[Update: 11:15 PM EST] Darvish again was one out away from completing a no-hitter. With two outs in the ninth inning, David Ortiz beat the shift, sending a grounder into right-center for a single. Manager Ron Washington immediately pulled Darvish from the game as the right-hander had thrown 126 pitches. Darvish’s final line: 8.2 IP, 0 ER, 1 H, 2 BB, 12 K.
You may recall that Darvish was one out away from a perfect game on April 2, 2013 against the Astros. Marwin Gonzalez singled on a ground ball up the middle to end the bid.
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[Update: 10:53 PM EST] Darvish has no-hit the Red Sox through eight innings. He walked another batter in the eighth so he now has two walks on the night along with 11 strikeouts and is at 113 pitches. Three outs to go.
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Rangers starter Yu Darvish is working on a no-hitter. You’ve heard it before and you’ll certainly hear it again. The right-hander has held the Red Sox without a hit through seven innings tonight, striking out ten and walking one in the process.
The no-hitter stayed in tact thanks to a controversial ruling by the scorer. With two outs in the seventh, David Ortiz hit a blooper to shallow right field and it dropped untouched after miscommunication between rookie second baseman Rougned Odor and right fielder Alex Rios. The scorer assigned the error to Rios. Darvish followed up the event with a walk to Mike Napoli before getting Grady Sizemore to fly out to right field to end the inning.
In this writer’s humble opinion, that would have been ruled a hit in 29 out of 29 other ballparks and in 100 percent of non-perfect-game-related situations. So Ortiz’s bloop should have been ruled a hit. Here’s the video.
At any rate, we’ll keep you posted here as Darvish attempts to get six more outs to seal the no-hitter.