Nine no-hit innings and a pitcher waiting in the on-deck circle: the only no-hitter decided by a wild pitch (2026)

On the last afternoon of the 2013 season, Henderson Álvarez of the Miami Marlins threw nine innings without allowing a hit, and the game ended with him still waiting to bat.

The Marlins beat the Detroit Tigers 1-0 at Marlins Park on 29 September. The game's only run came home on a wild pitch with two outs in the bottom of the ninth. 1

Álvarez watched that ending from the on-deck circle, next man up, bat in his hands. He pulled off his batting helmet and ran into the pile still wearing his batting gloves. 2

Of the 282 no-hitters thrown in the major leagues up to that afternoon, only this one ended on a wild pitch. 2

The ninth inning, in order

Álvarez took the mound for the top of the ninth with the score still 0-0. Alex Avila, pinch-hitting for reliever Rick Porcello, grounded back to him. Don Kelly chopped a ball off the mound, and Álvarez leapt, snared it and threw to first. Andy Dirks drew a four-pitch walk, the only one Miami allowed all afternoon. Matt Tuiasosopo ran the count full and swung through a 95-mph fastball for the third out, on Álvarez's 99th pitch of the afternoon. 1 3

He walked off the mound pumping one fist, then both, sure he had done it. A teammate had to explain on the bench that the game was still 0-0, and that a no-hitter counts only once the pitcher has finished a complete game. 2

Justin Ruggiano grounded out to short to open the bottom of the ninth. Giancarlo Stanton singled to centre, Logan Morrison singled behind him, and a wild pitch from reliever Luke Putkonen moved both runners into scoring position. 3 Adeiny Hechavarria grounded to short with the infield in, and the runners held. Chris Coghlan walked to load the bases. 3

Greg Dobbs came up to bat for catcher Koyie Hill. Putkonen's first pitch to him bounced low and inside, past catcher Brayan Peña, and Stanton came home standing up. 2 Both wild pitches were charged to Putkonen, so the pitcher who threw the ball that decided the no-hitter also took the loss. 3

The Marlins scored fewer runs than any team in the majors that season, and their last afternoon of the year produced one run, on a pitch that never got to the catcher's glove. 2

"I started praying, 'Please give us a run,'" Álvarez said afterwards. "I was hoping for a wild pitch." 2

Logan Morrison had just singled, and he put the scene plainly: "I've never seen it where we got a walk-off win and we're mauling the pitcher instead of the guy who got the hit or scored the run." 1

Two lists side by side: Álvarez's three outs in the top of the ninth, and the Marlins' six batters in the bottom half, with two wild pitches marked in red — Two halves of the same inning: the three outs that left the game scoreless, and the six batters who ended it. Our own diagram, drawn from the Retrosheet play-by-play.

The pile at home plate belonged to the pitcher. Rookie José Fernández took the jersey off Álvarez's back and held it up to the crowd. 1

Why the wild pitch was the only ending available

A scoreless ninth is a trap for a pitcher in the middle of a no-hitter, because of how the record is defined. An eight-man committee on statistical accuracy settled that definition in 1991: a no-hitter is a complete game of nine or more innings without a hit. 2 Álvarez had nine innings without a hit and he did not have a complete game, because the game had not finished.

Had it gone to a tenth, Marlins manager Mike Redmond said, Álvarez would have gone back out for it, on a ceiling of about 115 pitches against the 99 he had thrown. 1 A hit in that inning erases the no-hitter. Handing the ball to the bullpen turns it into a combined no-hitter shared with whoever finishes the game. The wild pitch spared him both, and it made the no-hitter official in the same instant that it won the game.

Bands of a box score: the line score showing no hits for Detroit, and the pitching lines, with Álvarez's nine hitless innings — The record as it stands: no hits for Detroit across nine innings, one run for Miami, and a game that took 2 hours 6 minutes in front of 28,315. Two bands of the same page, from the Retrosheet box score of 29 September 2013.

The four no-hitters that waited for their own offence

In each of the four no-hitters below, the pitcher's own side had been held scoreless, which left the ending to somebody else. These are the no-hitters in American League and National League history that MLB counts as clinched on a walk-off:

9 September 1949 — Dick Fowler, Philadelphia Athletics, against the St. Louis Browns. Hal Peck led off the bottom of the ninth with a triple and Irv Hall singled him home. 4
15 May 1952 — Virgil Trucks, Detroit Tigers, against the Washington Senators. Vic Wertz homered with two out in the ninth. 4
12 July 1997 — Francisco Córdova, nine hitless innings for Pittsburgh, and Ricardo Rincón, one more in the tenth, against Houston. Mark Smith's three-run homer in the bottom of the tenth ended the first combined extra-inning no-hitter in AL/NL history. 4
29 September 2013 — Henderson Álvarez, Miami Marlins, against the Detroit Tigers. The winning run came home on a wild pitch. 4

In the first three, a batter drove the winning run in. Álvarez was already waiting with his bat when his no-hitter was settled.

The team it happened to

The 2013 Marlins finished 62-100, the worst record in the National League. Their season had opened in the wake of the twelve-player trade with Toronto that sent José Reyes, Mark Buehrle and three others north and made Álvarez a Marlin. 1

Álvarez's own year had started late. A sore shoulder kept him on the disabled list until July, and the no-hitter was his fifth win of the season against six losses. The no-hitter came in his 58th career start, and it was his first complete game since a six-hit shutout for Toronto in May 2012. 2

The Tigers arrived at 93-69 with the American League Central already won and a division series at Oakland set for the following Friday, so manager Jim Leyland rested four starters and pulled three more by the seventh inning. 2 Miguel Cabrera won his third consecutive batting title that day without stepping into the batter's box. 2 Prince Fielder was hit by a pitch in the first inning and was replaced after two plate appearances. 3

Across from Álvarez was Justin Verlander, working the last tune-up before the playoffs: six innings, three hits, ten strikeouts. 2 Verlander, hitless in his big-league career to that point, drove a ball down the right-field line in the sixth that landed a couple of feet foul. 1

Two defensive plays held it together, both from Miami's left side: Hechavarria's leaping catch of Ramón Santiago's line drive in the third inning, and Álvarez's own snare of Kelly's chopper in the ninth. 1 "You need to have a little luck to throw a no-hitter," Redmond said. "We definitely had that today." 1

The last Marlin to throw a no-hitter before him spent that afternoon on the other side of the field. Aníbal Sánchez, who did it for Miami in 2006, had since been traded to Detroit and watched from the visitors' dugout. 1 2

Baseball pitcher Henderson Álvarez in a blue cap, looking to his left — Henderson Álvarez photographed with the Toronto Blue Jays on 31 August 2011, in his rookie season; Toronto traded him to Miami fifteen months later. Photograph: Keith Allison, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Two things to check if you go looking

The figure of 282 is the one the wire services carried that evening, and the no-hitter count has climbed since. On MLB's own list of no-hitters clinched by a walk-off, Álvarez's is still the most recent entry. 4

The same wire copy called his the first walk-off complete-game no-hitter since Trucks in 1952. That claim sits out of step with the 1949 entry on that list, where Dick Fowler's no-hitter for the Athletics also ended on a hit in the bottom of the ninth. 2 4

Álvarez's no-hitter is the only one in that company decided by a pitch that nobody hit. It took a scoreless game, nine hitless innings and a ball in the dirt, and it belonged to a pitcher who spent the closing minutes of it standing in the on-deck circle, waiting for a turn that never came.