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The New York Mets won their seventh straight game Friday night, but Oliver Perez lost his bid for the team’s first no-hitter in the top of the fifth when the Colorado Rockies’ Brad Hawpe homered to right.
Right fielder Endy Chavez could only watch as the ball sailed over the fence, increasing to 7,413 the number of Mets games since their 1962 inception without a single no-hitter.
July’s most prolific teams in terms of run scoring (both the Rockies and Mets have been averaging nearly 7 runs a game this month) were locked in a pitchers’ duel until Damion Easley hit a two-out homer in the bottom of the eighth. The Rockies loaded the bases in the sixth, seventh and eighth innings, but could not get the go-ahead run to the plate.
The game was was the Mets’ pitching staff’s fourth straight three-hitter, the first time an MLB team has gone four straight games allowing three hits or less since the 1974 Baltimore Orioles (thanks to Mets Walk-Offs for that tidbit). The Mets also became the first NL team in the live-ball era (1920 and later) to accomplish that feat.
Perez’s Friday night performance marked the deepest a Mets pitcher went without yielding a hit since Mike Pelfrey took a no-hitter into the sixth inning on May 15. And it was the 153rd time a potential Mets no-hitter was broken up in the fifth inning, according to some research done earlier this year by Retrosheet.
In fact, Mets pitchers have made it through four or more no-hit innings 257 times during their 46-plus years of existence.
Here’s the breakdown:
- 153 potential Mets no-hitters were broken up in the fifth
- 64 potential Mets no-hitters were broken up in the sixth
- 22 potential Mets no-hitters were broken up in the seventh
- 15 potential Mets no-hitters were broken up in the eighth
- 3 potential Mets no-hitters were broken up in the ninth
*Some information used in this post was obtained free of charge from and is copyrighted by Retrosheet. Interested parties may contact Retrosheet at www.retrosheet.org.
