Parker Messick flashes dominance, nearly breaks Guardians' no-hitter hex

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Hedges didn’t want any part of Messick’s moment. “I don’t know why I’m doing this,” the catcher said. “It’s your freaking day, kid.” Hedges, though, had a front-row crouch, the best vantage point in the ballpark for Messick’s no-hit bid Thursday. Hedges has caught all four of Messick’s masterpieces this season. In the span of a few weeks, Messick has graduated from a battle for the fifth spot in the Guardians’ rotation to major-league appointment viewing every fifth day. Thursday, he came within three outs of vanquishing one of the more implausible hexes in baseball. The Guardians, renowned for their long-standing pitching factory, somehow own the league’s longest no-hitter drought, dating to May 15, 1981, a mere 16,408 days ago, when Len Barker silenced the Toronto Blue Jays on a damp, dreary night on the shores of Lake Erie. Messick had no knowledge of such a drought. When informed it stretches 45 years, he smiled and quipped, “I did my best, guys. Maybe next time.” Heckuva night for the rookie.#GuardsBall | #GuardiWins pic.twitter.com/Q8tR2IaWPi — Cleveland Guardians (@CleGuardians) April 17, 2026 That might have sounded preposterous, say, last summer, when Messick was breaking into the big leagues with a reputation for working fast and throwing strikes. His first 11 starts at the top level, however, suggest he could be capable of anything. He has logged a 2.07 ERA as a big leaguer and a 1.05 ERA in his four starts in 2026. (His ERA this season doubled Thursday, thanks to a pair of ninth-inning runs after the Orioles broke through in the hit column.) When one of the Orioles’ hitters advanced to second base, a rare opportunity for a chat with Cleveland’s middle infielders, he mentioned to second baseman Juan Brito how difficult it was to pick up the ball out of Messick’s hand. “I really thought he was going to do it,” Guardians manager Stephen Vogt said. Messick’s fastball/changeup combination isn’t flashy — he averages 93 mph on the heater — but it continues to fluster hitters. The changeup, in particular, has proven devastating since he arrived in the majors, with an elite whiff rate approaching 50 percent. Hitters chase it. They miss it. They curse it. They specifically seek it out and come up empty anyway. “They swung and missed at a handful that I know they were looking for,” Hedges said. “The bottom falls out, and when you have late movement like that, especially when you set it up with other pitches — the heaters and the curveballs and the cutters — you have to take an outlier swing to it. You could tell they were trying to, but it’s just that good of a pitch.” Messick painted the strike zone with fastballs and confused hitters with sliders, curveballs and cutters. He worked at a breakneck pace and never shook off his catcher. Once he reached the sixth inning, he’d record a third out, retreat to the dugout and pray before he returned to hush another three hitters. The energy in the ballpark steadily built — to the point Messick had to cover his ears to hear Hedges’ suggestions on the PitchCom device in his cap. “That’s what we live for,” Messick said. “That’s what we want every single game.” Messick is the fourth individual Cleveland pitcher since Barker’s gem — a perfect game thrown in front of 7,290 fans and another 729,000 who claim to have been there — to carry a no-hitter into the ninth inning, joining John Farrell (1989), Carlos Carrasco (2015) and Gavin Williams (2025). Slade Cecconi came within six outs of a no-hitter in September. Plenty of others have had Barker and everyone else in Cleveland thinking the drought might end. Messick threw 112 pitches, his most since the Guardians drafted him in the second round out of Florida State in 2022. “Everybody pretty much knows the deal there,” he said. “You’re throwing until either your arm falls off or you finish the game or they get a hit.” Messick finally cracked some top-100 prospects lists for the first time this spring as he jockeyed with Logan Allen for the final spot in Cleveland’s Opening Day rotation. A few days before the club left Arizona, as Messick was playing catch on a back field at the team’s spring training complex, pitching coach Carl Willis pulled him aside to tell him he had won the competition. That seems to have been a shrewd choice. A few weeks later, Messick was flirting with history, attempting to accomplish a feat in his 11th career start that CC Sabathia, Corey Kluber, Cliff Lee, Shane Bieber, Bartolo Colon, Charles Nagy, Rick Sutcliffe, Bert Blyleven, Carrasco and so many other pitching icons never could in a Cleveland uniform. “I’ll have plenty more years to pitch some baseball games,” Messick said, “so it might happen again.” Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Zack Meisel is a senior writer for The Athletic covering the Cleveland Guardians and Major League Baseball. Zack was named the Ohio Sportswriter of the Year for 2021 and 2024 by the National Sports Media Association. He has been on the beat since 2011 and is the author of four books, including "Cleveland Rocked," the tale of the 1995 team. Follow Zack on Twitter @ZackMeisel