Reid Detmers didn't exactly throw the prettiest or the most efficient no-hitter in early May, not with 2 strikeouts, 11 ground outs, and 14 fly-outs, while his Angels blew the Rays out 12-0. But a no-hitter it was, while Detmers still had rookie status. The no-hitter won't change, but Detmers's status has.
The Angels optioned the left-hander to Salt Lake (AAA) Wednesday. Allowing eight home runs and issuing thirteen walks over 27 innings to follow the no-no does that for you. The second and youngest Angels rookie to pitch a no-hitter is now the youngest Angel to earn a trip back to the minors a month and a half after pitching his gem.
What sealed Detmers's trip back to Salt Lake was three fives against the Royals Tuesday night: 5 hits, 5 earned runs, 5 innings, en route a game the Angels lost 12-11 in 11 innings.
It showed the Angels only that he needs more seasoning after all, while they return to their sadly usual path of trying to find reasonably competent starting pitching, after what they had that isn't named Shohei Ohtani contributed their fair share to the team's 7-22 collapse following a 27-17 start.
Detmers still has time to re-horse and return as a worthy major league pitcher. He's also in the record books permanently as the 25th major league rookie to throw a no-hitter while still a rook. Not all of those rooks went on to deliver reasonable careers, unfortunately.
"Late success is quieter," said Hall of Fame pitcher Sandy Koufax. But too-early success can leave the noise of might-have-been behind for too long after it dissolves, too. These are Detmers's 24 fellow no-hit rookies, and how they fared after delivering those goods:
Bumpus Jones (Reds; 22), October 15, 1892 — The only game of Jones's season was the final day of the season, and he kept the Pirates hitless while they scored one run without benefit of a hit. Jones only got to pitch in one more major league season, 1893 ... posting a 10.19 ERA for the Reds and the New York Giants with a 6.80 fielding-independent pitching (FIP) rate. He pitched a few more seasons in the minors before calling it a career after the 1900 season.
Christy Mathewson (Giants; 20), July 15, 1901 — He struck 4 out and walked 4, but kept the Cardinals hitless as his Giants beat them, 5-0, in St. Louis. It brought his ERA down to 1.64 with a 2.64 FIP. I think there's a plaque with his name and likeness on it in Cooperstown somewhere.
Nick Maddox (Pirates; 20), September 20, 1907 — Slightly younger than Mathewson when Mathewson delivered his jewel, Maddox kept the Brooklyn Superbas (the future Dodgers) hitless despite a run scoring in the fourth inning. This right-hander posted two more fine seasons for the Pirates as a starter, a fourth season as a starter and reliever, but returned to the minors to stay until retiring after the 1914 season.
Jeff Tesreau (Giants; 24), September 6, 1912 — Tesreau would finish his season leading the National League with a 1.96 ERA. (His FIP: 3.41.) His big game came at the expense of fellow rookie (and Hall of Famer) Eppa Rixey and the Phillies, with his Giants beating them 3-0 on 10 hits and helping him big in the field while he walked 2 and struck 2 out.
He went on to pitch seven major league seasons (and in three World Series) before becoming Dartmouth College's baseball coach and winning 346 games there before he died in 1946.
Charlie Robertson (White Sox; 26), April 30, 1922 — The only one of the Rookie 25 whose no-hitter was a perfect game, Robertson did it in his fourth start of the season, beating the Tigers 2-0. He struck out 6 batters and got all the runs he'd need to work with when Earl Sheely whacked a two-run single to left in the second inning. Dogged by arm trouble afterward, Robertson pitched seven full seasons before retiring after 1928.
Robertson remains the only rookie ever to pitch a perfect game. But he's also in the trivia books for another reason: his single pitching appearance in April 1919 left him as the last living member of that tainted White Sox team when he died in 1984.
Paul (Daffy) Dean (Cardinals; 21), September 21, 1934 — Seeing and raising his Hall of Fame brother Dizzy in the second game of a doubleheader against the Dodgers in Ebbets Field, Dean topped the opening shutout with a 6-strikeout, 1-walk no-hitter as the Cardinals won, 3-0. Dean himself scored the first run on a Pepper Martin base hit in the sixth; Ripper Collins sent Hall of Famer Joe Medwick home twice with singles in the seventh and the ninth.
