No-Hitters Are Overrated Anyway

I remember when I was a kid I went to a White Sox game against the Yankees with my dad. It was a special game in history, because it happened to be the day that Andy Hawkins threw a no-hittter against the White Sox. Oh, and he also lost the game 4-0.

I was only nine years old at the time, so I didn't quite understand the significance of what I'd just seen, I just knew that the White Sox had one, and that it was a good thing. The idea of how Hawkins must have felt after the Yankees committed three errors in that 8th inning to lose the game never crossed my mind. Looking back on it now, though, I'll bet he was pretty pissed off.

Wouldn't you be? At the very least you have to figure Jered Weaver probably is.

Weaver held the Dodgers without a hit through six innings before being removed for a pinch-hitter and turning things over to Arredondo, who retired the Dodgers in order in the seventh and eighth innings. The game did not qualify as an official no-hitter because the Dodgers did not bat in their half of the ninth inning.

The Dodgers scored in the fifth on a pair of errors, a stolen base and a sacrifice fly. Weaver committed the first error when he couldn't cleanly field leadoff hitter Matt Kemp's dribbler up the first base line.

Kemp would go on to steal second base and move up to third after Jeff Mathis saw a cute girl in the stands and wanted to impress her* by playing catch with Torii Hunter in center field (*this is my interpretation, anyway). Kemp would then score on a sac fly by Blake DeWitt, and the Dodgers would win 1-0.

All of which means that in his next start, Jered will give up 15 hits in 7 innings of work, yet the Angels will win the game 13-7. Baseball just has a way of balancing this stuff out, so it's important that Jered not let this bother him going into his next start. Things could be worse, after all, he could be Jeff Weaver.