July 25, 2024: Padres’ Dylan Cease nears perfection again and no-hits Nationals

There is no better way to spend a midsummer afternoon than at the ballpark. The anticipation might have you thinking about the fortunes of your favorite team, or perhaps it’s the pitching matchup that has intriguing possibilities. The beauty of the occasion is that what will happen in the field of play has infinite possibilities.

Probability theory and statistics following the law of rare events suggest that you are very unlikely to witness a no-hitter, a batter hitting for the cycle, or even a spectacular triple play.1 A study by Huber and Glen of major-league games from 1901 to 2004, quantified that likelihood – approximately 0.13 percent of games were no-hitters, 0.14 percent of games had a batter hit for the cycle, and 0.32 percent of games had a triple play.2

On this afternoon in July 2024 at Nationals Park, the stark contrast in the fortunes of the two teams and their starting pitchers could not be more apparent. The trade deadline was looming in less than one week, and there was little doubt that the Washington Nationals, in fourth place in the National League East Division, would be sellers in their quest for young, controllable talent. Hunter Harvey had already been traded to the Kansas City Royals and Jesse Winker and Lane Thomas would soon be bound for the New York Mets and Cleveland Guardians, respectively.

The San Diego Padres – in second place in the NL West Division – were bound to be buyers in their quest for at least a NL wild-card berth in the playoffs. Their subsequent acquisition of veterans Tanner Scott and Bryan Hoeing from the Miami Marlins strengthened their bullpen.

Patrick Corbin (2-9, 5.35 ERA) started for the host Nationals with Dylan Cease (9-8, 3.76 ERA) on the mound for the Padres, who were attempting to complete a three-game series sweep. In the first year of a six-year free-agent contract in 2019, Corbin was one of the World Series heroes for the Nationals with his Game Seven three-inning relief appearance.3 For the next five seasons, however, Corbin struggled mightily on the mound as a starting pitcher. At season’s end, Barry Svrluga implored his Washington Post readers to put aside the 35-year-old Corbin’s worst-in-baseball pitching stats and remember his ability to take the ball every fifth day without missing a start and to serve as a mentor to a young pitching staff.4

On the other hand, the 28-year-old Cease was already leaving his indelible mark as a starting pitcher in his first season with the Padres as he readied for his 22nd starting assignment.5 In five of those starts, including his last two, he had pitched at least six innings and remarkably yielded only one hit in each outing.

The afternoon did not start well for Corbin. With one out in the first inning, Donovan Solano singled to right and Corbin walked Xander Bogaerts. After Manny Machado lined out, Jake Cronenworth walked. Bases loaded, two outs. The game was not even 10 minutes old, and it started to rain, enough to delay the game for 76 minutes. When the game resumed, Ha-Seong Kim drove a full-count single to left, scoring all three baserunners for what turned out to be the only runs of the game.

Starting pitchers and their valuable arms are accustomed to their every-five-days routine, particularly as it relates to game day. Given the rain delay, Padres manager Mike Shildt had to consider whether to change his pitching strategy and rely on nine innings from his bullpen. He stuck with Cease, who bided his time warming up on an inside mound and staying as loose as possible.6   

When the game resumed, Corbin recovered from the shaky first inning by yielding only two hits in his seven innings of work – Jurickson Profar’s double to left in the second and Bogaerts’ single to right in the sixth. It was a quality start by Corbin going for naught.7

Meanwhile, Cease did not exhibit any ill effects from the rain delay, striking out five Nationals over the first three innings. For the game, he struck out nine and yielded three walks, two issued to Thomas (first and fourth innings) and one to CJ Abrams (seventh inning).

Invariably a no-hitter would not have been possible without at least one spectacular or even improbable defensive play during the course of the game. In this game, that moment arrived when Nationals first baseman Juan Yepez came to bat to open the bottom of the fifth inning and looped a fly ball into no-man’s land in right-center.8

Second baseman Bogaerts raced 55 feet to the ball, but it popped out of his glove. Meanwhile, center fielder Jackson Merrill, who had appeared in the All-Star Game as a rookie earlier in July, burst 95 feet to the very same spot, stabbed at the ball and caught it. It was the most improbable of plays, determined to have a catch probability of 5 percent. Merrill’s reaction? “Well, I had a little help,” he said with a grin. “I don’t worry about the probability. All I know is that I caught it.”9

When Cease next faced Yepez and coaxed him to ground out to end the seventh inning, with the no-hitter still in progress, he must have noticed Adrián Morejón warming up in the Padres’ bullpen. Shildt’s plan was to congratulate Cease on a job well done after 94 pitches and finish the game with two innings from his bullpen. The manager was convinced otherwise by Cease.10 A teammate, pitcher Joe Musgrove, offered his own endorsement of Cease to his manager. “He’s still throwing 100, and he’s not even at 100 pitches yet. Let him go.”11

Cease needed only nine pitches to retire the Nationals in the eighth inning, but one in particular again brought some good fortune and an outstanding play. With one out, Bogaerts slid to grab a grounder hit by Keibert Ruiz. From his knees, the ball slipped out of Bogaerts’ hand after making a 360-degree turn. He batted the ball back with his glove and threw it to first just in time to nab Ruiz.12 Disaster averted!

