No-hit Metsoterica
Five Mets teamed up for a gem, but how many Mets is the most not to allow a hit?
Trivia question: Sunday night, the Mets beat the Phillies to win their franchise-record seventh consecutive series to open the season. But of course, the Mets still haven’t swept a series this year. When’s the last time the Mets actually swept a series?
Beyond the Fab Five
By Jesse Spector
Obviously, Tylor Megill, Drew Smith, Joely Rodriguez, Seth Lugo, and Edwin Díaz made history on Friday night with their combined no-hitter, the first of its kind in Mets history and second overall no-no for the club, following Johan Santana in 2012.
What the five men who will be forever linked together did not do, however, was set a Mets record for most hitless appearances in a single game. There have, as it happens, been three other times that the Mets have had more pitchers throw no-hit ball, and they were all against the Phillies.
On September 16, 2007, Scott Schoeneweis, Guillermo Mota, Willie Collazo, Joe Smith, Pedro Feliciano, and Aaron Heilman set what was then a Mets record, six pitchers all setting down the Phillies without allowing a hit. Problem was, Oliver Perez started the game and gave up five runs, and Mota didn’t retire any of the three batters he faced (two walks and an error), and the Mets lost to the Phillies, 10-6.
On September 22, 2016 – maybe not surprising that it was another September game with expanded rosters – the Mets got scoreless outings from Sean Gilmartin, Erik Goeddel, Fernando Salas, Hansel Robles, Josh Edgin, Jerry Blevins, and Jim Henderson in a… 9-8 win in 11 innings (you may remember this as the Asdrúbal Cabrera Game) over the Phillies because Seth Lugo, Addison Reed, and Jeurys Familia all got lit up pretty good.
That record of seven hitless Mets pitcher outings in a game lasted a little more than a year until it was matched, again against the Phillies, on September 30, 2017. This was another Lugo start, in which he gave up two runs in four innings, followed by hitless relief from Chasen Bradford, Josh Smoker, Paul Sewald, Blevins, A.J. Ramos, Jacob Rhame, and Familia (and one hit allowed by Jamie Callahan). The Mets won that one, 7-4, again in 11 innings.
The major league record? It happened two years ago in a 16-inning game in San Francisco, where the Giants got hitless relief appearances from Fernando Abad, Shaun Anderson, Will Smith, Andrew Suarez, Enderson Franco, Burch Smith, Wandy Peralta, Kyle Barraclough, and Sam Selman. But they lost to the Rockies, 8-5, on September 24, 2019, as there were four San Francisco pitchers – Madison Bumgarner, Jandel Gustave, Sam Coonrod, and Dereck Rodriguez – who did give up hits. Are the nine Giants pitchers even aware that they share a major league record?
Obviously, nobody came close to the major league record for most batters faced in a game without allowing a hit – that belongs to Jim Maloney in his 10-inning no-hitter at Wrigley Field on August 19, 1965, a game in which the Reds righty issued an astonishing 10 walks.
The Mets’ record, as you’d expect, belongs to Santana, who faced 32 Cardinals in his no-no, walking five. If you were listening to the radio broadcast, you may have heard Howie Rose mention that the only other Mets starter to go five innings without allowing a hit was Sid Fernandez on May 15, 1987, against the Giants. El Sid faced 18 batters before leaving that game with a sore knee, and that’s exactly how many Megill faced on Friday.
Next on the list? Pat Mahomes faced 17 batters in a 4.2-inning relief appearance against the Expos on July 27, 2000, holding things down after Grant Roberts got strafed for seven runs in 1.1 frames. Matt Franco’s single off Steve Kline in the eighth inning drove home Edgardo Alfonzo with the deciding run as the Mets came all the way back from 7-2 down to win, 9-8, at Shea.
Then there are relief appearances of 15 batters without allowing a hit by Randy Tate (4 IP) in 1975 and Tom Hausman (4.1 IP) in 1980, before you get back to the next-longest hitless start by a Mets pitcher, by innings and batters faced – four frames and 14 hitters by Jacob deGrom on the last day of the 2015 season against the Nationals. Bartolo Colon and Logan Verrett followed with a perfect inning apiece before Jon Niese finally let the no-hit bid slip on Clint Robinson’s infield single in the seventh.
As for deGrom, whom we’re still waiting to see on the mound for the first time this year, his namesake stat continues to roll on, as the month of April wrapped up with 27 deGroms recorded – that’s pitchers who worked at least five scoreless innings and wound up with a no-decision – around Major League Baseball.
Taijuan Walker left Saturday’s game with a lead, but Adam Ottavino’s meltdown turned it into a 4-1 Mets loss and the third deGrom of Walker’s career. The last one was actually August 21, 2017, when Walker was with the Diamondbacks, and pitched 5.1 scoreless innings against the Mets. Yoenis Céspedes tied that game with an RBI single in the seventh inning, but A.J. Pollock hit a two-run homer for Arizona in the 10th inning to decide it.
Walker joining Carlos Carrasco (April 16) and Max Scherzer (April 25) gives the Mets three deGroms so far this season (they’re 1-2 in the games), one off the major league lead held by the Brewers, who are 3-1 in their deGroms – a win and a loss in the ones started by Corbin Burnes and ultimately victorious after not hitting for Eric Lauer (April 24) and Freddy Peralta (April 28). Burnes, Yu Darvish, and Miles Mikolas had two deGroms apiece in the first month of the season to share the major league lead in the deeply unsatisfying category that continues to feel all the more unsatisfying without deGrom here to throw one.
Trivia answer: The Mets beat the Marlins in a pair of games last August 31 and September 2, the opener shortened to seven innings, the middle game pushed to a doubleheader late in September that the Mets did sweep. The last time the Mets swept an actual three-game series was August 10-12 against the Nationals, but the last two games of that were seven innings as part of a doubleheader after a middle-game rainout. The Mets’ last sweep of a series of entirely regulation ballgames, as scheduled, was May 7-9 of last year against the Diamondbacks (they did take the first three games of their series against the Cubs at home last June).