no-hitter

In almost any other season, Dave Roberts might have made a different choice.

Even though Tyler Glasnow was pitching a no-hitter, Roberts would have at least considered removing the right-hander after six innings on Monday night.

Glasnow’s pitch count was already at 91.

This season is unlike any other, however. Up is down, down is up, and the Dodgers can’t rely on their bullpen.

The uncharacteristic problem required an uncharacteristic solution from Roberts, who kept Glasnow in the game.

What was most important about the series-opening 3-1 win over the Colorado Rockies wasn’t that Glasnow kept a no-hitter intact for another inning or that human propane tank Tanner Scott blew it by giving up a double to Ryan Ritter in the ninth.

Rather, the most promising development of the night was that Glasnow completed seven innings and threw 105 pitches.

Starts like this will be necessary for the Dodgers to overcome their most obvious weakness. Starts like this will be indispensable in their quest to repeat as champions.

For the Dodgers to have a chance to win another World Series, they will have to lean more than usual on their starting pitching.

“I do think that there’s certain times, if [the starters] give me the opportunity as far as efficiency and how their stuff is playing, to push them a little more,” Roberts said.

Roberts is already pushing them.

Two days earlier in Baltimore, Roberts granted Yoshinobu Yamamoto a chance to complete a no-hitter. Yamamoto came up short by an out.

Glasnow has completed seven innings in each of his last two starts.

“Those things are going to be good going forward,” Roberts said.

As much as Roberts continues to champion his relievers — “I believe in them,” he insisted — the reality is that the Dodgers’ bullpen ranks 19th in the majors in earned-run average entering play Tuesday. The less Roberts has to call on that group, the better.

Scott, the team’s $72-million closer, has a 4.47 ERA. Kirby Yates, another questionable offseason acquisition, is even worse at 4.71.

Blake Treinen was a postseason hero last year but he was sidelined for more than three months with a forearm sprain and has struggled with consistency since his return.

The only addition made to the bullpen at the trade deadline was Brock Stewart, who is on the injured list.

The situation could force the Dodgers to move away from the kind of bullpen-heavy game plans they have used in recent years and turn back the clock to the days when their starters accounted for an overwhelming majority of their innings.

Since the start of August, the Dodgers are second in the majors in innings pitched by their starters. Their starters have a combined ERA of 3.31 in that period, also second-best in the majors.

The Dodgers are expected to have four pitchers in their playoff rotation, and they have five legitimate candidates for those positions in Yamamoto, Blake Snell, Shohei Ohtani, Glasnow and Clayton Kershaw.

But pitching deep into a postseason game isn’t the same as pitching deep into a regular-season game. Snell and Glasnow have each started 10 playoff games. Snell didn’t complete six innings in any of them. Glasnow did it only twice.

Yamamoto crossed the sixth-inning threshold once in four postseason starts last year, as he pitched into the seventh inning against the New York Yankees in Game 2 of the World Series.

Kershaw’s last six-inning start in the playoffs was in 2020. Ohtani has never pitched in the playoffs, and the most he has pitched this season is five innings.

The pitching staff’s composition could lead to hard decisions for Roberts in October.

Yamamoto, Snell and Glasnow have each averaged 4 ⅔ innings in their postseason starts. If, say, Snell runs into trouble in the fifth inning of a playoff game, what should Roberts do? Could he trust this particular group of relievers to cover the last four-plus innings of a game? Would Snell be the more reliable option to record the final outs of the inning? Or would either choice lead to disaster?

There’s potential for irony. The manager previously second-guessed for removing starting pitchers too early could now come under scrutiny for leaving them in too long.

Years ago, when Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax were at the top of the Dodgers’ pitching rotation, Drysdale missed a game to attend to some personal business. Koufax pitched a no-hitter that day.

When told about the achievement, Drysdale had one question: “Did he win?”

That’s a fair question for the current Dodgers pitching staff as well. Because Monday, for the second time in three days, the Dodgers took a no-hitter into the ninth inning.

They lost the first one. And while they won the second, it wasn’t easy with the Colorado Rockies bringing the tying run to the plate three times before Tanner Scott got the last out to preserve a 3-1 win at Dodger Stadium.

The victory kept the Dodgers a game ahead of the San Diego Padres in the National League West with 18 games left in the regular season.

It was Tyler Glasnow who flirted with history Monday, pitching seven hitless innings before turning the game over to relievers Blake Treinen and Scott. On Saturday, a similar scenario unfolded when Yoshinobu Yamamoto came within an out of a no-hitter against the Baltimore Orioles before giving up a home run to Jackson Holliday.

He left at that point, only to see Treinen and Scott give up three more runs in a 4-3 Dodger loss.

