Why the Atlanta Braves pulled Ian Anderson from no-hit bid

Here it comes, the ultimate analytics move, another egregious attack on the heart of the game. After five no-hit innings in Game 3 of the World Series, manager Brian Snitker walked toward Ian Anderson in the Braves’ dugout and informed his starting pitcher that he was taking him out before he could face the top of the Houston Astros’ order for the third time. Gather ‘round, all you nerd-haters—this one was shaping up to be a classic of the genre.

Except the man who made the decision said it was nearly the exact opposite. Snitker, showing he has zero interest in the human condition’s bottomless desire for drama, trampled on the storyline not because of a spreadsheet but because of a very human feeling in the pit of his stomach. Anderson would not get his no-hitter, and the world would not get its preferred storyline, and there was a simple reason for that: It just didn’t feel right.

“Ian was like, ‘Are you sure? Are you sure?’” Snitker says. “But I was just like, ‘Ian, I’m going with my gut right here. Just my eyes, my gut.’ It would have been real easy to let him go back out.”

Snitker is disarmingly folksy—Nobel-level folksy—and it can serve to take the sting away from his bluntless. “The no-hitter thing,” he said, tossing it out there like he’d just remembered. “He wasn’t going to pitch a nine-inning no-hitter.”