Ervin Santana no-hits Cleveland
Posted by John Autin on July 27, 2011
Ervin Santana tossed a no-hitter in Cleveland Wednesday afternoon.
Santana had 10 strikeouts and 1 walk. He allowed one unearned run; the first batter he faced reached on an E-6, stole 2nd, and eventually scored on a wild pitch. The error and the walk were the only baserunners against him.
-- It's the Angels' first individual no-hitter since Mike Witt's perfect game on the last day of the 1984 season, and the 8th in franchise history, half of those by Nolan Ryan. It's their first no-hitter of any kind since 1990, a game in which Witt got the save with 2 IP in relief of Mark Langston.
-- Santana's 94 Game Score matched this year's season high, set by Justin Verlander in a 2-hit shutout, also against Cleveland; Verlander did not allow a hit until 1 out in the 8th. The no-hitters by Verlander and Francisco Liriano this year scored 90 and 83, respectively. Since 1919, the highest no-hit Game Score was 101, shared by Nolan Ryan and Sandy Koufax, each in the last of their several no-hitters.
-- Santana's previous best for a 9-inning CG was 3 hits, which he did twice.
-- The last no-hitter against Cleveland was in 1993, by Jim Abbott of the Yankees.
-- It was the Angels' 7th straight allowing 3 runs or less, 3 of them in Cleveland. That's 1 shy of longest streak this year, by Boston in May (also with 3 games in Cleveland).
-- The Angels have reached a season high of 9 games over .500. They've gone 23-10 since Father's Day.
July 27th, 2011 at 3:11 pm
The Jim Abbott no-hitter lives on in family lore. For my birthday that year, my family took me to a Yankees game. Unfortunately, I was born on September FIFTH.
July 27th, 2011 at 3:18 pm
@1, Nightfly -- Look on the bright side. For his 12th birthday, my brother (and the rest of my family) got to witness our beloved Tigers getting no-hit by Nolan Ryan, with a no-hit-record(?) 17 Ks:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/DET/DET197307150.shtml
July 27th, 2011 at 3:18 pm
Question: Aceves with his win last night has a 20-2 career record. Anybody ever done better in their first 22 decisions?
July 27th, 2011 at 3:22 pm
@1: I did hit the jackpot, on that game, though. One of the nicer things anyone ever got me!!:)
July 27th, 2011 at 3:22 pm
(no I didn't go to the game, but I saw some of it, on TV)
July 27th, 2011 at 3:32 pm
@3, Daylight -- Interesting question re: Aceves. I'll have to think about whether it's searchable.
July 27th, 2011 at 3:40 pm
The Indians were no-hit, but their very first batter got on base and scored. How hard would it be to find out if that's ever happened before?
July 27th, 2011 at 3:41 pm
@3, Daylight re: Alfredo Aceves -- I can tell you that no other pitcher in the 60' 6" era has had at least 20 wins and that good of a W% in his first N years combined, for N=1 to 10.
I can't think of a remotely efficient way to answer the question of "within his first 22 decisions," especially since it's taken him 88 games to reach 20 wins.
Maybe Raphy, the Maestro of the Play Index, will wander by with a suggestion....
July 27th, 2011 at 3:52 pm
@7, Matt -- Check out Raphy's post, "No-Hit but Not Shutout":
http://www.baseball-reference.com/blog/archives/13479
You can eyeball the individual box scores & play-by-play (where available) and get close to the answer you're after. But the games only go back to 1919.
July 27th, 2011 at 4:17 pm
No idea how to search it, but I can't imagine it would have many instances.
How many times has the pitcher who threw the no-no trailed at any point in their game?
Santana was down 1-0 until the 5th today.
July 27th, 2011 at 4:28 pm
The Indians were no-hit, but their very first batter got on base and scored. How hard would it be to find out if that's ever happened before?
The only other time thatt happened since 1919, it happened to the Indians (8/25/67, second game, Dean Chance).
