Yu Darvish loses a "no-no" with 1 out remaining to Big Papi, Rangers drop Red Sox 8 - 0

So close again: Rangers' Darvish loses no-hit bid with out to go

Anthony Andro

+FOX Sports Southwest


ARLINGTON, Texas – Boston's David Ortiz took the official scorer off the hook Friday night in what would have been one of the most debated no-hitters in big league history.

His ninth inning single with two outs off Texas ace Yu Darvish ended Darvish's bid for a no-hitter and made a controversial seventh-inning error by Texas outfielder Alex Rios a non-factor in Darvish's no-hit bid. It didn't take away from a brilliant performance by Darvish in an 8-0 blanking of the Boston Red Sox.
The hit by Ortiz to right field in the teeth of the Texas shift marked the second-consecutive year Darvish has lost a no-hitter with two outs in the ninth inning.

It was fitting that it was Ortiz who ended the no-no bid as he was part of the controversy in the seventh inning. It was his two-out blooper to right that fell in between Rios and second baseman Rougned Odor, without either of the players touching the ball.

It took official scorer Steve Weller a couple of minutes to make the error call. While that was happening Darvish walked Mike Napoli before getting Grady Sizemore to fly out to right to keep the no-hit bid intact.

Darvish, who struck out 12 before being lifted after allowing the Ortiz single, took some of the blame for the error because he fell behind 3-1 to Ortiz. He had no problem with the final result.

"This is my second time I experienced this but if I keep pitching like this someday I'll get it," Darvish said. "I'll keep doing what I'm doing and I'll probably have the world record of almost a no-hitter. I don't think it was the best game that I threw but it was against Boston and I think I pitched well against them."

Darvish was perfect through six innings and that carried over to start the seventh as he got a fly ball from Dustin Pedroia and a grounder from Shane Victorino.

That's when Ortiz looked like a lazy fly ball that no one caught. Rios took full responsibility for the play.

"We had the shift on and I thought that he (Odor) was a little closer to the ball than I was,
said Rios. "At the end, it's my responsibility to call him off and it's a shame that I couldn't help him achieve a great pitching performance tonight. I should have taken control of that ball. It can be called an error, yeah. We were camped under the ball, so it can be called an error."

Odor said he couldn't hear Rios because of the crowd noise at Globe Life Park.

Texas manager Ron Washington thought the play should have been made too.

"My take on it is it should have been caught," said Washington, who declined to say who he thought should have caught the ball.

Weller cited Rule 10:12a1 in the rule book for his decision on the error call. He believed Rios called off Odor on the play. He checked with the Elias Sports Bureau who agreed with his decision.

"Again, this is a judgment call," Weller told a pool reporter. "In my judgment, when the ball goes up in the air, I felt like the second baseman or the right fielder under normal effort could've clearly caught the ball. I don't think there's a lot of argument about that. Under the rule, 10.12a1, it clearly states that a fly ball that lands — that's allowed to hit the ground, that in the judgment of the official scorer under normal effort could be caught — you're to award an error on the play."

Ortiz said he had no problem with the play being ruled an error but after he broke up the no-hitter with a clean hit, he believes the call in the seventh should be changed too. 

"Ok, I know I hit a ball that was supposed to be caught," Ortiz said. "You know guy throwing a no-hitter, we all understand, but it comes down to the rules of the game… that's a hit. That's the rule that we all know and that's rule that the game have for more than 100 years. "

Darvish worked around an eighth-inning leadoff walk to keep the no-hitter going, finishing the inning with his 12th and final strikeout.

He was replaced by Alex Ogando after the single and Ogando completed the major-league high eighth shutout for the +Texas Rangers. That's not up for debate regardless of how the seventh inning played out.

Darvish was philosophical about the night because he felt like he had given up a hit to Ortiz in the seventh.

"It was a 3-1 count and I had to throw a fastball in that situation," Darvish said. "As soon as he hit it I thought it was going to be a hit. Obviously I was a little bit disappointed but I was already ready to give up a hit so it didn't matter."

