Cleveland's offense was left out of the hit column — again.
For the second time this season, Cleveland was on the wrong end of a no-hitter, this one at the hands of Cincinnati's Wade Miley. The first no-hitter against Cleveland was tossed by Carlos Rodon on April 14 in Chicago.
Miley was efficient, effective and made quick work of Cleveland in the ninth, especially, finishing it via a Jordan Luplow groundout. His no-hitter, the fourth around the league this season, featured one walk and eight strikeouts. He was two batters away from facing the minimum.
"He kept us off balance," said manager Terry Francona on a Zoom call. "I think he touched 90 once tonight, but he put on a clinic. I mean he cut the ball in on the righties, threw a change-up, threw a four-seamer in, he just went back and forth. I mean that was pretty impressive. Again, I’d like to see our guys make some adjustments, but he pitched his ass off.”
"I don’t know," said Amed Rosario on a Zoom call when asked about what to do against Miley. "If I knew the answer, what just happened wouldn’t happen."
It's the first time in franchise history that Cleveland has been no-hit twice in the same season, let alone the first six weeks of the season. Cleveland is now the 14th team in baseball history to be no-hit twice in the same season in nine-inning games. It's also the second no-hitter in Progressive Field history since Ervin Santana no-hit Cleveland on July 27, 2011.
On the other side, Zach Plesac was tremendous, throwing eight scoreless innings with seven strikeouts, five hits allowed and zero walks.
“I thought he pitched his heart out," Francona said. "Early in the game, had a couple innings where he had a runner on third with less than two outs. He got out of both of them. And then after that, I don’t think there was a base runner. He pitched great.”
But, Emmanuel Clase entered in the ninth, and everything fell apart.
With two runners on, Clase fielded a weakly hit ground ball off the bat of Nick Castellanos. Instead of taking the out at first base, Clase hesitated and instead turned to second, where Rosario hadn't yet gotten to the bag. Clase threw it anyway, and the errant throw got away from Rosario to allow the first run of the night score on an error. Clase then balked home the second run before a single by Mike Moustakas made it a 3-0 game. That ended Clase's night without recording an out.
“It looked to me like Amed was late covering and [Josh] Naylor’s yelling ‘Two, two, two,’ as he should," Francona said of the error. "I don’t know if Emmanuel knew Amed was kind of in no man’s land and kind of let it go. It sort of started a not real good inning for us.”
"That play was based on judgment," Rosario said. "At the time, with the pitcher, I was playing far away from the base, so I didn’t have time to get to the base on time. That’s when you can get caught in between."
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