July 27th, 2011 at 4:46 pm
I was able to confirm one pre-1919 no-hitter in which the losing team's first batter scored. On May 24, 1884, "Philadelphia Athletics (AA) P Al Atkinson hits the leadoff batter‚ Ed Swartwood‚ who steals 2B‚ takes 3B on a putout‚ and scores on a passed ball. But Atkinson sets down the next 27 [Pittsburgh] Alleghenies for a near-perfect‚ no-hit 10-1 win." (Source: baseballlibrary.com)
Atkinson also pitched a no-hitter for the American Association Athletics against the New York Metropolitans on May 1, 1886, winning 3-2.
July 27th, 2011 at 4:46 pm
Jim Abbott's name popping up was interesting, so I clicked on the link. (Your link doesn't seem to be the "correct" Jim Abbott, by the way)
I find the 1991 Angels team interesting. Three 18+ game winners, all with ERA+ of >100 (including Abbott at 142) and yet they only finished 81-81, last in a division where every team was .500 or better. I had forgotten about that.
Second-from-worst in runs scored in the AL, with the second-worst OPS+.
July 27th, 2011 at 5:06 pm
#13, "Kong" -- Thanks for the Abbott note; I've corrected the link.
And wow, 1991 -- I didn't know there was ever a year when the 7-team AL West all finished .500 or higher. In the 2-division era, the AL East was usually stronger.
July 27th, 2011 at 5:06 pm
Boston Globe, today:
http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/extras/extra_bases/2011/07/sox_win_but_the.html
Alfredo Aceves is 5-0 with a 2.50 earned run average in 25 relief appearances. He is the first pitcher to go 20-2 in his career since Howie Krist of St. Louis from 1937-42.
July 27th, 2011 at 5:08 pm
That would be the Cardinals, by the way.
After winning on July 25, 1942, Krist's career W-L was 21-2.
July 27th, 2011 at 5:11 pm
@15 -- Thanks for the find, Allan. I hope "Daylight" is still around to read it.
P.S. Howie Krist ran his record to 21-2, then lost 2 straight. He was 26-4 through 1942; finished his career 37-11.
July 27th, 2011 at 5:12 pm
Surprised to see no mention of Santana's previous outings vs CLE: 10 Starts, 0-6, 4.98 ERA. He also made his career debut against the Indians and gave up the cycle to the first 4 hitters he ever faced in the bigs. The Indians were the only team in the AL he had never beaten.
Also, although this is the first official no-hitter since Witt, don't forget the first game in the previous post, where Jared Weaver and Jose Arrendondo combined to allow 0 hits over 8 innings for the Halos
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/LAN/LAN200806280.shtml?utm_source=direct&utm_medium=Share&utm_campaign=ShareTool
July 27th, 2011 at 7:22 pm
Good job people. Thanks for the info on Aceves.
July 27th, 2011 at 8:21 pm
The Indians hadn't officially been no-hit since 1993, but the Tribe was also on the losing side of a "one-hit perfect game" last season.
July 27th, 2011 at 8:34 pm
I always felt Mark Langston was the pitching version of JD Drew.
July 27th, 2011 at 8:50 pm
@DaveKingman
That '91 Angels team had some weird pitching anomalies. For instance, both Floyd Bannister and Fernando Valenzuela are on that team, and both had one season where they led the league in SOs.
I also thought Finley was a terribly unappreciated player. He finished second in 1999 in SO and SO/9, with exactly 200 and about 8.5. But sometimes 2nd does not tell the whole story. His 200 Ks that year were second to Pedro's 313. And his 8.5 SO/9 were second to Pedro's 13 SO/9.
Then, although I never saw him pitch much, Bryan Harvey was called nearly unhittable by a few of his contemporaries. Robin Ventura said he would have nightmares about facing Harvey. It was a shame he never stayed healthy. In 1993, He saved 70% of the Marlin's wins.
July 27th, 2011 at 10:00 pm
@1, I was at the Abbott game. Despite being 9 and a huge baseball fan even at the time, I somehow did not realize that Abbott threw the no-hitter until we were walking out and my mom went "I can't believe he threw a no-hitter."