So when Scott gave up a double to Ryan Ritter to start the ninth — ending the no-hitter and drawing boos from those who remained from the crowd of 48,433 — manager Dave Roberts said he hoped he wasn’t witnessing déjà vu all over again.

“I try to not think like that,” he said.

Given how the Dodgers bullpen has struggled recently, it was hard not to.

Scott, however, quickly settled down, retiring the next two batters on soft grounders before Hunter Goodman lined out to Max Muncy at third to end the game and give Glasnow (2-3) his first win since March.

It was a victory that was long overdue.

Glasnow pitched six no-hit innings his last time out only to wind up with the loss when the Dodgers (80-64) failed to score behind him. That’s become an all-too-common problem for Glasnow, who has the second-lowest ERA in the Dodgers rotation but has received the weakest support with an average of 3½ runs per start.

Mookie Betts hits a two-run single in the seventh inning during the Dodgers’ 3-1 win over the Rockies on Monday.

(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)

The Dodgers’ hitters didn’t even match that modest number Monday. But when Mookie Betts delivered a two-run single in the seventh, breaking a 1-1 tie, it left Glasnow in position for the win.

“It’s always good to score runs,” he said with a smile.

Smiles have been hard to come by after Glasnow’s starts. In only three of his 15 starts have the Dodgers trailed by more than a run when he has exited the game. Yet in five of those starts, the Dodgers didn’t even score a run behind him, which explains why he went more than 160 days between wins.

“It is what it is,” he shrugged. “But yeah, they put some at bats together, and we ended up winning.”

Glasnow, who was held out of his last scheduled start with a sore back, was pitching for the first time in 10 days and was strong from the start, striking out the side in the first — although he needed 18 pitches to do it. He fanned the side again in the sixth, but in between he gave up a second-inning run on Jordan Beck’s leadoff walk, a stolen base and two long outs, the second Kyle Farmer’s sacrifice fly to the left-field wall.

What he didn’t give up was a hit. Glasnow said he was aware he had a no-hitter as the game progressed, but he also knew he probably wouldn’t be allowed to finish it.

“My pitch count was pretty high,” said the right-hander, who finished with a season-high 105, striking out 11 and walking two. “I don’t know how many pitches I was going to be allowed to throw.”

Also working against him were his two stints on the injured list this season and his recent back issues.

“Obviously I want to stay in, no matter what my pitch count is,” he said. “[But] given my, like, track record, I kind of understand why. I respect the decision.”

For five innings, Colorado starter Chase Dollander, who came in 2-12 with a 6.77 ERA, nearly matched Glasnow. The Dodgers didn’t get their first baserunner until the third inning and didn’t have a hit until the fifth, when Michael Conforto led off with a single to left.

Dodgers starter Tyler Glasnow delivers in the fifth inning Monday against the Rockies.

(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)

Dollander faced just three batters over the minimum before leaving with an apparent injury after walking Ben Rortvedt to start the sixth. Reliever Juan Mejia walked the first batter he faced and an out later Freddie Freeman bounced a high-hopper over Farmer and down the right-field line for a tying double.

An inning later the Dodgers scored two more off Angel Chivilli (1-5) to go in front. With two out and a runner on first, Shohei Ohtani doubled to right to bring Betts to the plate. After falling behind 0-2, he picked out a belt-high slider and drove it into the center to break the tie.

With the Dodgers safely in front and Glasnow out of the game, the drama turned to the no-hitter. There have been 22 combined no-hitters in major league history, with the last one by the Dodgers coming against the Padres in Monterrey, Mexico, in 2018.

That appeared in reach when Treinen breezed through the eighth. But Ritter, the Rockies’ No. 9 hitter, one-hopped the wall in left on Scott’s second pitch of the ninth. The ball appeared catchable off the bat, but Alex Call, inserted for defensive purposes, turned the wrong way, costing him any chance to make a play.

Scott retired the side on two ground outs and a liner to Muncy before celebrating with Rortvedt, who was called up from the minors Thursday and has come within four outs of catching two no-hitters in his first three starts.

“It’s not me, it’s these guys,” he said. “I’m doing my homework as much as I can, trying to be prepared. The pitchers are prepared. It’s just the fruit of that labor at that point.

“It’s not easy. They’re making it look easy.”

If only! On June 18, 2014, the airwaves and the internet lit up in collective awe at one of the greatest athletic feats in modern history. Clayton Kershaw recorded 15 strikeouts in a 107-pitch no-hitter that many consider the best single-game pitching performance of all time. The asterisk of this epic Dodgers game was the one error in the seventh inning that prevented its official recognition as a “perfect game”: When the Rockies’ Corey Dickerson tapped the ball toward the mound, Dodgers shortstop Hanley Ramirez botched a throw to first base, and Dickerson made it to second.

