Paxton’s No-Hitter Was Something Special
Ladies and gentlemen, for the first time in Major League Baseball history, continental North America is fully accounted for on the no-hit front within a single season. The United States of America checked in with its first no-hitter of 2018 on April 18, when the A’s Sean Manaea held the Red Sox hitless in Oakland. Mexico got on the board for the first time last Friday, May 2, when the Dodgers’ Walker Buehler and three relievers no-hit the Padres during the Mexico Series opener in Monterrey. And on Tuesday night, Canada completed the sweep when the Mariners’ James Paxton no-hit the Blue Jays in Toronto.
Paxton, who was born and raised in Ladner, British Columbia, made history by becoming just the second Canadian-born pitcher to throw a no-hitter and the first to do so on Canadian soil. Toronto-born Dick Fowler, pitching for the A’s, no-hit the Browns on September 9, 1945 in Philadelphia. While we’re dispensing with ordinal trivia, it seems appropriate to mention that Paxton is third pitcher to throw a no-hitter at the Rogers Centre (previously the Skydome) after the A’s Dave Stewart (June 29, 1990) and the Tigers’ Justin Verlander (May 7, 2011); no Blue Jays pitcher has ever done it there. Paxton threw the sixth no-hitter in Mariners history, after Randy Johnson (June 2, 1990 against the Tigers), Chris Bosio (April 22, 1993 against the Red Sox), Kevin Millwood and five relievers (June 8, 2012 against the Dodgers), Felix Hernandez (a perfect game on August 15, 2012 against the Rays), and Hisashi Iwakuma (August 12, 2015 against the Orioles).
(While the record books are silent on the matter, Paxton is assumed to be the first pitcher to throw a no-hitter in a season where a bald eagle landed on him.)
Paxton was nearly unhittable the last time he took the mound, striking out 16 in seven shutout innings on May 2 against the A’s. In that contest, during which he threw 105 pitches, the 29-year-old southpaw got 31 swinging strikes, 25 of them via four-seam fastball, many of them at the top of the zone. On Tuesday, he was more efficient, needing just 99 pitches for the entire night, and inducing “only” 15 swings and misses, eight with the four-seamer. He got squeezed a bit at the top of the zone and walked three, but faced just two batters over the minimum thanks to a double play, and threw more than five pitches to just one batter. In only two innings did he use more than 12 pitches, and in four innings, he needed 10 or fewer pitches, including the eighth and ninth. Thus, when he needed to reach back for more gas, it was there. The pitch speed graph from Brooks Baseball tells the story:
Whew. Paxton’s 10 fastest fastballs of the night, ranging from 97.4 mph to 100.2 mph, came from among his final 23 pitches, from the second out of the seventh inning — a lineout to centerfield by Justin Smoak off a 98.5 mph heater — onward. If you need more testimony as to the power of adrenaline, consider that his final three pitches to Josh Donaldson were three of his four fastest of the night, a 98.9 mph swinging strike, a 100.2 mph called strike, and a 99.7 mph strike that Donaldson grounded to third baseman Kyle Seager:
https://gfycat.com/FlimsySevereAngwantibo
To get to that point, Paxton had to survive some scares. In the third inning, he sandwiched a four-pitch walk to Kendrys Morales and a five-pitch walk to Anthony Alford around a warning track fly ball off the bat of Lourdes Gurriel Jr. to deep center field, where Dee Gordon hauled it in. Via Statcast, Gurriel’s shot had a 102.6 mph exit velocity (one of seven Paxton allowed that were at least 100 mph) and an 88% hit probability, the Jays’ highest of the night of the pitches they put into play (one higher in terms of exit velo and launch angle wound up foul). Paxton recovered to retire Teoscar Hernandez on a foul out and Donaldson on a fielder’s choice, but his 20 pitches that inning set a high for the night.
With one out in the fourth inning, Paxton walked Smoak on four pitches, the third and final free pass he handed out. Four pitches later, he got a room-service grounder from Kevin Pillar to Seager, who started an around-the-horn double play. That began the streak of 16 straight batters retired, which he rode for the rest of the night. Hell, he didn’t even go to a three-ball count from that point onward. In the seventh inning, he needed six pitches to dispatch Pillar on a grounder; that was the only time he went past five pitches in any encounter.
Paxton did need a little help from his friends in the outfield in the eighth inning. First came Russell Martin’s towering drive to left center, where Ben Gamel made a leaping grab in front of the wall:
https://gfycat.com/UnsungBowedArthropods
On the very next pitch, Morales hit a screaming line drive that Gordon slid to catch, apparently while battling the lights:
https://gfycat.com/NarrowMeaslyHoopoe
The Morales drive produced the night’s fastest exit velocity against Paxton (111.6 mph) and the second-highest hit probability (80%), while the Martin fly had just a 48% chance of a hit thanks to its hang time.
Though Paxton has actually showed something of a reverse platoon split over the years, he faced an all-righty Blue Jays lineup, with lefty-swinging Curtis Granderson sitting and three switch-hitters (Morales, Smoak, and Yangervis Solarte) playing, the last two of whom have historically done worse against southpaws. The Jays have been one of the league’s least effective teams against lefties this seasons, the team’s been in a bit of a skid (6-10) after a promising start (13-6), and their collective frame of mind couldn’t have been helped by the arrest of closer Roberto Osuna for a domestic-violence charge that resulted in his being placed on administrative leave by MLB. Add that to a pitcher who’s found an extra gear lately, and you have a recipe for a rough night on their end.
The Mariners gave Paxton a good cushion with which to work, rallying for two runs against starter Marcus Stroman in the third inning, adding two more via a Mike Zunino homer in the fourth, and tacking on a final run in the fifth via three straight singles and a Mitch Haniger sacrifice fly.
That Paxton needed just 99 pitches to complete the no-hitter means that his outing was also a Maddux, to use Jason Lukehart’s wonderful term for any complete game shutout with fewer than 100 pitches. While it was probably commonplace among no-hitters during the pre-pitch-count era, when strikeout totals were lower, since the turn of the millennium, it’s actually become quite rare for one to check off that box, too:
| Pitcher | Date | Team | Opponent | Pitches |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Derek Lowe | 4/27/02 | Red Sox | Devil Rays | 97 |
| Philip Humber | 4/21/12 | White Sox | Mariners | 96 |
| Henderson Alvarez | 9/29/13 | Marlins | Tigers | 99 |
| Edinson Volquez | 6/3/17 | Marlins | D-backs | 98 |
| James Paxton | 5/8/18 | Mariners | Blue Jays | 99 |
That’s five out of 51 no-hitters since the start of the 2001 season that have used 99 pitches or fewer. While it’s easy to feel somewhat jaded about the frequency of these gems, between the Maddux factor and the Canadian factor and the Damn, James Paxton Is on Some Kind of Roll factor, this one really was something special.
Brooklyn-based Jay Jaffe is a senior writer for FanGraphs, the author of The Cooperstown Casebook (Thomas Dunne Books, 2017) and the creator of the JAWS (Jaffe WAR Score) metric for Hall of Fame analysis. He founded the Futility Infielder website (2001), was a columnist for Baseball Prospectus (2005-2012) and a contributing writer for Sports Illustrated (2012-2018). He has been a recurring guest on MLB Network and a member of the BBWAA since 2011, and a Hall of Fame voter since 2021. Follow him on BlueSky @jayjaffe.bsky.social.
What a nice piece of writing this was. I watched the game and was familiar with the details. Reading this account brought it all back with accuracy and added context. And the writing just flowed. Really well done.
Thank you for the kind words!
Agreed, although this gem from Kyle Seager should probably be mentioned in the “a little help from his friends” department: https://www.mlb.com/mariners/video/must-c-seager-keeps-no-no-alive/c-2022568483
The biggest 3 have, but North America has 23 countries, including baseball playing nations like the Dominican, Cuba, etc.
It was a hell of a performance though.
Geography is hard. Maybe he meant “continental” North America?
Yes. Updated to reflect that.
I hate to be “that guy,” but please understand my excitement because I have a Geography degree and I never, ever, ever get to use it for anything. Like ever. With GPS now I don’t even get to impress with my awesome map reading skills. Anyway, I am dreadfully sorry to inform you of this, but even the expression “continental North America” is inappropriate because all of the countries of Central America (Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, etc.) are very much part of the North American continent. The Caribbean nations maybe could be excluded via technicality by saying “continental North America,” but I’m afraid that no matter how it is worded, the Central America countries are very much part of our North American continental brotherhood. BTW, I am glad my first post is as a “know-it-all.” What an outstanding way to introduce myself to the community! All joking aside, fantastic article 🙂 Love the site, and I love all the awesome work everyone does.
