April 8, 2023: Trash Pandas pitch no-hitter in bizarre loss to Lookouts

The Rocket City Trash Pandas,1 the Double-A affiliate of the Los Angeles Angels, began their 2023 season with a series against the Chattanooga Lookouts, the Cincinnati Reds’ affiliate in the Southern League. After the Trash Pandas finished 2022 with the best record (81-57) in the league, 5,264 fans showed up at Toyota Field in Madison, Alabama,2 on Opening Day, April 6.

The Lookouts won the opener, 6-3 in 11 innings. After rain postponed the next day’s game, the teams played a doubleheader on April 8. By league rules, both games were seven-inning contests.3

Right-hander Coleman Crow started for the Trash Pandas in the first game. It was the second season with Rocket City for the 23-year-old Crow, a 2019 draftee whose career was delayed by the COVID pandemic. In 2022, his first full professional season. he finished 9-3 with a 4.85 ERA. His 128 strikeouts were second in the league.

Crow breezed through six hitless innings. He allowed two walks, one to Baseball America preseason Top 100 prospect Noelvi Marte4 in the first and a leadoff walk to left fielder Jacob Hurtubise in the sixth. Crow struck out six Lookouts during that stretch.5

Connor Phillips started for Chattanooga. The 21-year-old right-hander had split his time between the Class A Dayton Dragons and the Lookouts in 2022. After going 1-5 with a 4.93 ERA with the Lookouts, he was sent back to Chattanooga for the 2023 season.

Phillips struggled in the first. He hit second baseman Kyren Paris and walked catcher Edgar Quero. A wild pitch moved both runners up. A second walk loaded the bases. Phillips got left fielder Bryce Teodosio to fly out to left field, ending the inning.

Phillips settled down and allowed one more baserunner – Quero, who singled in the third – before Chattanooga manager Jose Moreno sent in right-hander Mac Sceroler in the fifth. The 27-year-old Sceroler, the nephew of former big-league pitchers Ben McDonald and Brett Laxton, had appeared in five major-league games with the Baltimore Orioles in 2021 but missed the entire 2022 season after having surgery to repair a torn labrum.

Designated hitter Aaron Whitefield led off the fifth with a walk but was forced out at second on third baseman Jose Gomez’s popup to right fielder Rece Hinds. But Zach Neto6 singled and Paris’s three-run home run gave the Trash Pandas a 3-0 lead.7

The game moved to the top of the seventh with the Lookouts still hitless. Rocket City manager Andy Schatzley, needing just three outs to close out the game, sent in 22-year-old right-hander Ben Joyce in relief of Crow.8 Joyce walked the first two batters before second baseman Nick Quintana popped out to second. A third walk, to catcher Daniel Vellojin, loaded the bases.

James Free pinch-hit for Quincy McAfee and struck out for the second out.9

Now one out from a no-hit shutout, Joyce walked Hurtubise – a West Point graduate playing under a Department of Defense deferral of his military service obligation10 – to make the score 3-1. Ilvin Fernandez ran for Vellojin.11

Shortstop Jose Torres followed with a fly ball. Center fielder Jeremiah Jackson was charged with an error when he dropped the ball and his error allowed all three baserunners to score, giving the Lookouts a 4-3 lead. Torres ended up on second.

Rocket City – whose no-hitter remained intact – made a pitching change, bringing in Eric Torres. The 23-year-old left-hander hit the first three batters he faced, bringing Jose Torres (no relation) home with Chattanooga’s fifth run.12

A walk to center fielder Allan Cerda scored the Lookouts’ sixth run. Then a wild pitch added the seventh run. Eric Torres hit Quintana to load the bases again before striking out Fernandez for the third out.

The Lookouts sent 13 batters to the plate and scored seven runs in the inning. Six of the runs were unearned. Two Trash Panda pitchers walked five and hit four batters. By the end of the frame, Chattanooga was ahead 7-3.

Right-hander Stevie Branche pitched the bottom of the seventh for the Lookouts. After striking out leadoff batter Whitefield, Branche gave up a pair of singles and a walk to load the bases as Rocket City fought back. Quero singled and two runs scored.

Right-hander Pedro García replaced Branche and struck out the next two batters to get his second save of the season. Toyota Field’s scoreboard displayed the bizarre final line: a 7-5 win for the visitors, despite being outhit 6-0. The three Trash Panda pitchers walked seven batters, hit four, and threw two wild pitches. It was the second no-hitter in the club’s three-year history.13

Rocket City later posted on its Twitter feed: “Well, we did not give up a hit in the first game of today’s doubleheader. Unfortunately, we also did not win. So, there’s that.”14

It was only the second time a team allowed seven runs in a no-hitter and lost the game. The previous occasion was in 1948 when the Wellsville Red Sox of the Class D Pennsylvania-New York-Ontario (PONY) League no-hit the Lockport Reds in a 7-3 loss in Lockport, New York.

That game played out in a similar fashion to the Trash Pandas’ loss.