If only Ramirez had made the play at first! If only coach Don Mattingly hadn’t substituted the ailing Ramirez one inning prior! Los Angeles was one bruised right finger away from celebrating perfection.

Baseball has a celebrated history of quantifying value. No professional sport embraces numbers and statistics in the way baseball does. Statisticians are as much a part of the game as the dirt, chalk and grass. Although baseball has been collecting data since the late 1800s, the empiric statistical analysis that is part of our game today dates back to 1977 with the introduction of sabermetrics.

It’s critical to the game: How else are we to determine success when the majority of what we see is failure? The best hitters in baseball are those who only fail less than 70% of the time; in other words, have a batting average over .300. These perennial all-stars will experience the dissatisfaction and humility of an out in 7 out of every 10 plate appearances. In what other profession can you fail 70% of the time and be considered one of the greats? Consider the mental strength required to accept failure as part of the game and the focus to view each at-bat as an opportunity to fail a little bit less.

We need a similar kind of thinking in life to quantify value in our failure rates.

A “perfect game” is defined by Major League Baseball as a game in which a team pitches a victory that lasts a minimum of nine innings and in which no opposing player reaches base. It’s so rare because failure — by pitchers as well as batters — is expected as a matter of course. Francis Thomas Vincent Jr., the eighth commissioner of MLB, is quoted as saying: “Baseball teaches us, or has taught most of us, how to deal with failure. We learn at a very young age that failure is the norm in baseball and, precisely because we have failed, we hold in high regard those who fail less often — those who hit safely in one out of three chances and become star players. I also find it fascinating that baseball, alone in sport, considers errors to be part of the game, part of its rigorous truth.”

On June 19, 2014, the fans and commentators of baseball praised in dramatic fashion Kershaw’s dominant no-hitter, but with a subtle tone of confusion and denial of the ugly blemish recorded across the team’s box score: 0-0-1. Zero runs. Zero hits. One error. One base runner. An imperfect game. If only!

The collective hope for perfection is understandable. Most people are afraid to fail.

Parades aren’t held for the runner-up. Grades aren’t given just for trying. Job promotions aren’t offered for making mistakes. Placing perfection on a pedestal relieves the collective anxiety — but prohibits the opportunity — of accepting failure as an integral part of life. For an individual, failure is an opportunity to grow and become a better person. For a business, failure is an opportunity to pivot and redefine success. The opposite of perfection is not failure. It is accepting the opportunity to learn from transgressions. Winston Churchill once quipped, “The maxim, ‘Nothing prevails but perfection,’ may be spelled P-A-R-A-L-Y-S-I-S.”

Almost to the day, 75 years before Kershaw’s no-hitter, the world of sports witnessed the catastrophic reality of paralysis. In June 1939, after a week of extensive testing at the Mayo Clinic, Lou Gehrig announced to the world that he had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. This announcement happened to fall on his 36th birthday. This represented the end of Gehrig’s illustrious baseball career. But 75 years later, what is remembered about this man is not his career batting average of .340, seven-time All-Star appearances, six-time World Series championships, winning of the Triple Crown or two-time league MVP. Sabermetrics could not possibly explain Gehrig’s value to the sport. What endures is what no statistic can capture: his grace. His humility. His courage in the face of loss. What is remembered and honored is his response to the ultimate “failure”: a failure of upper and lower motor neurons to make necessary connections that ultimately leads to rapidly progressive muscle weakness and atrophy. In defiance to an illness that is uniformly fatal, Gehrig paid homage to his teammates, professional members of the MLB and its fans by proclaiming himself “the luckiest man on the face of the Earth.”

Similarly, sabermetrics misses the true greatness of Kershaw’s no-hitter. What could never be displayed in statistics or numbers was Kershaw’s response to the error. After Ramirez’s throwing error, his hat lay at the base of Kershaw’s pitching mound. As I watched from the stands, I could not hear what Kershaw said to Ramirez as he picked it up, dusted off and handed the hat back to his humiliated teammate. But his body language appeared unbelievably humble, accepting and supportive, as if to recognize the lesson of baseball, which is that errors are a celebrated part of the game. To dwell on errors and think “if only” leads to disappointment and blame, but to accept and embrace imperfections with a positive and optimistic attitude defines the ultimate success.

If only we could all be that perfect.

Josh Diamond is a physician in private practice in Los Angeles and a lifelong Dodgers fan. Some of his earliest memories are of attending games with his father; he now shares his love of the Dodgers with his son.