Ubaldo Jimenez, the rifle-armed right-hander in the Colorado Rockies' rotation, is lucky. After pitching the first no-hitter in Rockies history in Atlanta on Saturday night, Jimenez thanked his center fielder, Dexter Fowler, with an embrace of gratitude in the ensuing celebration. Fowler had made a truly spectacular diving catch in the left-center field gap to save the no-hitter with no outs in the seventh inning. It was probably the play that will be remembered most from this historic contest.
Jimenez, though, should have saved that hug for his manager, Jim Tracy.
The reason Ubaldo is lucky is not so much because Fowler preserved his attempt at history with that catch, as one great defensive play has become almost the standard in no-hit/perfect game bids, but because he is managed by Tracy and not New York Yankees skipper Joe Girardi.
Had Jimenez been a Yankee or otherwise managed by Girardi, he never would have gotten that chance. The complete game effort by Jimenez included 6 walks and required 128 pitches, the most thrown in the majors so far by any one pitcher in a game, and with good reason.
Just a week earlier, on April 10th, Girardi's ace lefty C.C. Sabathia was working on a similar no-hit bid in Tampa against the division rival Rays. The problem was that C.C. wasn't being economical and was at 110 pitches with 2 outs in the eighth. Kelly Shoppach was the batter that finally ended the attempt with a single to left, and thank the baseball gods for that. Girardi almost instantly walked out to the mound to take his big man out at 111 pitches. What we learned after the game was that Sabathia was going to be pulled by his manager after the at-bat with Shoppach regardless of the result.
"It's not something you want to do, but you have to think big picture," Girardi said in all seriousness. "I told Dave (Eiland, the pitching coach) 110 to 115 and that was it. If he would have been 105 in the ninth, maybe I'd let him go out."
Girardi already had a reputation as an over-manager who tinkered with everything and made unorthodox decisions to begin with. Now he was going to stop a no-hitter in progress because it did not conform to his pitch count of 110 to 115 pitches. Weren't these feats hard enough to accomplish to begin with?
Bear in mind that Sabathia, the Yankees' ace in the rotation, is known as a fierce competitor and a workhorse with a durable arm. At age 29, he is in the prime of his career. And for a complete game effort, 120-130 pitches from the starter is not unusual, even if it is considered taxing. Even so, Girardi decided it was too early in the season for C.C. to throw any more pitches and was ready to end the historic bid himself.
Sabathia's response to such a scenario, at least to the media, was that of a good-natured soldier. He claimed to respect and understand the manager's decision and that Girardi had every right to make it. It is hard to believe, though, that it would have played out this way on the mound had this occurred.
Had Girardi been a Yankees' manager in 1998, instead of a player, David Wells may not have been allowed to finish his perfect game, which took all of 119 pitches against the Twins. Perhaps he also forgot about the no-hitter he caught in 1996 when a declining and weary Dwight Gooden threw 136 pitches to get the job done against a vicious Mariners lineup. The unwritten rule is you throw away the pitch counts if no one on the other team has a hit. All major league pitchers are willing to risk a little extra fatigue and soreness for the opportunity to pitch one, and the manager is generally wrong to deprive him of that.
If ever there was an exception to this rule, it was David Cone. In 1996, three years before his perfect game (which Girardi also caught), Cone returned from a shoulder aneurism that had shelved him for 3½ months of the season and cast questions over whether his career was in jeopardy or if he would ever be the same pitcher. In his first game back, Cone miraculously threw 7 no-hit innings in Oakland against the Athletics before then-manager Joe Torre pulled the plug. Cone was disappointed, but this was a special case where no one knew how his arm would handle his first start after such a difficult surgery. Jimenez and Sabathia, by contrast, were healthy and ready to go. Jim Tracy recognized that. Joe Girardi did not.
Baseball fans and Yankee fans alike have Kelly Shoppach to thank for keeping Joe Girardi from making what may have become the most infamous and bone-headed move of his managing career. Likewise, Ubaldo Jimenez has Jim Tracy to thank for letting his pitcher pitch his way into the Rockies' record books. Apparently in today's game with such an emphasis on pitch counts, leaving a pitcher in to finish a no-hitter is no longer something that can be taken for granted.
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