July 27th, 2011 at 10:10 pm
All this no-hitter talk . . . I'm 52 years old and I've never seen more than 2 innings of a no-hitter. That's what happens when most of the games that you watch are Mets games.
July 27th, 2011 at 10:45 pm
Lost in all of this no-hitter excitement - I noticed that not only did the Indians not get any hits, they also made 5 errors!
I first learned about no-hitters shortly before I turned 10 when I read about this one, which may have been the first ever no-hitter by an Angels pitcher:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/LAA/LAA196205050.shtml
For a 1962 game, if it says, "Time of Game: 2:00", does this mean that the game started at 2:00 p.m., or does it mean that it took two hours to play?
Never mind, I just scrolled down further:
Time of Game: 2:00.
Attendance: 15,886.
Field Condition: Unknown.
Start Time Weather: 67° F, Night.
I thought I remembered this being a night game. And it turns out that I remembered correctly.
Our family subscribed to the Washington Evening Star newspaper, not the more popular morning paper, the Washington Post. Thus, we got all of the night games in our home-delivered edition, Monday through Saturday. Well, there probably weren't any Sunday night games then, except possibly in pre-Astrodome Houston, then in its first year as a major league city. And since my interests mainly lay with the American League, especially the Senators but also that up-and-coming team about 40 miles north of us, I probably didn't pay too much attention to the Colt .45s' games. (Incidentally, I started typing "Astros" in that last sentence but quickly realized I had to correct that!)
On Sundays, though, the paper came in the morning. There still weren't many Saturday night games, either, but that second year AL team in Los Angeles seemed to play a lot of them. If a late Saturday night game was still in progess at press time, the Star would print a partial line score. I felt cheated out of a real box score, especially since I don't think the Star caught up with the real box score in Monday's paper. Maybe if the Senators were involved they did.
But probably not the Orioles, at least under normal circumstances. The Washington papers did not cover the Orioles like a home team until the second Senators left town (to Texas, where they really did play Sunday night games due to the hot weather). However, the Saturday night game that the Orioles played in Los Angeles was not a normal game. It was a phenomenon called a no-hitter, and I was quite fascinated by the concept. I know that I read a full article about this game in the Star. Either they held the deadline on Saturday night, or they printed an article about it in Monday's paper.
Ironically, it would be another no-hitter involving both the Orioles and the Angels that became the first one I ever tuned into. This one was on a Sunday afternoon, so no late night action was involved. I thought I had remembered it being in Baltimore, but it turned out to have been in Anaheim.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/CAL/CAL197506010.shtml
Time of game was 2:01. It was one of Nolan Ryan's.
Dick Williams, who recently died, played for the Orioles in the Belinsky no-hitter and managed against them in the 1975 Ryan no-hitter. Brooks Robinson went a combined 0-for-7 in the two games.
July 27th, 2011 at 11:09 pm
@25, DoubleDiamond -- Nice reminiscence.
Changing direction ... A while back, I referred to some non-shutout no-hitter as a "no-no," and was widely corrected by folks who said that "no-no" means "no hits, no runs." I wasn't aware of that distinction, but I checked a few sites and it seemed to be confirmed.
I just wanted to mention that several ESPN commentators tonight have referred to E.Santana's no-hitter as a "no-no," even though they stated explicitly that he allowed a run.
Is the meaning of "no-no" in flux?
July 27th, 2011 at 11:33 pm
@26 No-no refers to the Met no hitters. What, you think I'm kidding? See http://nonohitters.com/
July 28th, 2011 at 3:17 am
@2, John Autin, while I'm guessing you were/are a Tigers fan, as a baseball fan looking back, would you rather Ryan didn't pitch that no-hitter?
With the pain of the loss well in the rear-view mirror, I'd much rather be able to tell people that not only did I see a no-hitter, but it was thrown by Nolan Ryan, who also struck out 17 batters!
July 28th, 2011 at 7:51 am
@24 - Sorry bout that, but I guess most people have similar experiences. I was fortunate to have one run that included attending a Dennis Martinez 5-inning, rain-shortened no-hitter (which I know no longer counts, and I can now find no record of in the Game Logs. I believe it was 89 or 90), attending the Terry Mulholland no-hitter on 8/15/90, and then watching the full Tommy Greene no-hitter on 5/23/91. 3 games in about 2 years.