The opposite of his garrulous brother, Dean (whose nickname was coined by a reporter simply because he thought both brothers needed related nicknames) would be part of the Cardinals' World Series triumph against the Tigers that year. But he was injured while having a slightly better 1935 and would never pitch effectively again after that.
Vern Kennedy (White Sox; 28), August 31, 1935 — Kennedy was a somewhat late Show arrival when he no-hit the White Sox, 5-0 ... helping his own cause by whacking a 3-run triple in the bottom of the sixth. He should have credited his teammates for the no-no (including veteran Hall of Famer Al Simmons making a diving catch of Milt Galatzer's line drive in the ninth): he struck nobody out.
Kennedy managed a 12-season major league career, but he finished with a 4.57 FIP against his 4.61 ERA and actually pitched nine more minor league seasons before retiring to life as a Missouri driving instructor. He died at 85 in a terrible home accident — he was dismantling his smokehouse when the roof collapsed upon him and killed him at once.
Bill McCahan (Athletics; 26), September 3, 1947 — McCahan, too, should have credited his mates for his rookie gem, considering he struck only two Senators out as his Philadelphia A's won, 3-0. His career was ruined when, working off-season for an oil company, he suffered a shoulder injury lifting barrels. He got to pitch 24 more games for the A's over 1948 and 1949, before being traded to the Dodgers in whose system he tried three more years before retiring.
While with the Dodgers' Fort Worth farm team, he met a local woman, married her, and retired to a career at General Dynamics before cancer claimed him at 65 in 1986.
Bobo Holloman (Browns; 30), May 6, 1953 — It took seven years plus in the minors before the flaky Holloman saw major league action with the 1953 Browns. After four relief appearances to open the season, Holloman got the start against the A's and prevailed in a 6-0 win. The bad news: Holloman struck only three out while walking five. It took the Browns thirteen hits to hang up single runs in the second, third, fifth, and sixth, plus two in the seventh when Holloman himself singled a pair home.
"It was," Browns owner Bill Veeck would write in Veeck — as in Wreck, "the quaintest no-hitter in the history of the game." (Veeck obviously forgot or was unaware of Kennedy's rookie no-no.)
It was also the highlight of Holloman's career. He proved so ineffective in his next 22 games (managing somehow to earn wins in three) that he was shipped back to the minors that 19 July, where he stayed for the rest of that season and all 1954 before retiring to become a trucker, an ad agency leader, and even an Orioles scout.
Sam Jones (Cubs; 29), May 12, 1955 — The first black pitcher to throw a Show no-hitter, he helped his Cubs flatten the Pirates, 4-0. He struck 6 out, walked 7, and could have said "This is so Cubs!" considering the Cubs' fifteen-hit attack — including Ted Tappe's RBI single in the first and solo home run in the seventh — delivered only 4 runs.
Jones — whose curve ball Hall of Famer Stan Musial admired — would lead the National League in strikeouts and walks in the same three seasons, 1955, 1956, and 1958. He was intimidating but often wild. In 1962 he was diagnosed with neck cancer, undergoing surgery and radiation to beat it, but his major league career skidded to a finish by 1964 (a leg fracture in one off-season auto accident didn't help) and he, too, pitched three more minor league seasons before retiring.
He returned to his boyhood home Monongah, West Virginia, and opened the town's first drive-through car wash before his neck cancer returned and killed him in 1971.
Bo Belinsky (Angels; 25), May 5, 1962 — After bouncing around the Oriole system and being taken by the Angels in a minor league draft, the rakish Belinsky sent Hollywood wild when his fourth major league start and win was his no-hitter against his former parent club, 5-0. It was the high point of a career to be eroded over eight Show seasons by too much taste for the demimonde and the high life.
His name would become synonymous with a lifestyle that was cool and slick and dazzling, one that was to be a trademark of those athletes who appeared later in the '60s — Joe Namath, Ken Harrelson, Derek Sanderson. But, in time, the name Belinsky would mean something else. It would become synonymous with dissipated talent.
