Pitcher Brandon Morrow (9-6, 4.45 ERA, 151 SO in 127.1 IP, 1.37 WHIP) of the Toronto Blue Jays (59-52) lost a no-hitter yesterday with two outs in the ninth inning when Tampa Bay Rays (67-44) third baseman Evan Longoria poked a hit just beyond the reach of second baseman Aaron Hill. The defensive play would have been a spectacular one and simply had to be ruled a hit. Hill looked like he did everything he possibly could to come up with the ball and said as much after the game; I don't feel like he should be blamed at all. I feel for Morrow in a big way, I can't imagine how tough it would be to come within inches of a no-hitter and not get it.
Not to be lost in the shuffle, however, was how truly dominating Morrow was yesterday. He struck out 17 batters, walked only 2 and gave up just the 1 hit in a complete game shutout. Bill James has a metric called "Game Score" which measures how dominating a pitcher's performance was based on statistics and Morrow's start yesterday ranked as the 4th best single start by a pitcher since 1920. Really remarkable stuff. "He was putting guys away better than I've ever seen," said Longoria after the game. That's high praise from a player who is fast becoming a superstar in his own right.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment