Welcome to BC Sports Fivesight. It's like foresight, but one better. Every week or so a carefully selected panel of Blogcritics and outside voices will converge to form an irresistible quintet that peers into the future of a certain sports topic, so you can live like Biff Tannen in Back To The Future II and wisely wager based on our expertise. Sorry, no refunds.
Perhaps the hardest occurrence to predict in baseball is the no-hitter. After Nolan Ryan tossed his record-breaking seventh no-no, the next person to pull one off was baseball legend Tommy Greene, with all of his 38 career wins. The next guy after Randy Johnson's perfect game in Aught Four? The rookie Marlins pitcher Anibal Sanchez. The only guy to pitch consecutive no-hitters was some guy back in the 1930s named Johnny Vander Meer, the only guy you've now heard of who played at least 70 years ago and isn't in the Hall of Fame. (Ray Liotta portrayals excepting.) This is, without a doubt, the most difficult assignment the Fivesight team has received in its prepubescent career. Nevertheless, we are determined to sit here and take calculated albeit wild stabs at who will toss the next no-hitter, and against whom. Matt Sussman, handsome sports editor Knowing full well that the elusive no-hitter can take a while to re-emerge — there were none in 2005 or 2000 — we can deduct that this millennium will never see any no-nos on years divisible by five. Therefore, if another one doesn't happen later this season, it'll be until 2011 when someone tosses it. And with guys like Jose Jimenez, Bud Smith, and Jonathan Sanchez falling into near-perfection with a blend of skill and luck, the next dude to throw one may not even be past Double-A yet. So I'm going to go with Christian Friedrich, a left-handed pitcher in the Rockies organization. (Lefties have thrown four of the last five perfect games, don'tcha know.) He's currently in Single-A, but the 21-year-old should be up in Denver by '11. I know little else about this man other than his Baseball Cube page, but fortunately in two years I'll know plenty about him when he no-hits the Diamondbacks. (No, I'm not self loathing. Why do you ask?) Charlie Doherty, Dead Red The fact that Toronto's ace Roy Halladay can go the distance on any given outing isn't news to anyone. But since he is one of the best pitchers in the American League, it's only a matter of time that one of his future complete games will have all zeroes in the box score. And I think Doc's no-no will come against Baltimore. Alex Remington, Chop-N-Change/Treehouse Fort baseball analyst It’ll probably happen in Petco again. Tons of arms in the West, and the Padres barely have a major league offense. My choice: Clayton Kershaw. Effectively wild, disgusting stuff, an abnormally low BABIP, and oh yeah — he's a fastball-curveball power lefty. We already know the Padres can't hit those. Sooze, Babes Love Baseball Little Timmy Lincecum will be the next dude to throw a perfect game. I think. [Editor's note: For forgetting to guess who Lincecum will throw it against, the de facto answer will be Minnesota.] Tuffy, some guy with Internet access Khloe Kardashian will get no hits from the baseball wing of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, but she will go for the cycle with the members of the C Street Bible study group, letting Senator John Ensign take her deep twice
Article comments
1 - Tony
1951 - Allie Reynolds threw 2 no hitters in one season. Not in the Hall of Fame.
2 - Sooze
Damn it.
3 - charlie doherty
Tuffy, that's hilarious (as I would expect from you). Bonus points for working in a current political/religious scandal into a sports segment. I'm actually surprised you didn't work in Mark Sanford somewhere. Maybe next time!
4 - Matthew T. Sussman
Thank you, Yusmeiro Petit, for not rendering these predictions obsolete quite yet.
5 - RJ
The next perfect game will be the next MLB game I attend.
6 - Dr Dreadful
...And you'll be cheering the team that the pitcher isn't on? :-)
(Anyway, that's the kind of thing that always happens to me!)