— Pat Jordan, Sports Illustrated, 1972
Belinsky managed to pitch in all or parts of eight Show seasons, his best being 1964 (2.86 ERA; 3.25 FIP) before an overnight brawl with and provoked by a Los Angeles sportswriter got him suspended and later traded by the Angels. He sank further into alcoholism (and three failed marriages) after his pitching career ended before finally sobering up, moving to Las Vegas, becoming a born-again Christian, and working for a car dealership before his death at 64 in 2001.
Don Wilson (Astros; 22), June 18, 1967 — The first MLB no-hitter pitched in an indoor stadium. Behind Wilson's 15-strikeout, 3-walk pitching, his Astros beat the Braves, 2-0. The Astros got the runs in the fourth inning, when Jimmy (The Toy Cannon) Wynn doubled Sonny Jackson home and Hall of Fame third baseman Eddie Mathews — finishing his career in Houston after so many years shining for the Braves themselves — pushing Wynn home on a ground force out at second base.
Wilson became a mainstay of the Astros' starting rotation for several seasons to come, including a second no-hitter and an all-star selection in 1971, his arguable best season. But his career ended in tragedy: he parked his Thunderbird in his garage, passed out as the garage door closed by automatic closing mechanism, and died at 29 of carbon monoxide asphyxiation. (As did his son, Donald, age five, whose bedroom was directly above the garage.)
Vida Blue (Athletics; 20), September 21, 1970 — In his second cup of coffee before knocking the American League and the country alike over (he was even a cover story — in Time) as its 1971 Cy Young Award and Most Valuable Player winner, Blue struck 9 Twins out, walked 1, and his A's beat them, 6-0. The final blow: Bert Campaneris's 3-run homer in a 5-run eighth.
The promise of that no-no and his 1971 season (league-leading 1.82 ERA and 2.20 FIP) was broken bitterly after A's owner Charlie Finley-fuming that Blue obtained an agent and asked for a $100,000 salary (this was pre-Messersmith) — insulted him during contract talks for 1972:
Well, I know you won 24 games. I know you led the league in earned-run average. I know you had three hundred strikeouts. [Actually, 301, but let's not get technical. — JK.] I know you made the all-star team. I know you were the youngest to win the Cy Young Award and the MVP. I know all that. And if I was you, I would ask for the same thing. And you deserve it. But I ain't gonna give it to you.
The stunned Blue threatened retirement and needed the unlikely intercession of commissioner Bowie Kuhn come April 1972 to get a $63,000 salary for the season. But the Finley insult scarred him; he'd never truly be the same pitcher again (not even striking 200 out in any season to follow, never mind 300 or more) despite managing to post a seventeen-season career including being part of the A's three straight World Series winners from 1972-74.
"He was bitter and withdrawn," noted John Helyar in The Lords of the Realm, "eventually developing a drug problem that landed him in court."
Indeed. Blue would be one of four Royals jailed on drug charges after the 1983 season. Aafter his pitching career finally ended, he cleaned up in due course and became a San Francisco Bay Area philanthropist, arranging numerous charitable events to benefit children including baseball promotion and specific charities.
Burt Hooton (Cubs; 22), April 16, 1972 — The knuckle-curve specialist became only the second rookie (after Holloman) to pitch a no-hitter in his first career start. But like Jones before him, Hooton could only do his job on the mound-kind of: he struck 7 out and walked 7 — while his Cubs whacked 12 hits with only 4 runs to show for it while beating the Phillies in Wrigley Field.
Nicknamed Happy because his natural facial expression suggested the opposite, Hooton went on to a fine 15-season career (including a second-place finish in the 1978 Cy Young Award voting), especially after his 1975 trade to the Dodgers), before making a long career as a coach in both the minor leagues and his alma mater the University of Texas.
Steve Busby (Royals; 23), April 27, 1973 — The tall right-hander turned in his gem against the Tigers in Detroit. It wasn't pretty — 4 strikeouts, 6 walks — but the Tigers couldn't buy a base hit while solo homers from Ed Kirkpatrick and Amos Otis plus a run-scoring error made for the 3-0 Royals win.
