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The Yankees can take solace. It wasn’t just them.
Cristian Javier does not discriminate. At some point in 2022, he basically stopped giving up hits, and it wasn’t just against Aaron Judge and Co.
Javier has a fastball that hardly awes with its velocity. But it is illustrious because it is an illusion. He slings it from a low three-quarters arm slot with lots of backspin, giving the optical illusion that it is rising simply because it is not descending as other fastballs do. The Phillies actually had been strong against fastballs up in the zone this season. Not this version. You can’t hit what you can’t see.
And the Phillies of Bryce Harper and Kyle Schwarber were as helpless as the Yankees of Judge and Anthony Rizzo. The Phillies, in fact, went from in control of this World Series and supported by a joyous home crowd to being on the wrong end of history and being booed. During Game 4. Of the World Series. The mood at Citizens Bank Ballpark morphed from sea of red to see us dread in 24 hours.
Like he did on June 25 against the Yankees, Javier did the heavy lifting in a no-hitter. This, of course, however, is not June 25 and the 71st game of the regular season. This was just the second time a team was held without a hit in a World Series contest. The other was Don Larsen’s perfecto in Game 5 in 1956 for the Yankees against the Dodgers.
Javier was not perfect. Just overwhelming.
