Corey Kluber pitched his way into Yankee history on Wednesday night, tossing the franchise’s first no-hitter since 1999, but he also became the latest entry in a growing trend.
Kluber’s no-no was the second in as many days and the sixth of the season, or seventh if you want to count Madison Bumgarner’s seven-inning no-hitter (MLB doesn’t). With the league just one no-hitter shy of tying the seasonal record, with less than two months gone by in the season, some have began to express concern that today’s no-hitters have diminished meaning.
Others, including Marlins manager and former Yankee great Don Mattingly, think they’re becoming harmful to the sport.
Speaking with reporters on Thursday, Mattingly said this year’s no-hitter surge coupled with the ever-growing strikeout rate has made the game “unwatchable” at times, an unfortunate realization for a manager whose job is to watch a game from the dugout every night.
"It's great for your team when a guy throws a no-no, it's great for that guy,” Mattingly said. “It's a great accomplishment. But when there's so many, so early, strikeouts are at an all-time high and things like that, it tells you there are some issues within the game that need to be addressed.”
So far this season, the league is averaging roughly one no-hitter per week, even as the 2021 season is nearly a quarter of the way through. Kluber’s no-hitter on Wednesday came just one night after Detroit’s Spencer Turnbull threw one himself against the Mariners, who were just no-hit nearly two weeks prior.
Major League Baseball went public about its changes to the baseball prior to this season, in an event to limit the historic home run surge that peaked in 2019, or the year of the “juiced ball” controversy, but those changes may have led to some unwanted side effects. Hitting across the league has been at an all-time low this year in terms of batting average, with hitters batting .236 heading into Kluber’s no-hit night, while slugging just .393.
While those numbers have been trending up in recent weeks, the no-hit surge hasn’t slowed, and Mattingly believes it’s hurting the game.
"It's been coming and it's been building, and now we're at a point where I think it's getting so much more attention because it's just a game that sometimes is unwatchable. You see guys you talk to and they don't even like watching games because there's nothing that goes on in them."
MLB is constantly looking for ways to increase action and pace to capture the attention of would-be fans while maintaining the attention of its current ones, and have even gone as far as testing a new mound distance in the Atlantic League this summer. But Mattingly believes the league has more pressing matters to focus on with its current structure, which he feels is diminishing the excitement of what is typically seen as a historic event in the no-hitter.
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