Busby pitched a second no-hitter the following year (against the Brewers) while posting his best (and only all-star) season, but fate moved its hand when he came up with a rotator cuff tear in 1976. He became the first pitcher to undergo repair surgery for the injury, but he could pitch only part of 1978, all of 1979, and part of 1980. (He missed being part of the Royals' trip to the World Series.)
His pitching career lasted only eight seasons, but Busby went on to become a longtime Rangers broadcaster before that ended after the 2016 season.
Jim Bibby (Rangers; 28), July 30, 1973 — Another late bloomer, after a spell in the Mets' minor league system and a couple of cups of coffee with the Cardinals before a trade to the Rangers. (Rangers manager Whitey Herzog pushed the team to deal for him, remembering his talent when he was the Mets' player development director.)
He threw the franchise's first no-hitter at the A's in Oakland. He struck thirteen out — including Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson (I didn't see [his fastball], I just heard it) — but walked 6. The game also made Bibby the first rookie no-hit pitcher to beat a pitcher who'd also thrown a rookie no-hitter: his opponent was Vida Blue. The final: 6-0.
Much like Busby, though, Bibby struggled with control issues much of his career to come. He'd move on to the Indians, the Pirates (where he pitched very well despite earning no decisions in their postseason run to the World Series championship), and — after missing 1982 with a shoulder injury — one more try each with the Rangers and the Cardinals before he retired following his July 1984 release. He enjoyed a post-pitching career as a longtime minor league pitching coach until his 2000 retirement, but bone cancer claimed him in 2010.
Mike Warren (Athletics; 22), September 29, 1983 — Up and down with the A's until injuries smashed into their rotation late season. Pitched his no-no in his final start of 1983, a 3-0 triumph over the White Sox. He, too, wasn't pretty (5 punch-outs, 3 walks); the A's got the runs courtesy of former Dodger mainstay Davey Lopes's RBI double in the first and former Ranger and Brave Jeff Burroughs's 2-run homer in the third.
Warren's 1984 began with poor run support and, when the bats began coming alive, control issues that returned him to relief pitching and, in short enough order, out of the Show after portions of three seasons. He tried pitching on in the minors three more seasons before retiring.
Wilson Álvarez (White Sox; 21), August 11, 1991 — Traded to the White Sox mid-way through that season, Alvarez's second major league pitching appearance rang the bell and then some: he no-hit the Orioles, 7-0, the Sox getting a little more bang for fourteen hits. The bad news: Alvarez walked five while striking seven out.
It was a sign of things to come, unfortunately. The Venezuelan left-hander struggled all career long with inconsistency, abetted soon enough by injuries and his not-so-great conditioning. He had a fine fourteen-year career that might have been better, finishing with a flourish as a Dodger long reliever and spot starter: in his next-to-last season, Alvarez reeled off nine straight starts with a 1.06 ERA over the nine.
Alvarez may be remembered better as one of the key pieces in the infamous White Flag Trade of 1997, when White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf — trading Alvarez and fellow veterans Danny Darwin and Roberto Hernández to the Giants for a pack of prospects — elected to tank the season, despite the team being only 3.5 games out of first in the American League Central at the time, rather than deal with the threesome's free agent payday possibilities.
José Jiménez (Cardinals; 25), June 25, 1999 — The Cardinals' rookie had it tougher than most when he pitched his no-hitter: his mound opponent was Hall of Famer Randy Johnson. Small wonder his Cardinals could only win 1-0: Johnson struck out 14 batters to Jiménez's 8, and it took 2 walks plus an RBI single to get that run home in the top of the ninth.
As a matter of fact, Jiménez faced Johnson again two starts later and shut the Diamondbacks out again. They were the only two shutouts of Jiménez's seven-season career. He was moved to the bullpen after his trade to the Rockies for 1999 and became evidence for the dubiousness of the save rule even with Coors Field a factor: he became the Rockies' all-time saves leader (102) ... with a 4.13 ERA/3.98 FIP.
After joining the 2004 Indians' bullpen, Jiménez flopped so profoundly (8.42 ERA; 5.53 FIP), he was given his release. He eventually went to the 2007 Pan-American Games, but was banned from them when he tested positive for an unidentified anabolic steroid.