To open the ninth inning, Cease retired Ildemaro Vargas on an eight-pitch groundout to second before Jacob Young grounded out to shortstop on his very next pitch.

Cease admitted to having a flashback when CJ Abrams came to the plate with two outs.13 On September 3, 2022, Cease was pitching for the Chicago White Sox and was agonizingly close to a no-hitter. On that occasion, Luis Arráez, now his Padres teammate, lined a two-out, ninth-inning single to right for the Twins’ only hit in Cease’s 13-0 pitching gem.14

This time? Abrams lined a center-cut, low-90s slider “that found Padres right fielder Bryce Johnson right in his tracks for the final out.”15 Dylan Cease had the second no-hitter in Padres’ history after enduring a pregame rain delay, making a convincing argument to stay in the game, and finishing the job on 114 pitches (71 for strikes).

Cease’s teammate Musgrove had no-hit the Texas Rangers in 2021. Baseball superstitions aside, Cease had talked strategy with Musgrove in the dugout as his masterpiece unfolded.16 Musgrove’s advice? “I’m like, we’re in the ninth inning, dude. Just do what you’ve been doing. Don’t change a thing.”17 

Cease’s performance over his last three games drew immediate comparison to 1938, when Cincinnati Reds right-hander Johnny Vander Meer threw two consecutive no-hitters and yielded only three hits in 27 innings in a three-game stretch while striking out 17 batters.18 By comparison, Cease had now allowed just two hits in 22 consecutive innings while striking out 30 batters.19 In a word, masterful!

At the conclusion of Cease’s workhorse 2024 regular season (14-11, 3.47 ERA), he led the Padres in wins and starts (33) and finished second in the National League with 224 strikeouts. The Padres swept the Atlanta Braves in two games in the wild-card round to advance to the NL Division Series against their West Coast rival, the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Dodgers won three games to two, and eventually won the World Series against the New York Yankees. Cease’s starts in NLDS Games One and Four were a statistical nightmare – five innings pitched, two home runs yielded, a 14.40 ERA, and a Padres loss in both games. Good fortune had run its course!

Author’s note

Speaking of rare events, this baseball fan has been fortunate enough to not only witness two other no-hitters, each with a singular game-circumstance helping to define the outcome, but to write the SABR Games Project essays to tell the whole story.20

On my first visit to Yankee Stadium, in 1952, I watched from the left-field bleachers as Virgil Trucks of the Detroit Tigers no-hit the Yankees. Trucks benefited from a change in the official scorer’s third-inning ruling after Phil Rizzuto hit a groundball to Tigers shortstop Johnny Pesky. Trucks later noted in an interview with SABR’s Gregory H. Wolf that “when I went out in the eighth inning, they announced over the PA system what [John] Drebinger had done and it had been corrected as an error … and it was still a no-hitter.”21

On another occasion as well, the 27th out proved to be the most daunting of tasks to complete a no-hitter. In the last game of the 2014 regular season, Jordan Zimmermann needed one last out at Nationals Park to preserve his no-hit masterpiece against the Miami Marlins. With two outs, Christian Yelich drove a Zimmermann fastball to deep left-center. Left fielder Steven Souza turned, sprinted, and dove, backward and horizontal to the ground. The umpires, the fans, Zimmermann, and his teammates knew he had caught the ball when he lifted his black glove into the air. Game over, a no-hitter in the baseball history book of rare events.22

Acknowledgments

A thank-you to SABR colleague and researcher Michael Huber for enlightening this author on the subject of probability theory and rare events. This essay was fact-checked by Victoria Monte and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

The author accessed Baseball-Reference.com for box scores/play-by-play information (baseball-reference.com/boxes/WAS/WAS202407250.shtml) and other data, as well as Retrosheet.org (retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2024/B07250WAS2024.htm).The July 25, 2024 Topps NOW baseball card for Dylan Cease (#471) is from the author’s collection.

