World Series 2021 – Why the Atlanta Braves pulled Ian Anderson from no-hit bid

ATLANTA — Here it comes, the ultimate analytics move, another egregious attack on the heart of the game. After five no-hit innings in Game 3 of the World Series, manager Brian Snitker walked toward Ian Anderson in the Braves’ dugout and informed his starting pitcher that he was taking him out before he could face the top of the Houston Astros‘ order for the third time. Gather ’round, all you nerd-haters — this one was shaping up to be a classic of the genre.

Except the man who made the decision said it was nearly the exact opposite. Snitker, showing he has zero interest in the human condition’s bottomless desire for drama, trampled on the storyline not because of a spreadsheet but because of a very human feeling in the pit of his stomach. Anderson would not get his no-hitter, and the world would not get its preferred storyline, and there was a simple reason for that: It just didn’t feel right.

“Ian was like, ‘Are you sure? Are you sure?'” Snitker says. “But I was just like, ‘Ian, I’m going with my gut right here. Just my eyes, my gut.’ It would have been real easy to let him go back out.”

Snitker is disarmingly folksy — Nobel-level folksy — and it can serve to take the sting away from his bluntless. “The no-hitter thing,” he said, tossing it out there like he’d just remembered. “He wasn’t going to pitch a nine-inning no-hitter.”

Snitker talked a little bit more, sounding like someone who was still trying to convince himself, before finally saying, “I don’t know. It could have backfired, I guess. I just thought at that point in time, in a game of this magnitude, that he had done his job.”

In the dugout, Anderson, a 23-year-old with an impenetrable demeanor and a short history of phenomenal postseason pitching, could feel Snitker making his way toward him. And he knew why, too, because Snitker makes that trip only when it’s accompanied by a handshake and a compliment.

“He walked down and said, ‘That’s it. Heck of a job,'” Anderson said. “You feel a little bit of, I had more to give, but it’s something that you understand and move forward.”

Anderson stared into Snitker’s round face, that face that has given nearly 50 years to Atlanta Braves baseball, and he pleaded his case without a lot of conviction. “I knew he wasn’t going to budge,” he said. “We’re very fortunate to have him, and the way he treats us is phenomenal. He’ll shake your hand after every outing, good or bad, and that goes a long way.”

The Braves won 2-0 to take a two games to one lead over the Astros, and if that outcome had been different, the questioning — and the answers — would have had a different tone. The no-hitter was lost in the top of the eighth, when — facing Tyler Matzek — pinch-hitter Aledmys Diaz hit a fly ball to short left field that fell at the feet of Eddie Rosario.

And so ended what would have been one of the game’s least ostentatious — almost polite — no-hitters ever. There weren’t any memorable defensive plays. Anderson was really, really good, but he put together five of the messiest no-hit innings you could imagine. He walked…