Looking Back On Miami Marlins A.J. Burnett’s No-No: Could It Happen Again, And Would It Hit The Same?
An IBWAA writer examines AJ Burnett's no-hitter and how it would be reviewed today.
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Pregame Pepper
Did you know…
. . . While A.J. Burnett’s no-hitter was not one of the best-pitched games among the no-hitters recorded in history, it wasn’t the worst-pitched no-hitter, either. According to Baseball-Reference’s Stathead search, 263 nine-inning no-hitters have been pitched in baseball history. Among those, Burnett’s game score is tied for the seventh-lowest. The lowest game score in a nine-inning no-hitter was recorded by Brooklyn’s Ed Lafitte in a 1914 Federal League game, when he allowed zero hits over nine innings in the first game of a doubleheader with Kansas City. Lafitte also walked seven and hit a batter while striking out just one and allowing two unearned runs, giving him 10 baserunners allowed in the game ( a record he shares among nine-inning no-hitters with multiple pitchers, including Burnett) and a 77 game score.
. . . On the flip side, many would expect the best game score for a no-hitter to naturally be a perfect game. In fact, the best game score among perfect games is a three-way tie among Nap Rucker’s 1908 gem for Brooklyn, Sandy Koufax’s 1965 perfecto for Los Angeles, and Matt Cain’s 2012 beauty for the San Francisco Giants. Those three games each had a game score of 101, tying Nolan Ryan’s final no-hitter, hurled when Ryan was 44 years old in 1991.
The best game score among no-hitters was recorded by Max Scherzer in 2015 when he struck out 17 Mets in a nine-inning no-no for the Nationals. Second-best is Clayton Kershaw’s 14-strikeout masterpiece against the Rockies in 2014.
Leading Off
Looking Back On A.J. Burnett’s No-No: Could It Happen Again, And Would It Hit The Same?
By Sean Millerick
Twenty-four years ago today, one of the most beautiful Marlins moments in Miami Marlins history happened.
It was wondrous for Marlins fans…and truly painful for everyone else. It worked, but it worked ugly. Very ugly. Get your eyes checked, refresh your browser to make sure it wasn’t a mistake, ugly. It’s something Marlins fans still celebrate today, firmly part of the franchise’s “good ‘ol days” that came roughly a quarter century ago.
Naturally, I’m speaking of A.J. Burnett’s miraculous no-hitter against the San Diego Padres.
Otherwise known as the ugliest no-hitter in MLB history.
Why? What can possibly be unimpressive about a no-no? That’d be the fact A.J.’s WHIP that night was still 1.0 despite the whole not surrendering a hit thing. Yep, nine walks. Nine. That’s one shy of Jim Maloney’s MLB record for no-hitter free passes, which came in a 10-inning game. But when it comes to excessive walks in regulation? Burnett is the no-hitter standard bearer.
To Marlins fans, though? Not ugly, just lovably quirky. Sort of like Burnett himself. Just the third no-hitter in franchise history, which, weirdly enough, was the third straight against an NL West team.
Come to think of it, of Miami’s six no-hitters since 1993 (a fact I bring up just to torment Braves and Mets fans reading along), five have been against the NL’s West division. Only the Dodgers among NL West clubs have avoided being rendered hitless by a Marlins starter, with the Diamondbacks falling victim twice (Anibal Sanchez in 2006, Edinson Volquez in 2017).
Honestly, I could go on forever on the subject of Marlins no-hitters. I’ve done so many times previously- please look it up for the clicks! I could tell you that it wasn’t until this decade that Miami had more winning seasons than no-hitters. Wax poetic about Henderson Alvarez being in the on-deck circle when he secured the franchise’s fifth. Gush about how the man who threw the first no-hitter in Marlins history (twenty-nine years ago yesterday) was traded for the very man we’re focusing on today.
Okay, that one is worth dwelling on. Care to guess how many times in MLB history a team has traded a pitcher who threw a no-hitter for them for another pitcher who threw a no-hitter for them?
Pretty sure that’d be just the once, when Miami dealt Al Leiter for Burnett back in 1998.
Sadly, the trade tree dies there, as Miami was simply too cheap to pay Burnett and allowed him to walk (your call if that was a pun). Of course, if there’s a subject I’ve written about even more than Marlins no-hitters, it’d be the Marlins being too cheap to pay someone.
Back to the no-no, though, what struck me most this time, looking back on Burnett’s for better or worse performance for the ages, were a pair of sad and sobering realizations:
Would a start like this ever even happen again, and would fans even enjoy it if it did?
For starters, even a complete game is becoming increasingly rare. In 2001, nearly 200 games saw pitchers go the distance, with Steve Sparks leading MLB with 8 CGs. In 2024? Less than 30 CGs occurred; Kevin Gausman and Max Fried shared the MLB lead with 2. Only one pitcher since 2016 has thrown more than five complete games in a season (Sandy Alcantara had six in 2022), and he only just came back from Tommy John surgery.
Basically, if pitchers are going to throw a complete game these days, they’d best be working on a Maddux.
Alright, maybe that’s a bit unfair. Blake Snell was afforded 114 pitches just last year when he pulled off the most recent individual no-hitter. If nothing else, though, you’d best be extremely efficient. No high-stress innings, not much traffic on the bases. Pitchers simply aren’t allowed to rack up that high of a pitch count anymore. Keeping starters in no matter what until a hit had been allowed was once an unwritten rule, but not so much anymore. Basically, the leash is shorter than it has ever been.
In other words, not a 129-pitch, 9 walk outing. Burnett walked five before the end of the third inning that night. Those innings were nothing if not high-stress. As I said in a piece commemorating Burnett’s no-no while searching for ways to make content during the COVID shutdown, my dad and I were initially watching more out of morbid curiosity than any belief that something historic could happen.
Which brings us to the second point: fans have a much deeper appreciation of how ugly that was now. As do MLB front offices. Plenty of starters these days are pulled before they face the prospect of having to navigate through the opposing team’s lineup a third time. Nothing Burnett was doing that night inspired any confidence that hitters couldn’t touch him…except for the puzzling reality they kept failing to do so.
With the practice of earlier pitching changes now so commonplace, there’s no question that the game feels very different today than it did twenty-four years ago. It’s not a reach to say that even plenty of Marlins fans would be clamoring for a call to the pen prior to that third turn. It certainly would have occurred to a data-driven manager.
Now, does that mean every manager would hold their starter back? Not at all. Plenty of the mysticism around a no-hitter is still there. Yet there is also more analysis than ever before, on every pitch of every start.
All of it adds up to Burnett’s unconventional no-no being very much a thing of the past.
Sean Millerick is a diehard Miami Marlins fan but still finds cause for hope every Spring Training. He currently writes for @MarlinManiac. You can find him on Twitter, or whatever Elon wants to call it, @miasportsminute.
Extra Innings
Most of the no-hitters with worse game scores than Burnett’s 85 were hurled before World War II, but among those in the last 30 years, only one had a worse game score, Francisco Liriano’s 1-0 blanking of the Chicago White Sox for the Minnesota Twins on May 3, 2011, which earned an 83 game score: