CLEVELAND — Parker Messick jogged out of the home dugout for the top of the ninth inning, twisted his body sideways to leap over the foul line and approached the mound to a standing ovation. One pitch later, the Baltimore Orioles sucked the air out of the ballpark.
The Guardians, renowned for their perennial pitching prowess, own the league’s longest no-hitter drought at 16,408 days. Messick came within three outs of vanquishing that hex before he served up a leadoff single to Leody Taveras in the ninth inning. Before that, he befuddled Baltimore’s hitters for eight innings.
Despite a late push, the Guardians held on for a 4-2 win. Messick’s ERA is now 1.05.
Until a few weeks ago, Messick thought he might be headed to Triple-A Columbus to start the season. A few days before the Guardians left Arizona, as Messick was playing catch on a back field at the team’s spring training complex, pitching coach Carl Willis pulled him aside to tell him he had made the Opening Day roster.
Four starts later, he nearly made history.
Not since Len Barker silenced the Toronto Blue Jays on May 15, 1981, on a chilly, damp night at Municipal Stadium in front of a few thousand — though a few hundred thousand later claimed to have been in attendance — has a Cleveland hurler recorded a no-hitter.
Had Messick completed the feat, he would’ve done so with some help from his teammates. Steven Kwan made a leaping catch at the center field wall. José Ramírez made a pair of dazzling plays at third base, including a snow-cone grab on a foul pop-up against the protective netting near the third-base camera bay.
For the better part of eight innings, Messick’s changeup induced its usual high rate of whiffs against the Orioles. The pitch has rated as one of the best in the league since his debut. Hitters chase it. They whiff at it. They curse it. They tell themselves it’s coming, and then they look like they’ve never seen a changeup before.
On Thursday, the pitch was as lethal as ever.