Joe Musgrove just pitched the first no-hitter in San Diego Padres history! Wow!
Carlos Rodon threw a no-hitter for the White Sox?!? Neat!
What? John Means of Baltimore threw a near-perfect game no-hitter? Geez...
Another one? Wade Miley? Cincinnati... Cool... I guess...
Oh, Detroit’s Spencer Turnbull threw a no-hitter? Well, good for him.
Did you hear about the no-hitter? No...not Turnbull, that was last night. Corey Kluber threw one for the Yankees tonight. . .
This whole no-hitter thing is just getting silly.
The record for most no-hitters pitched in a season is seven (which has happened three times). With Kluber’s gem last night, we’re at six for 2021. Or seven, if you count Madison Bumgarner's seven-inning no-hitter. The record books don't, but Bumgarner may beg to differ. At any rate, we are, at most, one no-hitter away from tying the record. And it's not even June.
No-hitters, like Red Sox championships, used to be rare. Now it’s gotten to the point where you’re surprised when a week goes by without one.
Of course, we may go the rest of the season without another no-hitter. No-hitters, after all, are as much a matter of luck as skill. All it takes is a ball being hit a few inches to the left or right to change a hit to an out, a no-hitter to a one-hitter to a pitcher not making it out of the first inning.
Consider, for example, the fact that, aside from the Cy Young winner Kluber and World Series MVP Bumgarner, none of the pitchers on this season's list are exactly first-ballot Hall of Famers. Their combined lifetime won-loss record as of today is 184-205. Indeed, only one has a winning record (Means, 18-15). Joe Musgrove is 33-42, and Turnbull is a distressing 10-25. Meanwhile, any number of All-Star pitchers have never thrown a no-hitter.
Still, the fact that even mediocre pitchers are able to dominate the opposition like this speaks to a problem in the game, and I say that as someone who has always appreciated the art and style of pitching. Even I get bored watching nine innings of strikeouts and weak ground balls, with only the occasional home run to break the monotony. Games like this that end 1-0 or 2-1 get old pretty fast.
The big innovation under discussion to help even the odds for hitters is to move the pitcher's mound back a foot, from sixty-feet, six-inches to sixty-one feet, six inches. That extra foot doesn't sound like it would accomplish anything more than set off my dormant OCD, but those who study such things assure us that this will have the effect of shaving a couple of miles per hour off a fastball. Nothing to scoff at when pitchers are now routinely breaking triple digits.
There is certainly something aesthetically displeasing about the 61-foot measurement. Not that 60 feet is any less arbitary, but at least it has that nice, multiple of ten thing going for it. And I suppose the current spectacle of futile offenses is even less aesthetically pleasing. Still, something just feels wrong about changing a measurement as ingrained in tradition as the distance between the pitcher's mound and home plate. It's like changing the distance between bases from 90 to 89 feet. . . .It just sets off my baseball-fan OCD.
Years ago, after an earlier "year of the pitcher," the height of the pitcher's mound was lowered. Maybe they could just do that again? Make the pitchers throw from the same level as the hitters? I agree, though, that something needs to be done. No-hitters need to remain something special and rare. They're part of what makes each baseball game a fount of possibility, a chance to see something you don't see every day.
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