NEW YORK — Clarke Schmidt exited the mound after getting through his seventh hitless inning and exchanged a glance with manager Aaron Boone in the dugout as an indication he was not continuing.
While Schmidt was disappointed, the right-hander certainly understood not going beyond the seventh inning to continue his no-hit bid.
Schmidt was pulled after tying a career high with 103 pitches, and the New York Yankees lost a no-hit bid against the Baltimore Orioles on Saturday when Gary Sánchez singled to start the eighth against J.T. Brubaker.
“It’s more him like looking at me like this is it for you right here,” Schmidt said after the 9-0 win. “There’s a little bit of a back-and-forth where you’re having a conference, some dialog, but you can tell with the look in his eyes, it’s ‘You’re at (103). We’re not driving you to 130 today.’”
“You’re going to power through pitch limits or within reason,” Boone said. “Today was not that day for Clarke.”
Schmidt threw 27 pitches in the first inning, when he issued consecutive walks to Jordan Westburg and Gunnar Henderson. He stranded a runner in the fourth after hitting Ryan O’Hearn with a pitch.
Schmidt breezed through a nine-pitch fifth inning and needed eight pitches to get through the sixth.
“I knew he was struggling a little bit, even in the fifth, in the sixth and when he came through in that seventh and I was kind of down there waiting,” Boone said. “I knew he was done.”
Schmidt threw 21 pitches in the seventh as Brubaker warmed up. He ended by retiring Colton Cowser on a fly ball to center field.
“Unbelievable,” Brubaker said of Schmidt. “He absolutely dominated with every single pitch he had in the arsenal and went right after their hitters and that can go show you what attacking hitters can do and it can put you in a really good spot.”
It was the fifth time in team history a pitcher threw at least seven hitless innings and did not finish the no-hitter. The previous instance was Oct. 3, 2022, at Texas when Luis Severino was pulled after seven and Josh Jung singled in the eighth off Miguel Castro.
Brubaker threw two strikes to Sánchez, but the former Yankees catcher hit a clean single to left one pitch after first base umpire Jansen Viconti said he checked his swing. After the hit, some in the crowd of 46,142 lightly booed.
“Everybody in the stadium knows the situation,” Brubaker said. “I’m not ignoring it. Anytime I toe the rubber, I don’t want to give up a hit. At the end that’s always the goal. It happened to be that there was the no-hitter going.”
Brubaker finished New York’s second one-hitter this season by retiring Dylan Carlson. It was the Yankees’ 73rd one-hitter and sixth since the start of the 2022 season.
Schmidt threw first-pitch strikes to 16 of 24 hitters, struck out five and walked two. He ended the game with a scoreless inning streak of 25.1, the third-longest by a Yankees player since 1961. Only Gerrit Cole (25 2/3 innings in 2023) and Catfish Hunter (26 innings in 1975) had longer scoreless streaks.
New York has thrown 24 no-hitters in team history. The last was June 28, 2023, in Oakland when Domingo Germán threw the Yankees’ major league-leading fourth perfect game.
The Orioles have been no-hit 15 times in team history. Baltimore was last held hitless on Aug. 12, 2015, in Seattle by Hisashi Iwakuma.
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