JT Ginn threw 105 pitches to keep the Los Angeles Angels hitless through eight innings, and then the whole thing died in six.
Not five outs. Not a bad inning. Six pitches. Adam Frazier singled on an 0-2 count to end the no-hitter through eight innings, and then Zach Neto — who Ginn had already hit with a pitch in the sixth — stepped up on a 2-0 sinker and launched it 413 feet to center field. Walk-off home run. Angels 2, Oakland Athletics 1. That’s your game.
This is only the third time since 1961 that a team was no-hit through eight or more innings and won on a walk-off homer.
Third time. Ever. The previous two instances were Don Lock with the Washington Senators in 1963 and Josh Harrison with Pittsburgh in 2017. There are people who have watched baseball their entire lives and never saw it happen once, and now the Angels did it on a Tuesday in May while riding a six-game losing streak.
Ginn’s line: 10 strikeouts, 1 walk, 105 pitches, and nothing. He was historically dominant for eight innings and historically unlucky for six pitches, and in baseball those two facts carry exactly equal weight. That’s not a bug in the sport. That’s the whole sport.
https://twitter.com/Angels/status/2056587303393644793
The thing that gets me is that Ginn hit Neto in the sixth inning. The guy who ended his shot at history had already been plunked by him once that same night. That’s not a storyline a screenwriter would pitch because nobody would buy it. Neto stepped into the box in the ninth inning having already taken one off the body from this pitcher, dug in, and turned on a 2-0 sinker. “Tip your cap to him,” Ginn said afterward, which is the most gracious possible response to having your guts ripped out in front of a national audience.
Neto told reporters the pre-ninth dugout speech was the most electric the Angels had ever had. They hadn’t recorded a single hit all night. And they manufactured one of the most absurd walk-off home runs in recent MLB history anyway. That’s what’s hard to sit with: the team getting no-hit is the team that won.
I keep thinking about a dominant pitching performance that actually holds up versus what happened to Ginn. The difference between legend and footnote is sometimes just one 0-2 leadoff single that dies in left-center. Frazier’s hit was nothing. And then Neto made the whole conversation irrelevant on the next at-bat.
Ginn is now the sixth pitcher since 1974 to allow no hits or runs through eight innings and still lose. The Angels have cornered the market on baseball weirdness this season, but this one belongs to both clubs in equal measure. A franchise on a six-game skid, getting no-hit, walking it off in the ninth on a 413-foot shot.
There is no partial credit in baseball. You throw a no-hitter or you don’t, and JT Ginn didn’t.
