What You Need to Know

The Improbable Frequently Fails To Happen

by Emma Baccellieri

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The Thursday Takeaway
Colby Lewis’ day didn’t start out as anything particularly special—a 20-pitch first inning of exactly the sort of unremarkable-but-decently effective stuff you expect from Colby Lewis. It didn’t take long, however, for him to look not simply decently effective but uncommonly so. There was an impressive swinging strikeout courtesy of his slider in the second, then there were three straight flyouts in the third, and from there, he was really dealing. The next few frames zipped by, as Lewis breezed through with eight or fewer pitches per inning through the seventh, including a series of six straight groundouts. True to his typical style, the performance wasn’t flashy—just three strikeouts through seven, with his standard mix of high-80s fastballs and a slider not too far behind—but it was perfect.

However, Lewis wasn’t the only pitcher shutting things down. Though Oakland’s Daniel Mengden wasn’t going for a perfecto (a walk and a single early on had spoiled any chance of that), he was going for a shutout. With the game scoreless heading into the seventh, Lewis’ bid for perfection was growing layered with the standard questions of this situation—when aiming for the win needs to take priority over aiming to stay perfect, whether there’s validity to an unwritten rule of no bunting here (not for the A's, who tried it to no avail in the sixth). But then Ian Desmond led off the seventh with a solo shot, and an error, a single and a fielder’s choice grounder later, the Rangers had given Lewis a 2-0 lead to work with. Mengden’s day came to an end, but after Lewis worked a perfect seventh, the As bullpen allowed even more damage with a two-run Adrian Beltre double in the eighth. For good measure, the Rangers tacked on another run, and Lewis took over a 5-0 lead for Texas in the bottom of the inning.

As far as perfect game narratives go, it had all the ingredients for something great. A tale of reinvention and redemption and journeying to Japan to find yourself, a former first-round draft pick who lost his shine to injuries, now a unexciting-but-dependable innings eater about to grasp perfection for just one day at age 36.

But no. With two outs in the bottom of the eighth, Lewis missed high and away with a fastball to Yonder Alonso—once, twice, again, again. A four-pitch walk, and the perfecto was gone.

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The no-hitter was still on, though, at least if Ryan Rua had anything to say about it. The leftfielder made a leaping catch at the warning track to snare a Marcus Semien liner for the final out of the inning and keep Lewis’ no-hit bid alive into the ninth.

Three outs away, Lewis came on to close out both the 5-0 victory and the no-hitter. Facing the bottom of Oakland’s order, he began the ninth facing off against Max Muncy, who drove a fastball on a 2-2 count over Nomar Mazara’s head in right field. Mazara went back, at the wall, almost there—and not quite. Muncy had a double, the no-hitter had gone the way of the perfect game, Lewis’ chance at a Hollywood arc to perfection was no more.