Esteban German breaks up Adam Wainwright's no-hit bid

An unfortunate error by Aaron Miles with two outs in the 6th resulted in the breakup of Adam Wainwright's no-hitter last night, as the next batter, Esteban German, singled cleanly through the left side. You can't give the Royals four outs in an inning. Miles, to his credit, tried to apologize for not making the play that would have ended the frame, but Wainwright, to his credit, would have none of it.

"I don't believe that changed anything," Wainwright said.

"I still felt locked in after the play. Then [Miles] made an amazing play to save a run. If he doesn't make that play, who knows? I'll take him in the field behind me any day. He shouldn't hang his head about that at all. It wasn't in the cards. God didn't want me to throw a no-hitter today. That's fine."

All this, of course, on the heels of Justin Verlander's no-hitter two nights ago, in which the announcers never announced he was pitching a no-hitter until the final out. (RSTN's Paul Splittorff, by the way, had no qualms telling it like it was yesterday.) In any case, I feel compelled to mention that our AL Central kin in the blogosphere pretty much have circled the wagon on the no-hitter, and a fine job they did.

In other news, the O-Dog finally turned in a bad start. Frankly, I'm a little relieved -- I was beginning to doubt the supposedly chaotic nature of the universe with every six-inning, four-run outing out of him. Of course, I'd rather see his ERA not be at 6.19 with a WHIP of 1.67 -- that seems perfectly normal -- but no one ever accused the universe of having a sense of humor.

OTHER ODDS AND ENDS:

-- A Baseball Prospectus article on the Royals, with an encouraging quote from Buddy Bell about Alex Gordon, who hit a three-run home run last night in the 9th:

"I'm really not interested in his numbers," Bell said. "I just want to see him get better. There was a stretch for about three weeks when he was hitting the ball hard and not getting much reward for it. On the whole, I've seen a lot of progress even if doesn't necessarily reflect in his statistics. The biggest thing with Alex is that he isn't getting beat down mentally by this. That would be my worry and what I've been looking for and I haven’t seen any signs of that."

-- Following up on yesterday's post about the AL-NL discrepancy, here's a tale of the tape of the Royals and Cardinals.

-- Mike Sweeney and Brandon Duckworth both got hurt yesterday.

-- For some reason, this is only now relevant to the Kansas City Star: Butler goes on the record about his demotion, saying he was just a little bit upset by it but understood the team had to do it because there was no room for him on the big leagues roster. And to think, we were all under the impression that he was sent down to learn how to play defense (now first base, apparently).