You can never tell what will happen in a baseball game. Giants 27 year old rookie pitcher Chris Heston took the mound this week in a fill-in role. He just happened to throw the 2015 season's first no-hitter on Tuesday, and he made it look
easy. With only 12 major league starts, Heston
needed just 110 pitches to no-hit the New York Mets.
Heston's no-hitter was the majors' first since Jordan Zimmerman of Washington on Sept. 28, 2014, the final day of the regular season. Since then,
there have been two near-misses that were broken up in the ninth inning.
This was the 17th no-hitter in Giants history, and the fourth in as many seasons. Matt Cain threw a perfect game against the Astros in 2012, while Tim Lincecum no-hit the Padres in both 2013 and '14.
Heston struck out 11 and didn't walk anyone, though he did hit three
batters, more than any other pitcher to throw a no-hitter since 1914. He didn’t allow a single well-hit ball all
night. Only two of his 27 outs came via fly balls to the outfield. The rest came via 13
ground balls.
Si.com had a chart of Heston's performance:
Command and control was the key to Heston's no hitter. He did not overpower the Mets, but he out pitched the Mets line up. The variation in location where the outs happened shows that the Mets batters could not lock in to one batting zone.