Not sure why I can't find the Denny Martinez game, but searching for it I found that he shut out the Phils once a year for 4 straight years. Probably not terribly uncommon, but I thought interesting.
6/14/88
6/9/89
4/19/90
5/21/91
July 28th, 2011 at 9:58 am
@29 Tristram I wonder if you're thinking of David Palmer or Pascual Perez. According to the Wikipedia list of rain shortened no-hitters, Palmer did it in 1984 and Perez in 1988. Those seem to be the only recent instances in the NL.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Major_League_Baseball_no-hitters#Shortened_games
July 28th, 2011 at 11:07 am
I had tickets to Dennis Martinez' perfect game in 1991, but I couldn't attend because I was going on vacation back East. I saw highlights of the game on the TV inside the Hall of Fame.
July 28th, 2011 at 1:27 pm
I can't help but feel there is something "tainted" about a run-allowing no-hitter. After all, the role of the pitcher is to prevent runs/baserunners, not hits.
At least, Santana, himself, was partly responsible for the run scoring.
July 28th, 2011 at 1:50 pm
@30 Ed - you are my hero! It was the Pascual Perez game. My memory must have been clouded by Martinez' subsequent perfect game. Pretty impressive outing by Pascual - 74 gamescore and 8 strikeouts in only 5 innings. I have to admit I have no memory of Graig Nettles ever playing for the Expos, let alone me having witnessed one of his 80 games with them.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/PHI/PHI198809240.shtml
July 28th, 2011 at 3:24 pm
Nettles with the Expos was kind of "Namath with the Rams" bad, so it's not surprising you blotted it out. Frankly, I did the same thing. For me the "He was an EXPO?" guy will always be Pete Rose, but a quick browse through their player history reveals some real startlers spending a bit of time at Stade Olympique... Maury Wills, for example.
Also, Miracle Mets stalwarts Ron Swoboda and Donn Clendenon were briefly Expos. Ron Hassey finished his career there. Matt Stairs STARTED his career there, and 18 years later, is back with the franchise in Washington, which might be some sort of record for players who didn't actually relocate with the team in 2005.
July 28th, 2011 at 3:54 pm
@34
Nice catches, Nightfly.
One hopes that never again will a baseball commissioner tacitly allow a franchise to wither and die so it can be relocated. May the curse of the jilted Expos forever remain on the Nationals! 🙂
At the other extreme, look at how hard Gary Bettman fights to prevent franchises from being relocated.
July 28th, 2011 at 8:26 pm
@35, Neil, buddy! -- The Nationals don't have enough hanging over them?!?
And besides ... Putting aside national pride for a moment, just think of how bad a franchise location Montreal must have been at the time to make D.C. look attractive.
(And before you District denizens and Montreal mavens get on my case: I love both cities; I'm talking only about the unfortunate fact that MLB franchises have struggled there.)
July 28th, 2011 at 8:44 pm
@36
JA, it was a complex situation in Montreal in the years leading up to the relocation and cause and effect are difficult to separate. But look how long previously it had been since a ML franchise relocated.
July 28th, 2011 at 11:34 pm
Oh, Neil... you hit me where I live with Gary Bettman. Hockey has always been my first love.
In truth, Bettman isn't so much against franchises moving, as he is at losing the inroads he's trying to make into southern markets. He didn't give a tinker's damn about the fanbases of Hartford, Minnesota, Winnipeg, or Quebec City, for example. That two of those markets have now reobtained teams is telling.
But yeah, he basically took over the Coyotes until they could be sold to a guy who would keep them in Arizona. He's also been willfully thwarting Jim Balsille's every attempt to buy a franchise, no matter how dire said team's bottom line might be, just to keep the guy from moving them to a better location.
I'm not sure whether this tenacity is Bettman's saving grace or damning feature - I love that the league's fanbase is growing in places like Carolina, Tampa, Dallas, and Nashville, but Hartford and Minnesota had long-established and loyal fan bases and were gutted for this grand experiment, and the results are still mixed 15 years later. (How many teams have to flee Atlanta?)
