Just under a month ago, righty Mike Fiers was pitching for the last-place Milwaukee Brewers with no chance of contention in 2015.
Fast forward to Friday night and Fiers pitched the biggest game of his career, tossing the 5th no-hitter in Major League Baseball this year for the first-place Houston Astros, 3-0 over the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Fiers was a force all night long, striking out five in a row over the course of the 7th and 8th innings to ignite the crowd of 33,000+ at Minute Maid Park in Houston.
Throwing 120 pitches through eight, Fiers labored at times but was still given the green light by manager AJ Hinch to come back out for the 9th inning. Despite his high pitch count, Fiers only walked three -- dancing around the strike zone all night long and winning long battles at the plate much more often than not. Taking all this into account, Hinch made the decision to give Fiers the ball to add on to his career-high pitch total despite the fact that Fiers had never pitched into the 9th inning in his entire MLB career.
The 30-year-old veteran rewarded his manager's faith, mowing down the vaunted Dodgers lineup in the top of the 9th to secure his date with destiny. His 134-pitch no-hitter comes just nine days after Seattle's Hisashi Iwakuma blanked the Baltimore Orioles at home on August 12th. In addition to Iwakuma, Fiers joins Chris Heston, Max Scherzer and Cole Hamels as the only pitchers to throw a no-hitter this season.
Friday's no-hitter is the first thrown at Minute Maid Park and the first for the Astros since a combined one back in June of 2003.
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