The Reds scored three runs in the third inning when Red Sox starter Lou Blackmore walked five batters, with another batter reaching base on a fielding error. The Red Sox tied the game in the eighth on a single, two errors, and a hit batter.

Blackmore, who stayed in the game until the 11th inning, walked 17 batters before he was replaced by Louis Clark.15 The Reds scored four runs in the 11th on three walks, four errors, a fielder’s choice, and a hit batter.16

Two Rocket City pitchers threw a one-hitter in the second game of the doubleheader. The Trash Pandas won the game 3-0. Despite their early season performance – one hit in a doubleheader – the Trash Pandas pitchers gave up the second-most runs and hits that season.17 The split left the Trash Pandas with a 1-2 record to start their season. Chattanooga was 2-1. Rocket City eventually finished with a 58-80 record for third place in the Southern League’s North Division. Chattanooga ended 70-67 to make the league playoffs, where they lost in the first round.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Bill Marston and copy-edited by Len Levin. The author thanks John Fredland, Kurt Blumenau, and Gary Belleville for their insights and recommendations.

Sources

The author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for pertinent information, He also used newspaper accounts of the game as well as the box score and game-day account of the game from MiLB.com.

https://www.milb.com/gameday/lookouts-vs-trash-pandas/2023/04/08/720939/final/box

Photo credit: Coleman Crow, Trading Card Database.

Notes

1 The team’s name, Trash Pandas, was chosen by the fans. A trash panda is the local slang term for a raccoon.

2 The team plays at Toyota Field in Madison, Alabama, and is called Rocket City because of its proximity to the NASA facility in Huntsville, Alabama.

3 According to baseball rule 4.10 (a), leagues can adopt a policy making the two games of a doubleheader each seven innings.

4 Marte, a 21-year-old Dominican native, was promoted to Triple A in June 2023. He made his major-league debut with the Reds on August 19, 2023. Marte hit .316 with three home runs in 35 big-league games in 2023. In March 2024 he received an 80-game suspension for testing positive for a performance-enhancing substance.

5 Crow was 2-0 with a 1.88 ERA in four starts for the Trash Pandas when he was traded to the New York Mets on June 23. Because of an injury, he never pitched for the Mets. Crow had Tommy John surgery in August 2023.

6 Neto was the Angels’ first-round draft pick, 13th overall, out of Campbell University in June 2022. A week after this game, on April 15, the Angels promoted him to the majors, making him the first player taken in 2022 to reach the big leagues. He batted .225 with 9 home runs in 84 games with Los Angeles in 2023.

7 Paris was called up by the Angels in September 2023 after he finished with a team-best 44 steals, 88 walks, a .255 batting average, 14 home runs, and 45 RBIs. He played in 15 games and batted .100 with the Angels in 2023. Paris started the 2024 season with the Trash Pandas. The Angels called him up again at the beginning of May.

8 Joyce was called up to the Los Angeles Angels on May 28, 2023, after appearing in 16 games with four saves, a 4.08 ERA and 26 strikeouts in 17⅔ innings. He made his major-league debut on May 29 when he pitched one inning in relief, giving up one hit and striking out two batters. He remained with the Angels until an elbow injury sidelined him in June. He appeared in seven games in September 2023 and started the 2024 season with the Trash Pandas.

9 Free stayed in the game playing catcher.

10 In May 2024 Hurtubise became only the second-ever West Point graduate to reach the major leagues when the Reds called him up. Dave Clark, “Who Is Jacob Hurtubise? Newest Cincinnati Red Is 2nd West Point Graduate to Play in MLB,” Cincinnati Enquirer, May 14, 2024, https://www.cincinnati.com/story/sports/mlb/reds/2024/05/14/jacob-hurtubise-cincinnati-reds-is-second-west-point-grad-to-play-major-league-baseball-army-usma/73681300007/. (The first was Chris Rowley, who pitched in eight games for the Toronto Blue Jays in 2017 and 2018.) 

11 Fernandez stayed in the game playing first base.

12 Torres hit 10 batters in 14 innings with Rocket City, the most by any Rocket City pitcher in 2023. He was sent to the Triple-A Salt Lake City Bees at the end of May. He pitched 33⅔ innings for Salt Lake through the rest of the 2023 season, hitting seven batters, second highest on the team.

13 The Trash Pandas were supposed to play in 2020 but the COVID pandemic shut down minor-league baseball. Chase Silseth, Luke Murphy, and Eric Torres combined for the first no-hitter on September 3, 2022, in an 8-0 win over the Biloxi Shuckers.

14 David Paschall, “Lookouts defeat Trash Pandas 7-5 without a single hit,” Chattanooga Times Free Press, April 23, 2023, https://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2023/apr/08/lookouts-defeat-trash-pandas-7-5-without-a-single/. The social media website Twitter.com was rebranded as “X” in July 2023, three months after this game.

16 “Blackmore Hurls 11-inning No-hitter in P.L., Loses 7-3,” Buffalo News, September 1, 1948: 50.

17 Rocket City’s pitching staff also gave up the most home runs and had the second-highest ERA in the Southern League in 2023.