Twenty years ago, Aníbal Sánchez carved his name into Marlins history at Dolphins Stadium, and he did it with a calm, efficient masterpiece.
On Sept. 6, 2006, in the deciding game of a three-game set against the Arizona Diamondbacks, Sánchez no-hit Arizona in a 2-0 Florida win. He worked through four walks and needed just 103 pitches to finish the job, becoming the fourth Marlins pitcher to throw a no-hitter.
The game didn’t start as cleanly for Florida’s offense. Hanley Ramírez opened the first with a triple, but the Marlins couldn’t cash it in. They finally broke through in the second when Joe Borchard, who had already delivered the go-ahead homer in the first game of the series, launched a solo shot to put Florida in front for good.
Sánchez was sharp from the outset. He was perfect the first time through the Diamondbacks order, while Arizona starter Édgar González could not match that rhythm. Miguel Cabrera made the lead a little more comfortable in the fourth, jumping on the very first pitch he saw from González and sending it out for a solo homer.
That 2-0 cushion was enough, but Sánchez still had to navigate traffic. He escaped a fourth-inning jam that included two one-out walks by retiring Eric Byrnes and Chad Tracy on flyouts to left.
In the fifth, he worked around an error to start the inning. In the sixth, after a two-out walk to Luis Gonzalez, he needed only one pitch to get Byrnes on a lineout.
Arizona kept putting the tying run on deck in the next two innings, but Sánchez kept shutting the door. He turned in a 1-2-3 seventh on only nine pitches, then erased a walk to former Marlins World Series hero Craig Counsell in the eighth by inducing Orlando Hudson into an inning-ending double play.
The final three innings were even quicker. Sánchez never threw more than 10 pitches in any of them.
He opened the ninth by striking out Conor Jackson, then got Gonzalez to pop out. With the no-hitter down to the last out, Byrnes rolled a routine grounder to short, Ramírez took his time, and the throw to first beat him by half a step to seal it.
Sánchez finished with six strikeouts. Borchard accounted for two of the Marlins’ five hits, while Arizona never managed one. It would be the lone no-hitter of Sánchez’s career, even though he later flirted with more and finished multiple one-hitters.
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