Seattle Mariners’ Lodge Peculiar No-Hitter

Tag-team no-hitters, oh my. The Seattle Mariners’ pitching staff authored what has to be one of the weirdest no-hitters in Major League history Friday night when Kevin Millwood and five relievers combined to stop the Los Angeles Dodgers’ bats cold in a 1-0 win. Millwood was the lead singer and the other quintet was the backup band.

There used to be an implicit blood-brother pact between managers and pitchers that a hurler would never be yanked if he was pitching a no-hitter, unless he could no longer stand up or his arm was as weak as a strand of linguini. I mean, why would you? But in the pitch-count era where it’s a given that some guys aren’t ever going to throw a complete game, things like this happen.

Millwood, the veteran right-hander, got the start and he did have an excuse not to continue. Recently, Millwood, who is now 37, has averaged a complete game about every other year. Sure enough, old-timer that he is, Millwood, felt a twinge in his groin as he prepared to start the seventh inning. No soldiering on after allowing exactly zero hits and one walk. Out he came as a protective move so his body wouldn’t fall apart.

Mariners manager Eric Wedge waved to the bullpen and kept on waving, running the show the rest of the way like it was an ordinary game. Officially, Millwood, who previously pitched one of those more common-place no hitters for the Philadelphia Phillies in 2003, completed 2/3 of a no-hitter this time, so he won’t get individual credit in the record books. He got by with a little help from his friends, including, in order, relievers Charlie Furbush (2/3 of an inning), Stephen Pryor (who got the win for throwing 1/3 of an inning), Lucas Luetge (1/3 of an inning), Brandon League (2/3 of an inning) and Tom Wilhelmsen (one inning).

That is about the most anonymous group of pitchers ever involved in throwing a no-hitter. I follow baseball pretty closely and I had to look up their first names. Those five should be forever grateful to Millwood for putting them in a position to become part of baseball history. Otherwise, as relievers, there was zilch chance they would get closer to a no-hitter than reading Nolan Ryan’s biography.

“Those guys got all the tough outs,” said a gracious Millwood, speaking of the late innings when pressure mounted to keep the Dodgers hitless. “First six, it is what it is. I’ve seen a lot of people do that.”

He’s right about that, though you have to think the pressure on the relievers was a little bit different than it would be for an individual going all of the way. Still, Wilhelmsen, who picked up the save, was trying to protect the lead in a one-run game as well as protect the no-hitter.

The winning run was scored by Ichiro Suzuki on a single by Kyle Seager, Seattle’s third baseman, who called the pitching heroics “unbelievable” and said he had never seen anything like it. Neither have the rest of us. It was a goofy no-hitter, but it counts. It’s all in the eye of the beholder to determine if it was the wackiest one of all since the Houston Astros also had a six-pitcher combined no-hitter in 2003. Coincidentally, the starting pitcher for Houston in that game, Roy Oswalt, also left the contest with groin soreness, although that came up in only the second inning.

The only way the Mariners-Dodgers game could have been stranger is if the Dodgers got the victory without a base-hit. Furbush committed a two-base throwing error in the seventh inning, putting Los Angeles’ Elian Herrera in scoring position, making that a realistic possibility. Dodgers manager Don Mattingly actually said he began fantasizing about stealing the game without a hit through some sort of wild combination of errors, sacrifices and walks.

As if this wasn’t enough to talk about.