Jake Arrieta pitched a no-hitter in a 2-0 win over the Los Angeles Dodgers on Sunday night, but even he believes he caught a nice break from the official scorekeeper.
In the bottom of the third, Kike Hernandez drilled a line drive to second that short-hopped Starlin Castro, who was unable to handle the hot shot. Hernandez reached on the play, but it was ruled an error on Castro instead of a hit for Hernandez.
“I thought it was a hit, I really did,” Arrieta said in a postgame interview with ESPN. “I thought it was a tough play. Hernandez hit it well. It was a tough short-hop for Castro, but you know, they scored it as an error. Thankfully so — I was able to finish it.”
Arrieta also said he didn’t realize until a few innings later that the play was ruled an error and not a hit.
Official scorer Jerry White defended his call and said he even watched it twice on replay later to confirm his decision.
Official scorer acknowledged Hernandez hit the ball hard, but said of Castro, “If he stays down on the ball, he makes the play.”
— Dylan Hernandez (@dylanohernandez) August 31, 2015
I thought it was a terrible call and that Hernandez should have been credited with a hit. There really is no doubt in my mind — when you hit a ball that hard and it short-hops a player, you should get a hit.
The consensus on both sides seemed to be that the ball should have been scored a hit.
“Just ask Arrieta. He said (during a postgame interview on ESPN) it was a hit,” Adrian Gonzalez said via the OC Register. “I asked five of their players when they were on the bases and they all thought it was a hit.”
Though Gonzalez says he thought it should have been a hit, he still points out that the Dodgers would have lost on a 1-hit shutout, which isn’t much better. Dodgers manager Don Mattingly said the same thing.
“It didn’t change the game at all,” Mattingly said. “If you really want my opinion, I think it’s a hit. But at this point, you get beat and you get no-hit. You’re not going to complain about that after the game. It’s not going to change the game at all.”
Mattingly also said he thought this no-hitter was different from the one less than two weeks ago by Mike Fiers in Houston. He credited Arrieta for having better stuff and shutting the team down, while he felt the players chased bad pitches in the loss against the Astros.
Even though the Dodgers have been no-hit twice in the fewest amount of games since 1923, they do have some fair excuses. In this case, there was a poor scoring decision. In Houston, well, there was this whole issue.
