Yu Darvish lost a perfect game with two outs in the top of the 7th inning of his start against the Boston Red Sox on Friday night when a fly ball to right by David Ortiz fell between Alex Rios and Rougned Odor.
The Rangers were employing a shift against the pull-hitting Ortiz, who hit into the shift with the fly ball. Unfortunately there was a miscommunication between Rios and Odor, and Rios did not call off his second baseman as he should have. That allowed the ball to fall in for a hit.
Darvish caught a break when the official scorer decided to rule the ball an error on Rios, which kept the no-hitter intact.
I understand that under usual circumstances that’s always ruled a hit. But as a guy with a pitching background, I’ve always felt that if you get a batter to hit a routine fly ball and your fielders let it drop, that’s on them, not you. Plays like that should ALWAYS be an error on the fielders. Maybe baseball should create a non-contact error statistic in addition to the current error category to account for plays like that.
At any rate, Darvish lost the no-hitter with two outs in the ninth when Ortiz singled through the shift:
Ball don’t lie?
