Brewers Protest Hit in CC Sabathia's One-Hitter

With the Pirates mired in an nine-game losing streak and CC Sabathia dominating the National League since his trade, the stars seemed aligned for an easy Brewer win before today's Pirates/Brewers game even started. The resulting complete game shut out (CC's third in the NL) win for the Brewers was about as predictable as outcomes come. In fact, the only hit allowed by Sabathia was a fifth inning single by Andy LaRoche. Apparently, that was one hit too many, because the Brewers are protesting the scoring:

"That's a joke," Milwaukee manager Ned Yost said. "The scorekeeper absolutely denied Major League Baseball a no-hitter. He threw a hit up on the board before LaRoche had even hit the bag. It's sad. That's sad. I'm upset. I can see if it was borderline, that it could have gone either way. That wasn't even close."

Yost continued, "If you know baseball at all, you know that's a play that has to be made and is made all the time. He rushed it. That's a stinkin' no-hitter that we all got cheated out of. I'm upset. That was my first no-hitter. I could have told my grandkids about it."

The play in question was Sabathia's flubbing of a squibber off of LaRoche's bat that he didn't even bother to throw to first. Fielding errors are pretty rare for pitchers and with the easy 7-0 win the Brewers have a 5 1/2 game lead in the NL wild card with only a month to go. I'd like to tell my grandkids about watching a no-hitter today, too, but I bet they'll get over it.