Francisco Liriano's ridiculous no-hitter... and by that I don't mean spectacular. Liriano came into the game with an ERA above 9.00 and didn't exactly have stellar stuff last night either. In fact, he walked 6 batters and only struck out 2. Even worse, of his 123 pitches only 53.7% were for strikes. Those aren't exactly numbers you'd associate with a no-hitter. There have been 248 no-hitters in baseball history so it is quite an achievement to pitch one but I think we'd all agree a lot of them have not been to spectacular and had more to do with luck than skill. The only worse no-hitter I've seen pitched was by AJ Burnett in 2001 against the Padres. In that game Burnett tossed 129 pitches (65 for strikes), walked 9 and only struck out 7. When I see no-hitters like these I can only think back to August of last year when Brandon Morrow came within one out of what might have gone down as the greatest no hitter in history. On that August day he absolutely dominated a strong Tampa Bay Rays lineup with 17 strikeouts and was one out away from the no hitter when a fluke infield single ended his chance to go in the record books. It's so sad that a performance like Morrow's only went into the books as a CGSO whereas Liriano and Burnett go down in history.
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