Notes

1 The Law of Rare Events – “If X is a binomial random variable Bin(n,p) and lim_n→∞ n _* p = λ, then X is asymptotically distributed as a Poisson with mean λ. Simply put, when the size of the population n is very large, and the occurrence of a certain event is rare (p small), then the binomial random variable can be approximated by a Poisson.” Wayne L. Winston, Scott Nestler, Konstantinos Pelechrinis, Mathletics – How Gamblers, Managers and Fans Use Mathematics in Sports, Second Edition (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2022), 143.

2 Michael Huber and Andrew Glen used the Poisson distribution to conduct the study. Michael Huber, Andrew Glen, “Modeling Rare Baseball Events – Are They Memoryless?” Journal of Statistics Education, Volume 15, Number 1, 2007. Republished online (August 7, 2017) at  tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10691898.2007.11889460#d1e141.

3 Steven C. Weiner, “October 30, 2019: Clutch pitching, late hitting lead Washington Nationals to World Series title,” SABR Baseball Games Project, accessed November 2024.

4 Barry Svrluga, “From the World Series to the Dog Days, Corbin Would Always Take the Ball,” Washington Post, September 26, 2024: D1. “Of the 173 pitchers who have thrown at least 300 innings over the past five seasons, no one has a higher ERA than Corbin’s 5.61. No one has given up more than Corbin’s 899 hits or Corbin’s 491 runs or Corbin’s 131 homers. No one has allowed opponents a higher batting average than Corbin’s .296 or lost more decisions than Corbin’s 70.”

5 During 2024 spring training, Cease was traded by the Chicago White Sox to the Padres for a minor-league outfielder, Samuel Zavala, and three pitching prospects – Jairo Iriarte, Drew Thorpe, and Steven Wilson.

6 Spencer Nusbaum, “Cease Fires No-Hitter as Nats Are Swept,” Washington Post, July 26, 2024: D1.

7 Paul Dickson, The Dickson Baseball Dictionary, 3rd Edition (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2009), 681. Quality start – “A statistic credited to a starting pitcher who pitches at least six innings and allows three or fewer earned runs.”

8 Paul Dickson, 583. No-man’s land – “The area of the field between the infield and the outfield where fielders need to know by prearrangement who will be expected to catch a flyball.” Yepez was called up from Triple-A affiliate Rochester on July 5 to replace a slumping Joey Meneses.

9 Bryce Miller, “Wildly Improbable Play Protects Dylan Cease No-Hitter for Padres,” SanDiegoUnionTribune.com, July 26, 2024, sandiegouniontribune.com/2024/07/25/bryce-miller-wildly-improbable-play-protects-dylan-cease-no-hitter-for-padres/.

10 Nusbaum.

11 Kevin Acee, “Padres’ Dylan Cease Throws Second No-Hitter in Franchise History,” SanDiegoUnionTribune.com, July 26, 2024, sandiegouniontribune.com/2024/07/25/dylan-cease-throws-second-no-hitter-in-padres-history/.

12 Acee.

13 Nusbaum.

14 Lamond Pope, “Dylan Cease Loses His No-Hit Bid for Chicago White Sox with 2 Outs in the 9th,” ChicagoTribune.com, September 3, 2022, chicagotribune.com/2022/09/03/dylan-cease-loses-his-no-hit-bid-for-chicago-white-sox-with-2-outs-in-the-9th-instead-settling-for-a-1-hit-shutout-i-really-emptied-the-tank/.

15 Nusbaum.

16 Kevin Acee, “Padres Daily: Washington; D. Cease; dominance,” SanDiegoUnionTribune.com, July 26, 2024, sandiegouniontribune.com/2024/07/26/padres-daily-washington-d-cease-dominance/.

17 Acee.

18 Gregory H. Wolf, “June 11, 1938: Reds’ Johnny Vander Meer tosses first no-hitter,” SABR Baseball Games Project, accessed November 2024.

19 Acee.

20 Steven C. Weiner, “August 25, 1952: Virgil Trucks hurls his second no-hitter of the season,” SABR Baseball Games Project, accessed November 2024. Steven C. Weiner, “September 28, 2014: Jordan Zimmermann no-hits Marlins to end regular season,” SABR Baseball Games Project, accessed November 2024.

21 The quote is from Trucks’ 2011 interview with the author of his SABR Baseball Biography Project biography. Newspaper coverage from 1952 reported that the public-address announcement occurred in the middle of the seventh inning, not the top of the eighth as Trucks said. Wolf, “Virgil Trucks,” SABR Baseball Biography Project; John Drebinger, “Trucks of Tigers Hurls No-Hitter, His Second of Season, Against Yankees,” New York Times, August 26, 1952: 16.

22 Steven C. Weiner, “September 28, 2014: Jordan Zimmermann no-hits Marlins to end regular season,” SABR Baseball Games Project, accessed November 2024.