Charles Klein
What a year it has been for pitchers in Major League Baseball. Last night Edwin Jackson threw the fourth no-hitter of the first half, throwing an incredible 149 pitches to accomplish the feat. And yet the achievement is diminished by the fact that Jackson walked eight batters and was generally erratic.
Are we really impressed or shocked now when we hear yet another pitcher has not given up a hit anymore? When I read the news I was: A) shocked because Jackson was pitching below his talent level up to this point B) It's Edwin Jackson C) The Tampa Bay Rays should get all the credit for being no-hit.
The Rays were no-hit for the third time since last July. Two of those no-no's were perfectos, thrown by Chicago White Sox pitcher Mark Buehrle on July 23, 2009 and by Oakland Athletics' hurler Dallas Braden on May 9th of this year. I am sure the other teams in the AL East are frothing at the mouth hoping that they can use the unbalanced schedule to their advantage and get a no-no or a perfecto of their own.
As the title of the article suggests, it seems that the no hitter is losing its value in the game. Guys hitting for the cycle has become a greater rarity than a pitcher throwing a no-hitter. I am not impressed with Jackson's no-hitter because he walked eight batters. That's a lot of walks. For me that performance is like if a hitter went 3-8 with three home runs and five strikeouts.
Sure it is an achievement for Jackson, but one that is not impressive to me as a baseball fan. Jackson had two more walks than strikeouts. That's not a quality start in my book. Usually we correlate a no-hitter with an overall fantastic performance by the pitcher who threw it. And yet perhaps after Armando Galarraga's imperfect game we then received the imperfect no-hitter. Call me desensitized or irreverent, but I am not that impressed by what Edwin Jackson did last night.
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