Sorry to rant. Bettman's definitely a love him or hate him sort of commish. And this drama influences my opinion on baseball relocation. I have never been happy that the Expos went south, especially to a market that already has the Orioles, and doubly-so when it was done with the active connivance of MLB.
July 29th, 2011 at 12:09 am
PS... speaking of Expos. RIP Hideki Irabu. Poor guy really caught a lot of abuse. Hell, if you search "Fat Toad" on b-r, it returns his player page.
July 29th, 2011 at 8:30 am
@39
Yeah, that is too bad about Irabu... I always felt that he had great ability. He could strike out major league hitters... and to do that you need good stuff.
July 29th, 2011 at 5:03 pm
Re #34:
I. Played for a relocated team in both cities, but played for at least one other MLB team in between
Baltimore Orioles and New York Yankees: Tom Hughes, Jack Thoney
Boston Braves and Milwaukee Braves: Johnny Antonelli, Del Crandall, Alvin Dark
Brooklyn Dodgers and Los Angeles Dodgers: Ron Negray
Kansas City Athletics and Oakland Athletics: Bob Johnson, Deron Johnson, Tommie Reynolds, Fred Talbot, Jose Tartabull, John Wyatt
Milwaukee Braves and Atlanta Braves: Joey Jay, Charlie Lau, Claude Raymond, Bob Uecker
Montreal Expos and Washington Nationals: Miguel Batista, Wil Cordero, Matt Stairs
New York Giants and San Francisco Giants: Ozzie Virgil
Philadelphia Athletics and Kansas City Athletics: Eddie Robinson
Seattle Pilots and Milwaukee Brewers: Ron Clark, Mike Ferraro, Larry Haney
St. Louis Browns and Baltimore Orioles: Fritz Dorish, Darrell Johnson, Don Johnson, Fred Marsh, Jim McDonald, Bob Nieman, Lou Sleater, Jim Wilson
Washington Senators (1901-60) and Minnesota Twins: Bill Fischer, Mike Fornieles
Washington Senators (1961-71) and Texas Rangers: Ed Brinkman, Mike Epstein, Darold Knowles
II. Played in the same city for two different franchises that did not exist in consecutive years
Cleveland Spiders and Cleveland Indians: Charlie Hemphill, Jimmy McAleer, Ollie Pickering, Ossee Schrecongost, Cy Young
Detroit Wolverines and Detroit Tigers: Deacon McGuire, Frank Scheibeck, Sam Thompson
Kansas City Athletics and Kansas City Royals: Moe Drabowsky, Aurelio Monteagudo, Ken Sanders, Dave Wickersham
Milwaukee Braves and Milwaukee Brewers: Hank Aaron, Felipe Alou, Phil Roof
New York Giants and New York Mets: Ed Bressoud, Willie Mays
Seattle Pilots and Seattle Mariners: Diego Segui
Washington Senators (1892-99) and Washington Senators (1901-60): John Anderson, Bill Coughlin, Gene DeMontreville, Patsy Donovan, Jack Doyle, Davey Dunkle, Lefty Herring, Mike Heydon, Mal Kittridge, Win Mercer, Jack O’Brien, Kip Selbach, Joe Stanley
Washington Senators (1901-60) and Washington Senators (1961-71): Don Mincher, Camilo Pascual, Pedro Ramos, Johnny Schaive, Roy Sievers, Zoilo Versalles (Rudy Hernandez, Hector Maestri, and Hal Woodeshick played for both franchises in 1960 and 1961)
III. Played for three different franchises (NL-AL-FL) in the same city
Chicago Cubs, White Sox and Feds (Whales): Rollie Zeider and Dutch Zwilling
St. Louis Browns, Cardinals and Feds (Terriers): Doc Crandall
August 2nd, 2011 at 5:53 pm
As for shortened no-hitters: Devern Hansack did it on the last day of the season one year, either 2005 or 2006. Don't remember much else about it.