Last Night in Baseball: No no-hitter for you, Max Fried

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The New York Yankees blanked the Tampa Bay Rays 4-0, but there were still plenty of grumblings throughout the clubhouse and fandom.

On the Yankees’ broadcast, announcer Michael Kay called the decision “unfathomable” and said, “you don’t wait for three innings to go by” to reverse that kind of call.

In the sixth inning, recent Rays’ call-up Chandler Simpson hit a grounder between first and second and reached the bag safely when the ball ricocheted off Paul Goldschmidt‘s glove.

At the time, official scorer Bill Mathews ruled the play an error, but he said after watching replays, he decided Simpson would have been safe even if the throw had been handled cleanly. 

Mathews’ announcement came right before the start of the eighth, and Fried proceeded to give up a hit to the first batter he faced. Maybe he would have allowed that hit regardless, and the no-hitter wasn’t meant to be. Fried even said he didn’t know about the scoring change until after Jake Mangum’s single.

We do know that the Yankees were not big fans of the officiating that day. In the top of that same inning, Aaron Judge launched a ball down the left-field line and thought he had his eighth home run of the season. The ump called it a foul ball, and after Judge was later called out on strikes, Aaron Boone came out of the dugout to argue and was ejected for the first time this season.

The good news for the Yankees is that Fried is an MLB-best 4-0 on the season with an ERA of 1.42, and no umpire can take that away.

The Reds’ bats are aliiiiiive

Earlier this season, the Cincinnati Reds made history for their inability to score runs. They lost three consecutive 1-0 games, which no team had done since 1960. Less than three weeks later, they more than made up for that cold streak with a 24-2 shellacking of the Baltimore Orioles.

The Reds put up all those runs despite going yard just three times. Elly De La Cruz got the party started when his solo shot in the top of the third inning broke up a 1-1 tie, though his most impressive play came on the defensive end the inning before. De La Cruz went airborne and then stretched out like Mister Fantastic for a diving catch to rob Jackson Holliday of a hit and an RBI. 

Soon after, De La Cruz’s homer jump-started a seven-run inning for the visiting team. In the eighth inning, Cincinnati’s lead ballooned to 16-1 before third baseman Noelvi Marte stepped up to the plate and smashed his first career grand slam. (It came off shortstop Jorge Mateo, but still!) 

Marte, the No. 8 hitter, drove in seven runs. The next batter in the lineup, catcher Austin Wynns, added a career-high six RBIs and had the Reds’ only other home run. The pair combined for 11 hits, the most from the final two spots in a batting order since at least 1901. Their 13 RBIs tied for second-most since 1920.

By the time the game came to a merciful end for the O’s, they had allowed 25 hits and all 24 runs were earned. Seven of those came off of struggling starter Charlie Morton, who fell to 0-5 this season.

And while the final score might look like the result of a Thursday Night Football matchup between two AFC North squads, neither the Bengals nor the Ravens have ever participated in a 24-2 game. 

Hello, Nimmo 

De La Cruz wasn’t the only player to both drive in a run for his team and steal a run from his opponent on Sunday. New York Mets outfielder Brandon Nimmo did the same — and in a much closer game against the St. Louis Cardinals.

First, Nimmo leaped above the wall to snatch Jordan Walker‘s would-be home run ball in the sixth inning, keeping the Mets’ lead at 3-1. 

Brandon Nimmo leaps to rob home run persevering Mets’ lead against Cardinals

In the next inning, after the Cardinals had tied things up, Nimmo singled to center and brought in Francisco Lindor for the go-ahead run. New York went on to win 7-4 for its first four-game sweep of St. Louis since 1986 — the same year the Mets claimed their most recent World Series title.

Don’t put down your hot dog

Seagulls aren’t just something you need to worry about at the beach. If you’ve got food, they will find you, and they will try to make it their food. At Sunday’s Diamondbacks/Cubs game, a seagull found a hot dog, and a photographer found the seagull. Magic was captured:

This isn’t an isolated incident; the same thing could happen to you and your loved ones. And their hot dogs. Stay vigilant.

Brewers set two steals records

Speaking of running away and tubed meats, the Brewers swiped six – six! – base in the first inning against the Athletics at home on Sunday, which seems impossible in a big-league game, but here we are. 

Brice Turang picked up the first steal, then he and Christian Yelich pulled off a double steal after that. William and Contreras and Rhys Hoskins both ended up on base, as well, and then executed their own double steal. Then, Sal Frelick snagged the final steal of the inning when he took second, which also allowed Hoskins to score on a throwing error. This is, per MLB’s Sarah Langs, the first time since at least the Divisional Era (1969) that a team has stolen six bases in one inning. It’s a franchise record for the Brewers, too. 

The thievery didn’t stop there, however. Milwaukee added one more steal in the second, third, and fourth innings to finish with nine of them, giving themselves a second franchise record for most steals in a game, while also becoming the fifth team since 2000 to pull that off.

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