SO CLOSE! AGAIN! Yu Darvish loses a no-no with one out to go. The @Rangers defeat the #RedSox 8-0. http://t.co/vt0GSG7x4Z
— FOX Sports (@FOXSports) May 10, 2014

+Texas Rangers +Boston Red Sox +MLB +David Ortiz 

Yankees Pineda Ejected this time for "Foreign Substance" After last Suspicion Resulted in Nothing

Yankees’ Michael Pineda ejected from loss to Red Sox after pine tar discovered on neck

Home plate umpire Gerry Davis came out to the mound at Red Sox manager John Farrell’s request and checked Pineda’s uniform. Davis ran his finger over the brown spot on Pineda’s neck and immediately ejected him.

BY ANTHONY MCCARRON 

+New York Daily News

COREY SIPKIN

+New York Yankees starter Michael Pineda appears to be bad at cheating. Pine tar is clearly visible on his neck here. When discovered by umpires in the second inning, he is ejected.

BOSTON – After giving up two runs in the first inning Wednesday night, Michael Pineda returned to the Fenway mound for the second frame with brown goop slathered on the right side of his neck, setting in motion a series of events that likely will push the Yankees’ 5-1 loss to the +Boston Red Sox into Rivalry lore.

Yankees Pineda on Pine Tar, "My hands get sweaty."

Pineda, now a “man of (foreign) substance” two times over, was ejected after plate umpire Gerry Davis dabbed his finger in the glistening stuff on Pineda’s neck at the request of Sox manager John Farrell. Pineda likely faces a suspension that could be as long as eight or 10 games, though +MLB officials won’t decide on the penalty until they’ve digested the umpires’ report.

And Pineda’s not the only one who could be in trouble. Yankee manager Joe Girardi moved an unmanned +ESPN camera after it turned to capture video of a dejected Pineda walking down the dugout tunnel toward the clubhouse with an athletic trainer and pitching coach Larry Rothschild. Girardi held the camera away, all of it caught by another camera angle. That could be subject to discipline, too.

Beyond the likely penalties, this storyline could keep reverberating through Rivalry games this season – now that the Red Sox have checked a Yankee pitcher, do Girardi and Co. retaliate by asking umps to look at any suspicious blotch on a Boston pitcher, just for the potential annoyance factor? Both Jon Lester and Clay Buchholz have been suspected in the past. 

COREY SIPKIN/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

COREY SIPKIN/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

In the first inning with catcher Brian McCann (l.) Pineda appears to have a clean neck, but in inning two, the substance appears just behind the right ear.

The whole grand theater is a sequel of sorts to what happened at the Stadium April 10. That cold night, Pineda beat Boston but was spotted with similar brown goo on the palm of his right hand. The Red Sox did not protest, but Farrell and several his players suggested Pineda should be less obvious if he was going to use something to improve his grip on the ball.

Pineda was not disciplined for the first offense, but Joe Torre, MLB’s VP of baseball operations, talked to Yankee GM Brian Cashman about the matter. Pineda claimed it was dirt on his palm.

Though it’s technically against baseball rules, pitchers generally use something to help them get a grip on the ball on cold nights – it was 53 degrees at first pitch at Fenway, with winds gusting at 24 miles per hour – and nobody says anything because they don’t want their own pitchers checked, too. Hitters say they’re happy that pitchers actually know where their 90-plus mph pitchers are headed.

Before Wednesday night’s game, Farrell said he expected “if it’s used, it’s more discreet than the last time.”

It wasn’t. It was just in a different place.

Farrell likely asked Davis to examine Pineda because it was the second time television cameras easily spotted Pineda using something. With Grady Sizemore batting with a 1-and-2 count and two out in the second, Davis came out to the mound and checked Pineda’s uniform and the ball, felt the brown substance and ejected the pitcher.

David Phelps replaced Pineda and struck out Sizemore to end the inning, one of the few Yankee highlights on a dismal evening that included three errors.

Pineda, who entered the game with a 1.00 ERA, had been wildly successful in his first three starts, a bright rotation surprise. Pitching with a clean neck in the first inning, though, the Red Sox scored two runs off him, a scoring burst that started with Sizemore’s leadoff triple. In his abbreviated outing, Pineda (2-2) allowed four hits and two runs in 1.2 innings.

It’s worth wondering how the Yankees let Pineda go to the mound with a foreign substance so apparent on his neck. And why would he do it again after being caught last time? Couldn’t he and the Yanks have found a better hiding place? Maybe Girardi and his coaches didn’t know he was using it Wednesday night. 

COREY SIPKIN/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

A foreign-substance free John Lackey dominates the Yankees over eight innings.

