I swear I'm not making this up, but earlier Wednesday, I happened to see a quote attributed to Hall of Famer Greg Maddux that he may or may not have said but certainly sounds like something he would say: "No need to steal the sign. I'll tell you what I throw. It's an 89 mph sinker, and you won't even swing at it."
Watching John Means befuddle the Seattle Mariners with a bunch of sinkers in his no-hitter reminded me of an old-school Maddux or Tom Glavine performance. The Baltimore Orioles left-hander worked side to side, sinkers on the inside part of the plate, changeups away, with an occasional curveball mixed in for a different look.
In and out, in and out, exactly the way Maddux and Glavine pitched. It's a different style of pitching than you typically see today, as the favored craft is a more vertical approach, with high-velocity fastballs up in the zone and breaking balls to change the batter's eye level.
It's pure power pitching, and given the strikeout rates, it's working. Means' game, like those of Maddux and Glavine, feels more like the thinking man's guide to pitching, beguiling batters with location, movement and changing speeds. It's perhaps a more artistic form of pitching, and Means' outing on Wednesday was a thing of beauty.
In fact, we've never seen a game like it -- for a couple of reasons. First off is the historical note that everyone is talking about: Means retired all 27 batters he faced in a 6-0 victory, yet it wasn't a perfect game, because Sam Haggerty reached on a third-strike wild pitch in the third inning that got under the glove of Orioles catcher Pedro Severino. It is the first time a pitcher has thrown a non-perfect-game no-hitter without a walk, hit by pitch or error, according to Elias Sports Bureau research. It is, out of more than 220,000 games in major league history, one of a kind.
Then there is this remarkable statistic: Means threw first-pitch strikes to 26 of the 27 batters. The only first-pitch ball he threw was to J.P. Crawford in the sixth inning, a fastball up in the zone, and watching the replay, it didn't miss by much. That at-bat was also the closest the Mariners came to a hit, when Crawford blooped a ball to center field, a play Statcast gave an expected batting average of .480, but Cedric Mullins got a good jump and made an easy sliding catch.
Means' first-pitch strike rate was the highest for any complete game of the pitch-count era (since 1988), which sounds like a mark Maddux might have held. (It actually was James Shields, who threw 92.9% first-pitch strikes in a 2011 game. Good luck beating Means' 96.3%).
Means credited getting inside on right-handed hitters as the key to his gem.
"That was my biggest pitch today, that fastball in," he said. "I have to be able to do that to get the changeup away working. Those fastballs in saved me."
Means is not a flamethrower, although he certainly throws hard enough, hitting 94.6 mph in the ninth inning for his hardest pitch of the game. He mostly sits 92-93 with the fastball, however, and as we watch some of these pitchers in their never-ending quest for even more velocity, there's a valuable lesson to learn in watching Means. He's clearly not maxing out on every pitch, as evidenced by some of those late-game 94-plus offerings. He pitches under control, however, and hits his spots. Yes, strikeouts are up, but so are walks and hit batters.
How good was Means' game? He finished with 12 strikeouts, making him the ninth pitcher to throw a no-hitter with at least 12 K's and no walks. His game score of 99 is the highest in Orioles history for a nine-inning game, topping the matching 98s of Erik Bedard and Mike Mussina. Now, we do have to mention that the Mariners are in the midst of a horrific team-wide slump. Well, "slump" might be a generous description. They really just can't hit -- .201 on the season and .173 over the past 18 games. No wonder the Mariners tried to jinx it:
Rather than going down as the 24th perfect game in MLB history, Means' outing will be remembered as one of those almost-perfect games, alongside some of these classics:
• Max Scherzer's two near-perfect games in 2015. In one game, he retired the first 26 batters before hitting Jose Tabata with a two-strike pitch in which Tabata leaned down into it with his elbow. In his final start that season, Scherzer struck out 17 with no walks in a no-hitter, his perfection marred only by a sixth-inning throwing error.
• The year before, Clayton Kershaw also lost an otherwise perfect game because of a throwing error.
• Maybe the most famous near-perfect game was by Detroit's Armando Galarraga in 2010, when umpire Jim Joyce incorrectly ruled Cleveland's Jason Donald safe on an infielder grounder with two outs in the ninth inning. Galarraga and Scherzer are two of 13 pitchers to lose a perfect game with two outs in the ninth. Ten of the 13 allowed a hit -- Scherzer and Hooks Wiltse hit a batter (Wiltse would end up throwing a 10-inning no-hitter); Milt Pappas of the Cubs walked a batter on a borderline 3-2 pitch, finishing the no-hitter but forever claiming umpire Bruce Froemming blew the call.
• One of those 13 game was pitched by Dave Stieb, who lost his perfect-game bid in 1989 when Roberto Kelly doubled. It was the third time in his career Stieb lost a no-hit bid with two outs in the ninth. (He finally threw one in 1990.)
• Pedro Martinez is one of two pitchers to lose a perfect game in extra innings. Pitching for the Expos in 1995, Martinez retired 27 in a row but allowed a leadoff double to San Diego's Bip Roberts in the 10th inning. At least he got the 1-0 victory.
• Then there is one of the most famous games of all time, in which Harvey Haddix pitched 12 perfect innings for the Pirates in 1959, only to lose the game in the 13th.
One final thought here. This is already the third no-hitter of 2021 -- and all three were near-perfect games. Joe Musgrove and Carlos Rodon each hit a batter for the only runner they allowed. Just a couple of years ago we were wondering if the no-hitter was a dying achievement. There were nine no-hitters in the four seasons from 2016 to 2019, but three of those were combined no-hitters.
The logic was that pitch counts would make no-hitters more difficult. Take all the (non-combined) no-hitters from 2006 to 2015 -- 36 over 10 seasons. The pitchers in those no-hitters averaged 116 pitches, with 12 of them requiring at least 120 and two clocking in at 149 (Edwin Jackson) and 148 (Tim Lincecum). No manager would allow a pitcher to throw that many pitches in 2021, and even 120 is rare these days. Since 2019, a pitcher has thrown 120 pitches just 15 times -- and one-third of those belong to Trevor Bauer. Two of them were no-hitters by Mike Fiers and Justin Verlander.
It's simply difficult to remain efficient enough to remain in the game for nine innings -- with so many takes from batters, so many swing-and-misses and so many strikeouts that run up pitch counts. Despite facing the minimum number of batters (Haggerty was caught stealing), Means still threw 113 pitches. Musgrove threw 112 and Rodon 114 while facing 28 batters. If any of these pitchers had walked a batter or two, they might not have been allowed to get to 120 to complete their games.
Still, domination is the name of the game in 2021 and I don't think we're done at three no-hitters for the season. The record in a season is seven, set in 1990 (six individual) and matched in 2012 (six individual) and 2015 (all individual). We might get there by the All-Star break.
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