It was a game of mind married to matter. But who will pay close attention to that?By Yours Truly
https://throneberryfields.blogspot.com/2018/05/more-than-power-to-paxtons-no-no.html
Of all I've seen about James Paxton's no-hitter against the Blue Jays, the second most remarkable points are these: A) He's the first Canadian-born major league pitcher to throw a no-hitter in Canada. B) He threw it coming off a sixteen-strikeout start that ended after seven innings, which raised a few old school temperatures considering the bullpen went on to lose the game.
The
most remarkable point is that his pitch velocity
increased as the game went on. Which, of course, is just not supposed to happen, is it?
Yes, this seems to be the era in which managers and front offices quake at the very idea of a pitcher going a third time around the order. And, yes, the reasons do seem to vary, though the axle around which they revolve is the thought that the later in the game, the weaker the pitcher's stuff. Yet those who howled over Paxton coming out after seven with sixteen punchouts might be among those raving that, in the no-no, the Mariners lefthander got a little faster as the game went deeper.
I took a look at the game, both visually and in a detailed play-by-play accounting. And I noticed something. Paxton struck out only seven in the game but the majority of them, four, came
after the fifth inning. He also threw fewer pitches after the fifth than before it: 57 pitches through the fifth; 42 after the fifth. His most laborious inning was the third, when he threw 20 pitches to five hitters. (He walked two but got a fly out with one on, a foul pop with first and second, and an inning-ending forceout.)
Paxton otherwise threw 11 pitches in the first, nine in the second, 11 in the fourth, six in the fifth, 14 in the sixth, 12 in the seventh, nine in the eighth, and seven in the ninth. Beyond the seven strikeouts, Paxton got nine fly outs and ten ground outs, one of which was a double play. Altogether he threw 99 pitches. 99. That's a pitch count a lot of even the best starting pitchers run up by the end of seven innings, and often enough sooner.
Clearly enough Paxton and his catcher Mike Zunino had a game plan, though they might not have expected a no-hitter to come out of it. They were going to pace themselves, work to Paxton's strengths of
both missing bats and pitching to the Mariners' defense. (Four of the flies Paxton threw were hit deep.) It seems to me that Paxton's no-hitter is evidence that a starting pitcher who works that way and keeps his head in the game and on the hitters can go long distance, third time around the order,
without burning himself out or needing a separate carrying case for his arm.
A few days ago, while discussing the question of starting pitcher usage in a so-called all-or-nothing hitting period (launch angles and exit velocities becoming prime topics when talking about hitters otherwise bereft of just putting balls in play or working walks, while strikeouts have punched through the ozone layer), I thought of a perfect game I remembered from the 1960s, a decade in which pitching dominated but hitters weren't strictly the all-or-nothing type, even among the big boppers. So, I looked it up.
The pitcher in question threw 113 pitches total in the game. He got three ground outs and ten fly outs while ringing up 14 strikeouts, including six to finish the game. Those six strikeouts involved 11 pitches in the eighth and 15 in the ninth. Before that, he threw ten pitches in the first, 13 in the second, 12 in the third, ten in the fourth, 17 in the fifth, 13 in the sixth, and 12 in the seventh. He also got the majority of his strikeouts after the fifth: six through five, including a pair in the first inning, and eight from the sixth through the ninth.
The pitcher was Sandy Koufax, who worked with a heavily medicated arthritic pitching elbow, beating the Cubs, 1-0, in September 1965---a game in which his opponent, Bob Hendley, might have thrown a no-hitter on its backside but for one hit (a double by Lou Johnson) that didn't figure in the lone run of the game. (That run, of course, came by way of a walk, a sacrifice, a steal, and a throwing error on the steal allowing the run to score.)
As noted above, Koufax's most laborious inning was the fifth, though the ninth was a close second as he worked to finish the perfecto. His efficiency in the first four innings allowed him to labour as he did in the fifth; his near-equivalent efficiency in the sixth and seventh saved him for the heavy lifting of the eighth and ninth. And there wasn't all that much difference in the pitch effort expended to get his ground outs and fly outs versus that on his strikeouts.
Koufax had 13 contact outs in his perfecto. Paxton had 19 contact outs in his no-no. And while you get the professionals' lament for the apparent all-or-nothing hitting era in which baseball now resides, you wondered just where
Sports Illustrated's Jon Tayler could observe that contact "has more or less vanished" when reviewing Paxton's game. The contact hasn't vanished, but neither have hitters up against superspeed pitchers who think their only hope is to try sending those pellets into the next county.
And enough of the superspeed pitchers still think they need to unload their entire magazines' worth of bullets early and often. Paxton proved on Tuesday night that you could shoot a smaller caliber weapon in the first third-and-a-half and still be able to marshal the heavy artillery in the final third-and-a-half, and come out intact. Imagine if his pitch count had hit 113 to finish the no-no. They'd be wondering whether he'd need an extra day's rest before his next start.
So far, Paxton's been kicking himself into the conversations about the game's best pitchers this year. It'd be even nicer if they began having conversations about the game's smartest pitchers. Based on the way he pitched his no-hitter, Paxton would have to come out in the top ten there, too.
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