They do now. And now they’ll have to figure out how to deal with the fallout, as well as the potential rotation problems a suspension for Pineda will cause. They are already down a starter with Ivan Nova on the disabled and Pineda could be banned for two starts, meaning they’ll be using their seventh starter of the season.

There is precedent for suspensions as long as eight or 10 games – In 2012, +Tampa Bay Rays’ Joel Peralta was slapped with an eight-game suspension for having pine tar on his glove. The +Los Angeles Angels’ Brendan Donnelly was hit with a 10-game ban in 2005 for having a foreign substance on his glove and the +St. Louis Cardinals’ Julian Tavarez was suspended for 10 games in 2004 for doctoring baseballs. 

Pineda will surely face a suspension one way or another. Joel Peralta got 8 games in 2012.
— Mark Feinsand (@FeinsandNYDN) April 24, 2014

How long will Pineda get?

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Yankees SP Pineda Issues Apology

(+USA TODAY Sports)

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/yankees/pine-tossed-yankees-pineda-ejected-red-sox-game-pine-tar-neck-article-1.1766894#ixzz2zljzKvee

We're all "Stars & Stripes" Strong - A day that will Never be Forgotten and a Different Memory

Post by FOX Sports.

Yankee Staff get out of its Sticky Situation, with the help of Michael Pineda

The bottom line is it wasn’t pine tar that made Pineda mostly unhittable for six-plus innings on Thursday night. After all, from spring training on, his slider has been his best pitch, with such tight spin that hitters fail to recognize it, so it’s not as if this was something new.

h/t +New York Daily News

MARK BONIFACIO/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Who knows what's on Michael Pineda's hand, but it probably isn't the reason he shut down Boston.

It’s the most accepted form of cheating, if you will, in baseball. And that’s if Michael Pineda actually was using pine tar to get a better grip on the baseball.

He said he wasn’t. He said it was just dirt on his hand that became the talk of Thursday night’s Yankees-Red Sox game.

It looked like something a little stickier, based on the images presented on TV and then the Internet. But in any case, David Ortiz claimed to know nothing about it after Pineda shut down the Red Sox for six-plus innings in a 4-1 victory.

And when he was told Pineda may have been using pine tar, Ortiz made it clear he didn’t care.

“Everybody uses pine tar,” he said. “It’s no big deal.”


That’s surely an overstatement. And it is against the rules, so let’s not pretend otherwise. Though it is not grounds for ejection, but a warning, according to the rule book.

And certainly you shouldn’t be dumb enough to actually put the pine tar on display on your pitching hand, if indeed that’s what Pineda did.

But in any case, Ortiz pretty much summed up the feeling among players and managers: that pitchers use it on cold nights to help get a better grip on the ball, but pine tar doesn’t significantly alter the pitches themselves.

It’s not considered to be in the same league as scuffing the ball with sandpaper or doctoring it with a slippery substance — both ways of making the ball sink or sail or move unnaturally.


If it was, the Red Sox would have brought it to the attention of the umpires. They didn’t, which is standard practice these days apparently because the use of pine tar is such an open secret.

The Red Sox, in particular, weren’t about to protest after Clay Buchholz, their starter on Thursday night, was accused last season of doctoring the ball with something more slippery than pine tar.

So the bottom line is it wasn’t pine tar that made Pineda mostly unhittable for six-plus innings on Thursday night. After all, from spring training on, his slider has been his best pitch, with such tight spin that hitters fail to recognize it, so it’s not as if this was something new.

And after all the sound and fury on Twitter, that’s really the beauty of this night for the Yankees.

ROBERT SABO/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Michael Pineda (l.) fist bumps Derek Jeter in the third inning.

More and more they can believe that, two years after shoulder surgery, Pineda looks very much like the guy they thought they were getting in that trade of Jesus Montero to the Mariners in January of 2012.

His fastball is touching 95 and even 96 on occasion now, which means his arm strength is practically what it was as a rookie with Mariners in 2011, when he topped out at 97 mph.

More significantly, he seems to have a feel for pitching that allows him to read swings and change speeds accordingly, keeping hitters off balance. On Thursday, for example, his changeup was nearly as effective as his slider.

All of this means the Yankees could well have the deepest starting rotation in baseball, depending on what CC Sabathia gives them at the front end.

It’s not considered to be in the same league as scuffing the ball with sandpaper or doctoring it with a slippery substance — both ways of making the ball sink or sail or move unnaturally.

