Washburn Doesn’t Have Time on His Side

The Rolling Stones will play Edison Field on Nov. 2, but cue the honky-tonk blues for Jarrod Washburn this morning. When you throw a no-hitter for five innings and a one-hit shutout for seven, and your team loses, well, you can’t get no satisfaction.

Washburn’s string of zeroes Tuesday counted for nothing.

After he faced 26 batters without giving up a run, reliever Ben Weber faced two batters and gave up two runs. Dennis Cook faced three and gave up a third run, and so the potential no-hitter and shutout were just faded memories in the Angels’ 3-0 loss to the Detroit Tigers.

“I feel bad for everybody,” Weber said. “I went in there to try to keep the score the way it was, and I didn’t do it. So we lost.”

The Angels’ bullpen collapse obscured a happy story for the Tigers, the first major league victory in four years for starter Seth Greisinger.

“It feels like this great reward,” he said.

Greisinger, who pitched for the U.S. Olympic team in 1996 and rocketed into the Detroit rotation in 1998, missed the last three seasons after reconstructive elbow surgery. The last time he faced the Angels, Phil Nevin drove in two runs in support of knuckleballer Steve Sparks, the winning pitcher.

In seven innings, he shut out the Angels on four hits and 98 pitches. He did everything right except forget to grab the game ball.

“Maybe I’ll grab a ball from the bag and pretend it was the game ball,” he said.

Without the help of catcher Brandon Inge, Greisinger would have nothing to commemorate. Inge led off the eighth inning and greeted Weber with an opposite-field home run, breaking a scoreless tie on what pitcher and hitter thought was a pretty good sinker.

The Angels botched their best chance to score. With one out in the seventh inning, a hit-and-run single by Brad Fullmer advanced Troy Glaus to third base. If Tim Salmon could hit the ball out of the infield, the Angels would score.

But, on a check swing, Salmon dribbled the ball in front of the plate and was easily thrown out. Salmon went hitless in three at-bats, failing to get the ball out of the infield every time, and his average dropped to .182.

Washburn was supportive of his offense and bullpen. The offense had scored 26 runs in his previous three starts, and Weber and Cook each pitched a scoreless inning in his previous start.

From the first batter, Washburn offered a hint of a special evening. He struck out the first two batters, in fact. He struck out two more in the second.

He is not a strikeout pitcher. He struck out two more in the fourth. He had matched his season high with six strikeouts, and this was 11 batters into the game.

To that point, Washburn was perfect--11 up, 11 down. He walked the 12th batter, then retired the next four to keep the no-hitter intact through five innings.

With one out in the sixth, Inge walked. Jose Macias then grounded sharply into right field, a clean hit but an agonizing one nonetheless. Second baseman Adam Kennedy dived to his left, fully extended his glove hand and missed the ball by inches.

“I don’t think I’ll ever throw a no-hitter,” Washburn said.

So the Tigers had runners on first and second, and then Robert Fick walked to load the bases. The no-hitter was done, and now the shutout was 90 feet away from being done. And the Tigers had their best hitter, Bobby Higginson, at the plate.

Washburn reared back and struck him out, for the second out. Randall Simon flied out, on an over-the-shoulder catch by Garret Anderson that was so pretty Washburn paused along the third-base line to give Anderson a high-five as the Angels returned to the dugout.

Washburn preserved the shutout through the seventh inning, but seven strikeouts and four walks kept his pitch count up. He threw 71 pitches through five innings and a season-high 113 through seven.

He received no decision but plenty of congratulations. In his last four starts, he is 3-0 with a 2.67 earned-run average.