CONDITIONS ARE RIPE

Why so many no-hitters in MLB thus far? Power pitchers, hitters facing shift trying for HRS.

It had been less than 24 hours since Spencer Turnbull of the Detroit Tigers completed baseball’s fifth no-hitter of the 2021 season when Corey Kluber of the New York Yankees threw the sixth.

The pitchers have remarkably different pedigrees — Turnbull led the majors in losses two seasons ago and Kluber has won two AL Cy Young Awards — but their achievements were celebrated with the same bells and whistles of a typical nohitter: Wire services sent news alerts, Mlb.com gave their box scores special badges, and the players celebrated wildly with teammates — or at least as wildly as Kluber, nicknamed Klubot for his stoicism, is capable of.

Turnbull, though, was very obviously elated.

“It is by far the best night of my life, most exciting, and it’s definitely kind of like one of those landmark stamps on my career up to this point,” he said in a postgame videoconference from Seattle in Wednesday’s early hours.

Those two no-hitters, and the four before them this season, have raised questions about how baseball could already have so many no-hitters so early in the year, and why they seem to be occurring at such an extraordinary rate.

What is going on?

A number of factors are in play leading to the surge of no-hitters. Chief among them are an emphasis on power pitching and batters’ having shown a willingness to sell out contact in order to increase power.

Those factors, plus surgical deployment of high-quality relievers, has resulted in strange numbers across the board.

Teams were averaging 7.83 hits per game through May 18 — the second lowest mark in baseball history behind 1908, according to Baseball Reference — and were striking out a record 8.97 times a game. As a result, batters were hitting a record-low .236 and scoring was down overall for a second consecutive season.

Another factor that has to be considered is control. Complete games are almost entirely a thing of the past — there have been only 14 this season, and there have been fewer than 40 in each season since 2014 — but the six pitchers who have thrown a no-hitter this season have kept their pitch counts low by employing remarkable control. Turnbull walked two batters and Cincinnati’s Wade Miley and Kluber each walked one. The other three pitchers who threw a no-hitter this season — the Padres’ Joe Musgrove, the White Sox’s Carlos Rodon, and the Orioles’ John Means — didn’t issue a single free pass.

Factor in colder weather in April and May, a new baseball, advanced defensive positioning and other changes in the game and it has seemingly become a recipe for nohitters becoming a common occurrence.

But you can’t discount simple variance. While nohitters come at a fairly predictable rate over long periods of time, they have frequently come in clumps and then gone long stretches without one.

Record pace, right?

Six no-hitters through May 19 edges 1917 for the fastest start in major league history. That season baseball raced to its fifth no-hitter by May 6 — despite not starting the season until April 11 — but did not get a sixth no-hitter until June 23.

With teams not having reached even 50 games each this season, and the season scheduled to go a full 162, matching the modern record of seven no-hitters (shared by multiple seasons) seems within reach, as does the overall record of eight, which was set in 1884.

But nothing is certain no matter how quickly no-nos pile up. Baseball raced to five no-hitters in 1917, but finished with just six. That last no-hitter was memorable: Babe Ruth of the Boston Red Sox walked the first batter, got ejected for arguing balls and strikes (and struck the umpire behind the ear in an epic tantrum), only to have reliever Ernie Shore erase the base runner on a caught stealing before retiring all 26 batters he faced.

What is Seager’s secret?

Seattle, Cleveland and Texas have each been no-hit twice already this season, but things are starting to get weird for Kyle Seager, the Mariners’ third baseman. As Christopher Kamka noted on Twitter, Seager has now been involved in nine no-hitters in his 11-season career.

Of course, Seager’s odds of being involved in no-hitters are helped by the fact that his team was hitting a major league-worst .197 through Friday.

TONY GUTIERREZ AP Corey Kluber is congratulated after his no-hitter vs. the Rangers on Wednesday.