Sports Time Radio

For quite a few years now Major League Baseball has been trying to get younger fans to watch their games. Somewhere down the line they decided that the way to do this was to speed up the game, but that doesn’t seem to have worked. Then they went back to something that had worked for them before by having more home runs hit. After the last strike in the 90’s fans where really turning against the game of baseball, but the Mark McGwire/Sammy Sosa home run chase brought fans back to the game. This time baseball allowed the baseballs to be “juiced”; so more home runs would be hit by everyone this time, but it didn’t seem to work this this time around. Then they decided that the games where too long and they added some new rules to help shorten them. Unfortunately some of the rules they’ve added aren’t helping the game at all, but will have to get into those another time. The thing that makes baseball tough to watch is something that they can’t control and that was the addition of analytics. As teams started to embrace analytics what no one realized was it would turn baseball into almost exclusively a three outcome game. By using analytics baseball has become a home run, walk or strikeout game and let’s face it that no fun to watch even for someone like me who’s been a lifelong baseball fan.

Now fortunately for us long time fanes there are those moments in baseball where it shows us the actual beauty of the game and reminds us why we love it so much. Last night we had one of those moments.

For the first time in the history of the San Diego Padres they had a pitcher throw a no-hitter. Joe Musgrove threw 112 pitches and struck out 10 Texas Rangers last night on his way to the first no-hitter in Padres history.

Musgrove faced 28 hitters last night as the only Rangers player who managed to reach base against Musgrove was Joey Gallo who was hit by a pitch in the Top of the 4th inning.

Musgrove’s family have been long time Padres season ticket holders and Musgrove wears #44 in honor of former Padres pitcher and former Cy Young award winner Jake Peavey.

Musgrove in in his 6th major league season and was acquired by the Padres this past off season from the Pittsburgh Pirates in a three team trade that also involved the New York Mets. To get Musgrove the Padres sent starter Joey Lucchesi to the Mets. San Diego also sent four minor leaguers Omar Cruz, Drake Fellows, Hudson Head and Dave Bednar to the Pirates. Pittsburgh also received Endy Rodriguez from the Mets in this deal as well.

This was actually the third time in Musgrove’s career that he had been traded. He was originally a 1st round draft pick of the Toronto Blue jays, but they traded him to the Houston Astros who he made his major league debut for on August 2nd of 2016. After the 2017 season Musgrove was sent by the Astros to the Pirates as part of the trade that brought Gerrit Cole to Houston. Musgrove spent three seasons with the Pirates, but injuries limited him in two of those. He’s now made two starts for the Padres and so far so good as Musgrove is 2-0 with a 0.00 ERA over 15 innings with 18 strikeouts and 0 walks. Not a bad start for the team he’s rooted for since he was a kid.

This was the first no-hitter for a franchise that is in it’s 53rd season as they started play in 1969. For those people who like this kind of thing last night was the Padres 8206th regular season game. Until last night the Padres had been the only team in Major League Baseball that hadn’t had a pitcher throw a no-hitter for them. Well that can no longer be said as Musgrove changed that.

How about one more odd fact from Musgrove’s no-hitter last night. Before Musgrove threw his no-hitter last night the last no-hitter was by Alec Mills of the Chicago Cubs on September 13th of last season (2020). The catcher for Mills no-hitter was Victor Caratini who was acquired by the Padres along with Yu Darvish this past off season from the Cubs and he just happened to be catching last night for Musgrove.

Did you get to see Musgrove’s no-hitter? Either way; what do you think of Musgrove’s no-hitter and the Padres finally getting a no-hitter in their history?

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