Buehrle Spins No-No
April 19, 2007 by Geoff Young
Filed under Feats and Accomplishments, Personalities
Did anyone see the Mark Buehrle no-hitter coming? You, with the hand up in the back — you’re lying.
In case you missed it, Buehrle faced the minimum against Texas on Wednesday night. The only baserunner against him came on a walk to Sammy Sosa, who promptly was picked off first base.
Others will analyze this to death, I’m sure, but I would just like to point out two things:
- Buehrle was knocked out of a start two weeks ago courtesy of a line drive off the bat of Cleveland’s Ryan Garko. Nice recovery, eh?
- No pitcher in the American League allowed more hits than Buehrle did in 2006. Or 2005. In fact, Buehrle has ranked #1 or #2 on that list in each of the past four seasons.
Once again, baseball is a very strange game where strange things happen. I have no idea how Buehrle could have done this.
Oh, and congratulations.
Rangers team batting avg. for the year-.234
Yep, that certainly helps the cause.
What makes it even more surprising is that Buehrle is a man who relies on batters putting the ball in play (he’s not overpowering by ANY stretch of the word).
There was an interesting statistic that was mentioned and I’m not sure how exactly to take it, but apparently he didn’t throw any change ups to left handed batters that night. *shrug* Who knows? But you think that raised his stock in contract negotiations? I sure do.
I do find it funny that Sammy “I swing at pitches not even thrown at me” Sosa was the lone walk.