubtedly permeated the Braves’ bullpen as they prepared to finish the job, Matzek said, “Well, Luke Jackson didn’t know. [A.J.] Minter didn’t know. After I got done with my inning, they came up to me and said, ‘Hey, did you know you gave up the first hit?’ Yeah, I did know.”
Anderson admitted there was a part of him that wanted to see how far he could roll with a no-hitter in a World Series game. “I think I’m still processing it a little bit,” he said.
“I need to win a baseball game,” Snitker said. “I don’t see a lot of stuff. My wife always asks me, ‘Did you see that? Did you see that?’ and I have to say no. You just get so locked into the game itself and you don’t see things. The me of old, probably a couple of years ago, would have said, ‘Why the hell am I doing this?’ But you know, he wasn’t going to throw a no-hitter himself.”
It’s the World Series, and the decisions aren’t made with ratings or storylines in mind. They’re business decisions, pure and simple, whether they originate in a series of formulas or the gut of a 66-year-old man.
In the pivotal Game 3 of the World Series between the Astros and Braves on Friday night at Truist Park, Atlanta rookie right-hander Ian Anderson pitched five no-hit innings before being lifted in favor of reliever A.J. Minter. At the time, Anderson was staked to a 1-0 lead thanks to Austin Riley’s one-out, RBI double in the third inning.
Two Braves relievers extended the no-hit bid to seven innings until a third reliever, Tyler Matzek allowed a single to pinch-hitter Aledmys Diaz to lead off the eighth. The Braves added an insurance run on Travis d’Arnaud’s solo homer and wound up winning Game 3 by a score of 2-0. They now lead the best-of-seven series by a count of 2-1.
Anderson overcame some early command issues and wound up striking out four against three walks. Of his 76 pitches, just 39 went for strikes. While Anderson notched just five swings and misses on the night, he also allowed just three hard-hit balls.
As it turns out, Anderson’s five no-hit innings were the fourth-most ever by a rookie in postseason history:
And here’s some even more exclusive company:
While Anderson has yet to work deep in any of his now four starts this postseason, he’s thrived at keeping runs off the board — he’s given up just three in 17 innings in these playoffs.
Braves manager Brian Snitker pulled Anderson before he could face the tough Houston lineup for a third time. The temptation to ride Anderson longer must have been strong, given the heavy load lifted by the Atlanta bullpen and the uncertain rotation moving forward, plus the fact that the two teams won’t have another off day until Monday (should the series go that long). However, Snitker appeared to have the decision made as soon as Anderson entered the dugout after striking out pinch-hitter Marwin Gonzalez to end the top of the fifth.
Snitker said he made the decision with his “gut” and noted Anderson’s pitch count made the call easier.
Anderson during the regular season — his age-23 campaign — pitched to a 3.58 ERA (124 ERA+) with 124 strikeouts and 51 unintentional walks in 128 1/3 innings.
In the pivotal Game 3 of the World Series between the Astros and Braves on Friday night at Truist Park, Atlanta rookie right-hander Ian Anderson pitched five no-hit innings before being lifted in favor of reliever A.J. Minter. At the time, Anderson was staked to a 1-0 lead thanks to Austin Riley’s one-out, RBI double in the third inning.
Anderson overcame some early command issues and wound up striking out four against three walks. Of his 76 pitches, just 39 went for strikes. While Anderson notched just five swings and misses on the night, he also allowed just three hard-hit balls.
As it turns out, Anderson’s five no-hit innings were the fourth-most ever by a rookie in postseason history:
And here’s some even more exclusive company:
While Anderson has yet to work deep in any of his now four starts this postseason, he’s thrived at keeping runs off the board — he’s given up just three in 17 innings in these playoffs.
Braves manager Brian Snitker pulled Anderson before he could face the tough Houston lineup for a third time. The temptation to ride Anderson longer must have been strong, given the heavy load lifted by the Atlanta bullpen and the uncertain rotation moving forward, plus the fact that the two teams won’t have another off day until Monday (should the series go that long). However, Snitker appeared to have the decision made as soon as Anderson entered the dugout after striking out pinch-hitter Marwin Gonzalez to end the top of the fifth.
Anderson during the regular season — his age-23 campaign — pitched to a 3.58 ERA (124 ERA+) with 124 strikeouts and 51 unintentional walks in 128 1/3 innings.
