This second-generation relief pitcher is on an absurd wins pace<\/a><\/p>\nMessick’s fastball was working on the corners and up in the zone. His changeup was filthy. His breaking stuff was sharp.<\/p>\n
No matter what Austin Hedges called for from behind the plate, Messick delivered it.<\/p>\n
The point of concern came with his pitch count — Messick was at 106 pitches after eight innings. That was already a career high.<\/p>\n
These days, teams don’t love to take chances — Messick is 25 years old with a long baseball future ahead of him. Pitcher arm injuries are so, so common. It’s a scary proposition to push a guy so far past where he’s been before.<\/p>\n
But Messick was truly in a place he hadn’t been before. He had thrown eight no-hit innings in a Major League Baseball game. It was just his 11th MLB start, and he was in a zone a Cleveland pitcher hadn’t found himself in in a long time.<\/p>\n
When he walked off after eight, there were no handshakes. He went to sit by himself. He was coming back for the ninth.<\/p>\n
The Cleveland crowd got to its feet when Messick ran out of the dugout to warm up for the ninth.<\/p>\n
Rain was coming, too. The grounds crew was behind the tarps, just in case.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And then on the first pitch of the ninth inning, Leody Taveras grounded a single into right field.<\/p>\n
That was it — well, Messick actually faced one more hitter to allow Cade Smith to warm up. Blaze Alexander added a single of his own to chase Messick.<\/p>\n
He got a second standing ovation as he walked off the field.<\/p>\n
The magical story didn’t quite finish. But it was quite the night.<\/p>\n
More MLB news:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Parker Messick magic. The Cleveland Guardians‘ young left-handed pitcher isn’t a household name. Or, well, he wasn’t before…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":609135,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,82],"class_list":["post-609134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=609134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609134\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/609135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=609134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=609134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=609134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}