'Baseball in 2022' derailed Cristian Javier's chance for no-hitter from start

PHILADELPHIA -- Anyone on the edge of their seat Wednesday night, hanging on the hope that the Astros’ Cristian Javier would make a run at Don Larsen in Game 4 of the World Series, hasn’t been paying attention to how baseball is played in the 21st century.

Or, perhaps more accurately, how the numbers are crunched and the data digested.

For those of us more familiar with the high cost of rising pitch counts, and that sickening feeling when you start doing the math for a potential no-hitter, we knew that Javier’s chance to join Larsen was D.O.A. long before reliever Bryan Abreu trotted in from the bullpen to begin the seventh inning.

Ultimately, it wasn’t the Phillies who ended Javier’s bid. They didn’t get a hit all night in the Astros’ 5-0 victory and only Jean Segura even came close, but his 99-mph sinking liner (.910 xBA) off reliever Rafael Montero was snagged by Kyle Tucker to end the eighth.

No, it was Javier’s own manager Dusty Baker that unapologetically killed his shot at history without as much as a second thought. But don’t hate Baker for the decision -- hate the game’s pitching guidelines, which provide little leeway for special moments to supersede the modern statistical boundaries for a healthy performance.

Sure it’s a buzzkill. And plenty of viewers at home probably went to go brush their teeth for bed once they saw that Javier wasn’t going to try for the no-hitter. But it’s not 1956 anymore. Or even ’86. Javier had a ceiling of 100 pitches before he threw his first Wednesday night. And based on how dominant he was through six innings -- two walks, nine strikeouts, zero hard-hit balls -- there was obviously nothing Javier could have done to alter his destiny. Other than possibly being more efficient.

“It was a situation where he was approaching that 100 mark,” Baker said. “Before every game we have kind of an unwritten limit on where a guy should be in the ball game. His limit was a hundred pitches ...  it's always tough to take a guy out, but you have to weigh the no-hitter and history versus trying to win this game and get back to 2-2 in the World Series.”

Baker’s logic was sound. Plus, he’s just following the organizational playbook, pretty much the same manual used by all 30 teams. But the way Javier was pitching -- he retired the last 11 he faced, including five straight Ks -- the Phillies could barely touch him. And they never got any closer to doing so, even as his pitch count nudged upward.

Here’s the problem though. Javier only threw 97 pitches or more six times during the regular season, over 25 starts, and surpassed 100 just twice. He maxed out at 115 pitches way back on June 25, which also happened to be another combined no-hitter for the Astros, coming against the Yankees in the Bronx. Javier struck out 13 in seven innings that day, but again the pitch count did him in. If only Javier was born a few decades earlier. But for these Astros, however, he’s at the right place, at the right time, especially when they desperately needed a win Wednesday to knot the series 2-2.

“He was very, very electric tonight with the fastball,” said his catcher Christian Vazquez. “I think that's the way he is and we’re always expecting that. And I think that's the best fastball right now in baseball.”

The Phillies wouldn’t disagree. The night after they apparently picked up on Lance McCullers tipping his pitches, hammering him for five homers in the 7-0 Game 3 rout, they were completely clueless against Javier. After Kyle Schwarber led off the first inning with a fly ball to left, the Phillies never got the ball out out of the infield during Javier’s stint on the mound.

But they did manage to push Javier’s pitch count, something that Baker was acutely aware of as the innings progressed. He had the Astros bullpen up in the sixth, and with Javier getting to 97 during his 1-2-3 seventh, Baker wasn’t going to send him back out after that.

“It's baseball in 2022,” Baker said. “So you think about, especially a young player, his health and his career as much as you think about that game. And we had an extremely fresh bullpen, and one of the best bullpens around, so I had full faith that they could do the job.”

Baker brought up how Dodgers manager Dave Roberts made a similar decision with Clayton Kershaw back in April -- he was pulled from a perfect-game bid after seven innings and only 80 pitches -- so what he did with Javier wasn’t all that unusual. And he was right about the Astros’ bullpen, as Montero, Bryan Abreu and Ryan Pressly finished the combined no-no, only the second no-hitter in World Series history.

Plus, now the Astros can bring back Javier for maybe two or three innings in a potential Game 7, which now seems likely given how this series is going. And if Javier gets them a World Series title, nobody will be complaining about pitch counts then.

By David Lennon

dave.lennon@newsday.comDPLennon

David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.