The Yankees are still going to be careful with Pineda, however. The minute Joe Girardi saw signs of fatigue, in fact, when Pineda gave up a home run and single in the seventh, he took him out with the right hander’s pitch count at 94. On this night that was no easy decision either, considering that Girardi had something of a bullpen crisis on his hand.

Indeed, with David Robertson on the disabled list, and Shawn Kelley and Adam Warren unavailable because of their recent work load, Girardi was minus his top three bullpen options.

Yet he still decided it wasn’t worth the risk of pushing Pineda too far. And it worked out for him, as Cesar Cabral and David Phelps buzzsawed through the Sox lineup for the final nine outs, making it look easy.

Phelps got the final seven outs, and here is where the Yankees’ gamble of using converted starters in their pen this year seems to be paying off, having relievers who can go multiple innings.

Of course, there is a bigger gamble the Yankees are taking by going with so many untested arms in their pen. Indeed, it’s fair to ask why a team that spent nearly $500 million to ensure a return to the playoffs didn’t sign at least one proven reliever to help fill the void left by Mariano Rivera.

For now, however, Phelps and Warren are giving the pen the boost it needs, so we’ll see. The Robertson injury has raised the stakes on the Yankees’ gamble, but suddenly it’s starting to look as if the Yankees have more pitching than expected.

On this night, that meant Pineda got the help he needed to finish off a gem. From his relievers, not his pine tar.

LINK to +MLB Network highlights video and original reference

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/yankees/harper-pineda-helping-yankee-staff-sticky-situation-article-1.1753083#ixzz2yarSQCov

Yankees' Pineda on pine tar controversy: 'My hands get sweaty'

By BOB NIGHTENGALE

William Perlma/THE STAR-LEDGER via +USA TODAY Sports

NEW YORK — It was the controversy that ended in a dud.

Even in New York.

New York Yankees starter Michael Pineda, who dominated the +Boston Red Sox in a 4-1 victory Thursday night, was spotted by the Red Sox’s broadcast team on NESN with a substance on his hand that appeared to be pine-tar.

Surely, he was cheating.

Only Pineda said it was nothing more than dirt.

“My hands get sweaty,” Pineda said. “It was dirt.

“I don’t use pine tar.”

+New York Yankees manager Joe Girardi insists he didn’t see anything unusual. Let alone illegal.

“I really don’t have anything to say on the subject,” Girardi said. “He pitched great, and we’re glad to have him.”

Pineda yielded just four hits and one run in six innings during his Yankee Stadium debut.

Red Sox manager John Farrell said the he became aware of something on Pineda’s hand in the fourth inning, but by the time he got notified, it was too late.

“It was not there,” Farrell said, “by the time I was aware of it.”

Pineda’s hand apparently was wiped clean, and no one from the umpiring crew was asked to check Pineda.

“That was never brought to our attention,” said umpire crew chief Brian O’Nora. “No one said a word.”

When it was mentioned that the TV cameras showed a brown substance on Pineda’s hand, O’Nora said it made no difference.

William Perlma/THE STAR-LEDGER via USA TODAY Sports

“I can’t comment on it because we’re on the field,” O’Nora said, “and the Red Sox didn’t bring it to our attention. So there’s nothing we can do about it.

“If they bring it to our attention, then you’ve got to do something.But they didn’t bring it to our attention.”

The Red Sox players, in fact, said they were completely unaware of the budding controversy until reporters asked about it after the game.

“Everybody uses pine tar in the league,” Red Sox DH David Ortiz said. “It’s no big deal at all.”

Red Sox catcher A.J. Pierznyski also said that he was unaware that anything funny was going on until notified later by reporters.

“I didn’t see it, sorry,” Pierznyski said. “He threw a good game, and that was it.”

The Red Sox, of course, were accused of doctoring the baseball themselves last season. Clay Buchholz, who started Thursday for the Red Sox, was accused by +Toronto Blue Jays TV analyst Jack Morris last season of throwing spit balls. Jon Lester was shown on TV during the World Series with a green substance on his glove in Game 1, which he later said was rosin. The +St. Louis Cardinals never complained.

Stay tuned.

The Yankees and Red Sox play 18 more times again this season, with another game scheduled Friday night at Yankee Stadium.

** The video and pictures are not the right of Sports CR3W **