Bud Smith (Cardinals; 21); September 3, 2001 — It took 7 strikeouts and 4 walks when Smith no-hit the Padres, 4-0. He got immediate help from future Hall of Famer Albert Pujols's first-inning 2-run homer; he got another run when Placido Polanco stole second and came home on a throwing error in the fifth, before Polanco whacked an RBI double in the seventh.
Smith would make a further splash with a splendid National League division series start. But he collapsed so profoundly in 2002, his pitching mechanics completely disarrayed, that he was out of the Show to stay.
He was dealt to the Phillies and signed with the Twins in due course, but he spent the rest of his brief career in those organizations' farm systems before pitching for the independent Long Beach (CA) Armada two years. He retired to a life of coaching high school baseball at 27.
Aníbal Sánchez (Marlins; 22), September 6, 2006 — He'd finish ninth in that year's National League Rookie of the Year voting. Sánchez struck six out and walked four while his Marlins mustered only a five-hit attack against the Diamondbacks — but Joe Borchard's second-inning home run and future Hall of Famer Miguel Cabrera's leadoff bomb in the fourth took care of the 2-0 score.
Sánchez would post a 15-season career in which his best regular season was with the 2013 Tigers (2.57 ERA; 2.39 FIP) but — by then almost purely a junk-baller — he'd pitch a gem in Game One of the 2019 National League Championship Series — taking a no-hitter into the eighth against the Cardinals. It put him into unique company with his teammate Max Scherzer, who took a no-no into the Game 2 seventh: they're the only pitchers to take no-hitters into the fifth or beyond back-to-back in a postseason, and they also did it with the Tigers in the 2013 ALCS.
After sitting 2021 out in search of an incentive-packed deal, he signed a minor-league deal with the Nats this past March.
Clay Buchholz (Red Sox; 22), September 1, 2007 — Brought up that August, Buchholz's second major league start was a no-hitter against the Orioles in Fenway Park. While he struck 9 out and walked 3, his Red Sox smothered the Orioles with a 10-run, 14-hit assault that included a 3-run double by Hall of Famer David Ortiz in the fourth.
It made Buchholz both the first Red Sox rookie to pitch a no-hitter and the third pitcher in Show history (with Holloman and Álvarez) to do it in his first or second major league start. The bad news: Inconsistency abetted by numerous injuries and illnesses checkered what turned out a 13-year career, four-team career that included a World Series ring with the 2013 Red Sox.
Chris Heston (Giants; 27), June 9, 2015 — Seasoned by six minor league seasons, Heston remained a rookie when he no-hit Noah Syndergaard and the Mets 5-0. He struck 11 out and walked nobody, but he spoiled his shot at perfection by plunking three batters along the way. Still, he struck 3 out in the ninth to finish — earning him a signed ball from Sandy Koufax, who did the same thing finishing his 1965 perfect game.
Heston even pitched in on the Giants' scoring with a 2-out, 2-run single in the fourth.
But with the Giants signing free agent starters Johnny Cueto and Jeff Samardzija after that season, Heston was moved to the bullpen, where he struggled with consistency and then suffered injuries. He pitched for the Mariners and the Twins subsequently (two gigs for the Mariners, one for the Twins), attempted a 2018 comeback with the Giants, but called it a career in 2020. He now works in real estate in Florida.
Tyler Gilbert (Diamondbacks; 27), August 14, 2021 — He was seasoned by five years in the minors (missing 2020 with the minor-league shutdown during the COVID pan-damn-ic) before he made the Diamondbacks in August last year. After three relief gigs he got a start against the Padres ... and no-hit them in the second, 7-0.
Gilbert struck 5 out, walked 3, and benefited from a 15-hit Snake attack including Drew Ellis's 3-run homer in a 5-run first. Making him the fourth rookie to toss a no-hitter in his first major league start and the first since Holloman. He also pitched the record-tying eighth no-hitter of the 2021 season while he was at it.
He's having an up-and-down season thus far this year. Perhaps the book on his career has a few more chapters yet to go.
There you have it. Out of those 25 no-hit rookies, six struck nine batters or more out; seven enjoyed careers of five seasons or more; 10 enjoyed careers of 10 or more seasons; one pitched a perfect game; and, only one made a career worthy of enshrinement in the Hall of Fame.
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