{"id":665415,"date":"2026-04-05T23:17:16","date_gmt":"2026-04-05T23:17:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/665415\/"},"modified":"2026-04-05T23:17:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-05T23:17:16","slug":"cubs-wouldve-thrown-a-no-hitter-but-michael-conforto-didnt-catch-this-99-probability-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/665415\/","title":{"rendered":"Cubs would&#8217;ve thrown a no-hitter \u2014 but Michael Conforto didn&#8217;t catch this 99% probability out"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportingnews.com\/us\/mlb\/chicago-cubs\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Chicago Cubs<\/a> nearly threw baseball&#8217;s first no-hitter of the season.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, Michael Conforto let a fly ball with a 99% catch probability drop, and that was the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportingnews.com\/us\/mlb\/cleveland-guardians\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Cleveland Guardians<\/a>&#8216; only hit of the entirety of game one of their Sunday doubleheader.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s hard to know on flyballs whether wind or the sky impacts their catchability, but when the Statcast percentage is that high, the ball should probably be caught.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s how the play looked:<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Cleveland&#8217;s only hit vs. the Cubs today was on a ball that Michael Conforto misjudged<\/p>\n<p>We remain in MLB&#8217;s longest no-hitter drought since 2004-2006 <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/a3Xk45kkyI\" rel=\"nofollow\">pic.twitter.com\/a3Xk45kkyI<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Talkin&#8217; Baseball (@TalkinBaseball_) <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/TalkinBaseball_\/status\/2040883809562890501?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">April 5, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<p>MORE:\u00a0<a target=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sportingnews.com\/us\/mlb\/los-angeles-angels\/news\/angels-jo-adell-robbed-3-home-runs-mariners-same-game-who-hit-how-did-it\/cedbd653305cdab130512218\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Jo Adell robbed 3 home runs in the same game<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Conforto made an adventure out of the moment out there.<\/p>\n<p>This is what The <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/TheWARmonger_\/status\/2040895948868530441\" rel=\"nofollow\">WARmonger wrote<\/a> on X: &#8220;Catch probability initially 99% on this one, BTW. It may update later but doubt it goes far. Tough way to lose a no-no.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Of course, there&#8217;s no way to know with absolute certainty that the rest of the game would&#8217;ve played out the same way if Conforto had caught this ball.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe the pressure of a potential no-hitter would&#8217;ve gotten to the Cubs and led to some different pitches down the stretch. This only happened in the sixth inning.<\/p>\n<p>But in retrospect, at least as far as history is concerned, the moment looms large.<\/p>\n<p>The Cubs won the game 1-0, so they won&#8217;t rue that part of the mistake. It just denied them a no-hitter.<\/p>\n<p>More MLB news:<\/p>\n<p>                            <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Chicago Cubs nearly threw baseball&#8217;s first no-hitter of the season. Instead, Michael Conforto let a fly ball&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":665416,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2399],"tags":[5,138,24,4245,161,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-665415","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago-cubs","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-chicago","10":"tag-chicago-cubs","11":"tag-chicagocubs","12":"tag-cubs","13":"tag-mlb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116354655792336344","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=665415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665415\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/665416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=665415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=665415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=665415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}