Of Vancil, Ellis and Maloney

The Wild Things begin a three-game series tonight against Florence at Champion Window Field, where the Freedom have won eight in a row.

Among those eight home wins is a no-hitter Sunday by Preston Vancil (pictured) against the Traverse City Beach Bums. It was the 14th no-hitter in Frontier League history.

Though the only thing the Beach Bums had that remotely resembled a potential hit was John Alonso's fly ball down the right-field line in the eighth inning that landed a foot so foul, it wasn't the cleanest no-hitter you're going to find. Vancil walked seven batters and threw 149 pitches. It brought back memories of Dock Ellis' no-hitter (minus the LSD) against San Diego when he walked eight Padres and hit a batter, and A.J. Burnett's nine-walk no-no several years ago. For this blog's older readers, there was Jim Maloney's 10-inning, 10-walk no-hitter in 1965.

The 149 pitches thrown by Vancil during the no-hitter is an unheard of number in the Frontier League, especially in this age of teams being slaves to closely monitored pitch counts. Heck, it's even unheard of in the major leagues. I did a Google search Monday for 150 pitches and found an old story about how many times a player threw 150 pitches in an MLB game. In 2002, it was none. In 2001, it was one.

Where am I going with this? Well, Vancil's normal spot in the rotation will pop up Friday, the final game in the series against Washington. I'm interested to see if Florence will give Vancil an extra day of rest or keep him in his normal spot in the rotation. Pushing Vancil (2-0, 0.00), who has pitched in only two pro games after putting up rather pedestrian numbers (5-6, 3.54) this spring at Abilene Christian University, back one day might not be a bad idea. The downside of such a move is you end up having a relief pitcher make a spot start and pushing back the rest of your rotation by one day. My guess is Vancil will start Friday's game.