Sunday, April 27, 2014

No Hitter!

I have been to a lot of baseball games in my life and there are a few things that you rarely get to witness as a fan.  When I first moved to North Carolina I attend a Durham Bulls game where Jason Hammel was throwing a no-hitter, but I was at the game with a group of people from work and we left early.  Bummer, but I still saw a good chunk of the game.  Yesterday was a great day for a game, and with my brother in town for work, I decided to attend yesterday's Bulls game against the Yankees Triple A team the Scranton Rail Riders. 


The Bulls had Mike Montgomery pitching who came to the Rays organization in the James Shields/Wil Myers trade.  I have seen him pitch several times before, but when the game started I was initially more excited to see Hak Ju Lee.  The Korean shortstop was one of my favorite Bulls last season, but had a season ending knee injury and missed most of last year.  He returned to the team this week.  


I had really nice seats for the game behind the visitors dugout and did manage to snap a picture of Montgomery warming up in the top of the first.  He walked former Bull Russ Canzler to lead off the second inning, but was spotless the rest of the way.  I think I noticed the no-hitter sometime around the fifth inning.  In the eighth inning the pitch count on Montgomery was getting close to 100 and the Bulls warmed up two pitchers in the bullpen.  At the end of the eighth one sat down and Brad Boxberger continued to stretch and throw in the bullpen.  Montgomery came out to start the ninth.  


 This is Montgomery warming up for the ninth inning.  He pitched to one batter in the ninth and was then pulled for Boxberger who finished off the no no with a ground out to second and a strike out.  Baseball America posted a compilation of video clips from the game.  The first out in the ninth, Montgomery's last, takes place around the 3:00 mark and the last 45 seconds is Boxberger's last two outs.  





I had to get a scoreboard shot at the end with the zeroes going across.  Awesome game to watch.  




3 comments:

  1. Nice post! Thank you. I missed the game. Ouch!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Very cool! but...why did they pull the guy with one out in the ninth? Was it just a pitch count thing? Ouch for Montgomery.
    The closest I got to seeing a no-no was a one-hitter by Don Sutton.

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    Replies
    1. From what I am gathering from different people is that the Rays have their minor league players on a hard 105 pitch count. The last three no-hitters by the Bulls (all since they were a Rays affiliate) have been combined no hitters. Would have been cool to give a little bit of wiggle room, but I cannot complain about the results the Rays get out of their minor league system.

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