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New York Yankees left-hander Max Fried had a no-hit attempt thwarted by a late scoring change during Sunday’s game against the Tampa Bay Rays. Fried had seemingly completed seven no-hit innings before Chandler Simpson grounded a ball to first baseman Paul Goldschmidt. After originally being ruled as an error on Goldschmidt, Simpson was later awarded a hit, retroactively ending what appeared to be an active bid for the first no-hitter of Major League Baseball’s season.
Here’s a look at the play in question:
While Goldschmidt did mishandle Simpson’s batted ball, the official scorer later said he “made a decision” and felt it was “very apparent” that Simpson would have won a footrace to the bag with both Goldschmidt and Fried.
It’s hard to argue with the scorer’s logic. Besides, Fried would then give up a single to Jake Mangum in the eighth, which would’ve dashed his no-hit dreams either way. In whole, he finished his afternoon with 7 ⅔ shutout innings, two strikeouts, and two walks on 102 pitches. The Yankees then turned to reliever Fernando Cruz to complete the eighth inning.
“We’re not going to beat him to the bag, so I get it, but it makes it a little dicey when…there’s a no-hitter going on,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone, who was ejected earlier, said after the game. “But the reality is that it was a hit.”
Fried later said that he didn’t know about the scoring change until after he left the game with two outs in the eighth inning.
Fried, 31, entered Sunday with a 1.88 ERA (210 ERA+) and a 5.60 strikeout-to-walk ratio in his first four starts. He joined the Yankees over the winter, signing an eight-year pact worth $218 million.
Had Fried completed his no-hit attempt, it would’ve been the 14th in Yankees franchise history, as well as the first since Domingo Germán threw a perfect game against the then-Oakland Athletics in June 2023. MLB’s last no-hitter came last September, when Shota Imanaga and a few Chicago Cubs relievers combined to blank the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Simpson, 24, only just made his big-league debut on Saturday. He’s widely regarded as one of the fastest players in organized baseball.