Weird, I am 99.9% sure that when I learned about the continents (in 3rd grade or so? say ~30 years ago or so), we were taught that Central America was part of South America.
I’m pretty sure I recall that there’s no real formal definition of “continent.” Do you know if this has changed at all over the years? (i.e. is there a chance my teacher could have said that Costa Rica was in South American and been “correct”, as of 1987?)
No, I’m sorry, but your teacher was wrong (or else your memory is). We estadounidenses are kind of embarrassingly badly educated on the geography of the rest of our continent but the answer is quite clear and universally accepted. You can find it on Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boundaries_between_the_continents_of_Earth
Yup. The only workable caveat here is something like “the large countries of North America.”
Northern North America?
“For the first time, every NAFTA signatory has seen a no-hitter in the same season”
Scary to think of what else Paxton might do.
He’s going to pitch with two Eagles next time.
In this day and age, with less pitchers facing third time thru the lineup, to throw a complete game shutout under 100 pitches is impressive enough. To do so with a no-hitter is even more impressive, although in a weird way if you’re going to throw a Maddux doing it via no-hitter is probably the “easiest” way to do it (less hits, runners on base, etc.). To do so with a Bald Eagle on your right arm is gotta be historic.
was at the game. there were enough hard hit balls for 6-7 hits and a couple dingers.
you missed the diving stab by Seager in the 8th(?) to prevent a Pillar double down the line. that was probably the best defensive play of the night.
A Maddux is rare enough that other factors probably don’t count for much.
But just about every no-hitter is not just FIP-based. To some extent, you’re going to be pitching to your fielders’ strengths anyway, and that’s no bad thing.
Some people worry about things like “the scorer called an error on a possible hit” (see Sean Manaea’s no-hitter earlier this year), or even generous calls by the Umps. (Which apparently went against Paxton’s favourite zone for fastballs here, so there’s that.)
I don’t really care. A no-hitter, any no-hitter, is a splendid thing. And a Maddux is to be treasured.
Pretty soon no-hitters aren’t even going to be lead stories. Almost every night somebody, even such luminaries as Jeremy Hellickson and Nick Kingham, carries a no-hitter or even a perfect game into the late innings. The disappearance of the base hit is becoming too obvious to ignore.
Kyle Seager’s contribution to this no hitter CANNOT be underplayed, especially his diving backhanded play in the 7th, which I wish you included in this otherwise fine piece. That is all.
Come for gifs, stay for the geography lessons!
Also “Phil Humber” is clearly someone Jay made up
The radical difference in his fastball height from game to game is fascinating. It has to have been deliberate, and it obviously worked each time, once for Ks and once for no hits on a lot of groundballs. If he can keep shifting his game plan, not that he’ll be this good, but he’ll be beast enough.
Paxton reminds me of Andy Pettite,not bad company.
Hopefully he can remain healthy.
Nice column. Here’s another statistical distinction, if I did my work right:
Paxton and Scherzer are the only pitchers with consecutive outings in which one was a no-hitter and the other had 15+ strikeouts. (Qualifiers: Since 1908, and discounting any consecutive outings that were separated by more than 16 days.)
Scherzer, like Paxton, had his high-K game first — a 16-K one-hitter on 6/14/2015 — and the no-hitter 6 days later.
Incidentally, a game of 16+ strikeouts is historically about twice as rare as a no-hitter, and remains at least as rare even in this golden age of strikeouts:
— Since 1908: 127 games of 16+ K … 229 no-hitters.
— Since 2010: 13 games of 16+ K … 32 no-hitters.
— Since 2015: 10 games of 16+ K … 11 no-hitters.
— This year to date: 2 of each.
(Game counts via Baseball Reference Play Index.)
Any insight into why Paxton’s splits against lefties look so bad? .424/.513/.758/
From what I can see, he is still inducing weak contact. Maybe just less control and an unlucky hr/fb ratio. Although it looks to be a pattern throughout his career. Something to worry about?