‘It stinks’: Cardinals’ Miles Mikolas falls one strike short of no-hitter
It’s been 21 years since the St Louis Cardinals pitched a no-hitter. Miles Mikolas needed one more strike.
The right-hander didn’t give up a hit until Cal Mitchell doubled with two outs in the ninth inning Tuesday night, and the St Louis Cardinals routed the Pittsburgh Pirates 9-1 to sweep a doubleheader.
“I’m a little over it. I mean it stinks, to get that close and then kind of come up empty-handed,” Mikolas said. “That’s a great outing. I’ll be real proud that I gave the bullpen kind of another night off. I know we need it with the doubleheader. I’m happy but deep down it kind of stinks.”
Mitchell drove a 2-2 curveball over the head of Gold Glove center-fielder Harrison Bader as he tried to make a running catch with his back to home plate.
“If he can’t get it, nobody can except maybe one of those guys in the stands when they have that like three-foot glove, maybe that guy,” Mikolas said. “We’re playing shallow so they don’t kind of doink one in. I think that’s what you’re always guarding against is you don’t want to lose it cheap. The guy hit a ball to the track, I’ll give it to him. And it was a good pitch. I’m more OK with that then if the dude bloops a brokenbat bleeder in there somewhere.”
The ball bounced on the warning track 383 feet from the plate and over the wall in straightaway center for a ground-rule double.
“It went to the left of my glove, kind of curled back,” Bader said. “I was working really hard to try to make up some ground. So yeah, just sucks. But it is what it is.”
The hit came on the 129th pitch from Mikolas. He was lifted for Packy Naughton, who got the final out to hand the Pirates their ninth straight loss.
The 33-year-old Mikolas bent over at the waist for a moment when Mitchell’s drive dropped. He struck out six, walked one and left to a standing ovation. Mitchell entered in the seventh to play right field and got Pittsburgh’s lone hit in his only at-bat of the game.
The most recent no-hitter for the Cardinals was thrown by rookie Bud Smith in a 4-0 win at San Diego in September 2001. The last one at home came from Bob Forsch in 1983.
“Normally I’m talking to guys in the dugout asking them about pitches, like where they were, what they thought, and I didn’t even bother asking them because nobody would turn to look at me,” Mikolas said. “So, that’s one of the things that kind of stinks about that is I’m kind of sitting there all by myself all game and, you know, watching Mad Dog [pitching coach Mike Maddux] like pace back and forth. I know he wants to say something, but can’t. It’s one of those superstitions.”
Pittsburgh got an unearned run in the fourth to make it 7-1 when Bryan Reynolds scored on Daniel Vogelbach’s groundout.
Mikolas, who reinvented himself in Japan before becoming a big league All-Star in 2018, has struggled through injuries the past few seasons. He had never gone longer than four innings in a major league start without allowing a hit.
“There’s a lot of perseverance in that story,” Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol said. “He’s doing an unbelievable job, he’s going about it really well, and this is a healthy Miles and it’s fun to watch.”