A New Low for Baseball
Surely this is an overreaction, but it really feels like last night’s combined no-hitter is a disaster for baseball. All postseason long, fans have been confronted with the ways that hitters are basically overmatched by pitchers, whether it was a Wild Card game that went into the 15th inning without a run, a Division Series game that went into the 18th without one, or a League Championship Series game that saw the Yankees – who had the best offense in the American League! – strike out 17 times.
But at least all those moments felt historic. A 15-inning game! A strikeout record! It was fun!
By comparison, last night took something that should have been historic – the first World Series no-hitter since Don Larsen’s perfect game in 1956 – and made it boring. Instead of a single pitcher doing it, it was just a chain of relief pitchers.
Combined no-hitters have, historically, been rare, quirky things. According to MLB.com, the first ever combined no-hitter happened in 1917, when Babe Ruth got tossed from a game for arguing with the umpire after walking the first hitter. The Red Sox brought in Ernie Shore, who retired 26 straight after that first batter was thrown out trying to steal. After that, there wasn’t another one for 50 years, and when they did happen, it was typically because something weird happened: a pitcher got hurt, or the game went into extra innings, or a pitcher had no control. But they were always rare: For a full century after Ruth/Shore did it, there were only 11 combined no-hitters in baseball history.
And then, suddenly, they just became a part of baseball. There have been two each in every full season since 2019. This year, there were more combined no-hitters than solo no-hitters. Last night’s game wasn’t even the first combined no-hitter of the season for EITHER TEAM.
Why are combined no-hitters bad? Because they change no-hitters from something someone DOES to something that just sort of happens. Whose accomplishment are we celebrating from last night? I guess Cristian Javier’s, sort of: He pitched six innings without giving up a hit. But that’s not that different from what he normally does. He only gave up one hit in 5⅓ innings in his last start. And, in fact, this season he had eight starts where he threw at least five innings and gave up two or fewer hits. That’s really impressive! He’s a great, exciting pitcher! But it makes what he did last night far less surprising. Similarly, the three relief pitchers who followed Javier, all did something – pitch a single inning without allowing a hit – that they routinely do. The weird thing about last night is just that they all did on the same day, which is more like trivia than a real achievement.
Indeed, the real test of a no-hitter is whether a pitcher can finish the game. And, depressingly, Javier wasn’t even given the CHANCE to finish the game. This made last night even more dispiriting than a regular season no-hitter: During the regular season, teams are understandably reluctant to overtax their starting pitchers for an individual accolade like a no-hitter. But what was Dusty Baker even saving Javier for last night? No matter what, it was his last start of the season!
And it’s not as if Baker even pushed Javier, who left the game with only 97 pitches; Baker let him throw more than that in June! This might have been forgivable if the game were close. Then Baker might not have wanted to risk waiting for Javier to pitch into trouble. But Houston was up 5-0 – they could have survived a baserunner or two.
This is just how bullpens are used now. We pull starters early to unload a barrage of seemingly interchangeable relievers who can all throw two devastating pitches for an inning or two. It seems like every series this postseason has at least one relief pitcher you’ve never heard of who throws the best slider you’ve ever seen. Indeed, the answer to “Whose accomplishment are we celebrating from last night?” seems to be, “The Houston Astros’ pitching development team.” Look at all the great, low-cost arms we have!
And it’s not just Houston. Throughout the league, teams have de-skilled and proletarianized the bullpen, turning pitchers into replaceable cogs in a faceless machine.
Earlier this week, in The Atlantic, Derek Thompson wrote about the effect Moneyball has had on baseball, claiming that it has rendered the sport boring by optimizing it for efficiency:
“The analytics revolution, which began with the movement known as Moneyball, led to a series of offensive and defensive adjustments that were, let’s say, catastrophically successful. Seeking strikeouts, managers increased the number of pitchers per game and pushed up the average velocity and spin rate per pitcher. Hitters responded by increasing the launch angles of their swings, raising the odds of a home run, but making strikeouts more likely as well. These decisions were all legal, and more important, they were all correct from an analytical and strategic standpoint.”
There is certainly something to this, but I think it’s missing a key piece. Thompson, and others who have made similar arguments, always say that teams adopting these strategies made the “right” call because those calls helped teams win. But successful, winning baseball teams were built before Moneyball and analytics. What made Moneyball different was that it defined “success” in terms of controlling costs (It has “money” right there in the name!). These strategies were “successful” in terms of reducing expenses for owners.
People knew strikeouts were good before analytics came along. But it used to be that pitchers who got a lot of strikeouts also got a lot of money. Nolan Ryan, the game’s all-time strikeout leader, was also the first player to make $1 million in a season. What analytics figured out was how to get a bunch of strikeouts from guys who make the league minimum. (The answer is surprisingly simple: Have them throw at max effort for an inning or two, instead of developing them into starters, and then cut them and replace them with someone new when they inevitably get injured.) And, similarly, a player who threw a no-hitter might get a raise come arbitration time. But if you chop that no-hitter up and give a few innings to this guy, a few more to that guy, and one more to a third guy, then nobody’s resume gets too impressive. Moneyball is nothing new, really. It’s a tale as old as time: Just the capitalist class destroying something beautiful and fun to keep labor costs down.