Anibal Sanchez hands his no-hitter over to the Tigers’ bullpen in the seventh

Tigers starter Anibal Sanchez no-hit the Red Sox through six innings in ALCS Game 1, but he will not be allowed to complete it. Sanchez threw 116 pitches, prompting Tigers manager Jim Leyland to lift him from the game with the larger goal in mind. Reliever Al Alburquerque will be the first out of the bullpen tasked with preserving the no-hitter. He is slated to face Mike Carp (pinch-hitting for Will Middlebrooks), Jarrod Saltalamacchia (pinch-hitting for David Ross), and Jacoby Ellsbury.

Sanchez’s final line reads: 6 IP, 0 R, 0 H, 6 BB, 12 K.

Anibal Sanchez 4th pitcher with 6+ no-hit innings in postseason history. Joins Halladay (10/6/2010), Pedro (10/11/1999) & Larsen (10/8/56).

— Jordan Bastian (@MLBastian) October 13, 2013

The Tigers chased Red Sox starter Jon Lester with one out in the seventh. Lester hit Jose Iglesias with a pitch, then gave way to reliever Junichi Tazawa, who recorded two outs to send the game to the bottom of the seventh with his team down 1-0.

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In case you missed it over the weekend, the New York Yankees suffered yet another huge blow when another huge star went on the injured list. The star: Aaron Judge, who strained his oblique during Saturday’s 9-2 win over the Royals.

Yesterday the Yankees placed him on the injured list. In so doing, Yankees manager Aaron Boone called it a “pretty significant strain in there.” The team did not offer a timeline, but Boone said they’ll monitor Judge for a couple of weeks to see where he is. Oblique strains, however, can cause a player to miss a lot of time. Four to six weeks is not unheard of for even moderate oblique strains. Guys with major strains have missed months.

Judge is the Yankees’ 13th player currently on the injured list and is the 14th Yankees player to visit it overall on the young season. Joining him there at the moment :

Left fielder Giancarlo Stanton (strained left biceps);
Center fielder Aaron Hicks (strained left lower back);
Catcher Gary Sánchez (strained left calf);
Shortstop Didi Gregorius (Tommy John surgery);
Starter Luis Severino (shoulder);
Third baseman Miguel Andújar (torn labrum in right shoulder);
First baseman Greg Bird (torn plantar fascia in left foot);
Shortstop Troy Tulowitzki (strained calf);
Reliever Dellin Betances (injured shoulder);
Reliever Ben Heller (elbow);
Starter Jordan Montgomery (elbow); and
Outfielder Jacoby Ellsbury (foot)

It’s an All-Star team’s worth of injuries. It’s such a good group of players that Ellsbury couldn’t even make the starting lineup of the all-injured team.

Though we often ignore it in season-long narratives of successful and unsuccessful teams, choosing to focus on great or poor performances, the fact of the matter is that team health is almost always a big, big factor in who wins and who loses. No one is going to cry for the Yankees here, of course, but at some point there are just too many injuries to overcome. One has to wonder if New York has reached that point yet.

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