The Slanch Report

Generally when you go out and pitch a no-hitter, you can chalk that game up in the win column. For the erstwhile California Angels, that was not the case Saturday night. Jered Weaver pitched 6 innings of no-hit ball but was lifted in the 7th for a pinch hitter. Unfortunately, thanks to two back-to-back errors in the fifth (the first of which was somewhat questionably), Matt Kemp had scored on a sacrifice fly, making the score 1-0 in the favor of the Dodgers.

Thanks to the asinine NL lack of a DH, the Angels were forced in a one-run game to remove Weaver in order to try and generate some offense. If only his team had a player that they could have hit for Weaver and leave him in the lineup, someone whose sole job it was to hit, thus enabling the pitcher to concentrate on just his pitching. Sigh.

Instead, the Angels took out Weaver who had only thrown 98 pitches and of course, was still amidst his no-hitter, but it was to no avail. Thanks to some stellar bullpen work from Jose Arredondo, the Angels kept up the no-hitter but were unable to score any runs against Chad Billingsley (Slanch Report’s favorite fantasy pitching sleeper) who pitched 7 innings of 3-hit ball.

This meant that for only the 5th time since 1900 a team get no-hit but still won the game. That’s ridiculous! Think of how many baseball games have been played since then, and this has happened only 5 times! Baseball is the best!

Technically, it wasn’t an official no-hitter because, being the home team and having the lead, the Dodgers didn’t bat in the 9th and so the Angels only pitched 8 innings of no-hit ball. In my book though, it’s a no-hitter and no one can say nothing.