Now Here is a Linescore You Don’t See Every Day!

Not all no-hitters are the same.

According to Retrosheet records, there have been 193 instances of a team being no-hit in major league history (they have linescore records for 1918 through 2010). Not surprisingly, in 180 of those games, the team being no-hit also scored no runs (see table below), leading to the linescore 0-0-x, where x is some number of errors.

Of course, the number of errors made by the team being no-hit has no impact upon the no-hitter itself. However, they can and have led to some interesting linescores. Here is the frequency of the unique linescores of no-hitters, with the date last accomplished (again, through 2010):

So there have been 13 occasions where the team being no-hit has managed to scratch out a run. We can add one more atypical no-hitter linescore, with Tuesday’s 3-1 Angels victory over the Indians in which Ervin Santana held the Tribe hitless, but yielded a run in the first inning on an error, followed by a stolen base, a groundout and a wild pitch.

What makes this most recent no-no so unusual is the error count for Cleveland. No team being no-hit has ever made more than four errors during the same game, but the Indians committed five miscues, leading to the first-ever linescore of 1-0-5.

Here’s to you, Cleveland . . . you’ve got 1-0-5 all to yourselves.