No. 6: Houston Astros
OK, a few quick thoughts about the first few days of the baseball season:
Earliest no-hitter in baseball history!
The season has only just begun, so there will probably be more unlikely stories than Ronel Blanco throwing a no-hitter on April Fool’s Day. Then again, maybe not.
The Astros signed Ronel Blanco as a free agent out of the Dominican Republic when he was 22 years old. This was not one of those stories where the pitcher claimed to be 17 but was actually 22—no, the Astros and everybody else knew he was 22 years old when he signed. He had spent his teenage years trying to make it as a position player, but the bat never came around, and teams just didn’t show any interest. He took a job at a car wash and kind of noodled around as a pitcher. One of the things he did was pitch to some other top prospects. One of those was a 16-year-old kid named Julio Rodriguez. That’s how the scouts saw him.
Blanco kicked around the Astros organization for a whole bunch of years, never really making any noise as a prospect—not that you would expect a relief pitcher in his mid-to-late 20s to get scouts excited—then, last year, they tried him out as a starter in Class AAA Sugar Land, and he was really good, and the team needed some pitching, so he got the call to the bigs. He was, uh, not too impressive. Baseball Prospectus’ succinct summary:
Ronel Blanco gave up too many homers as a starter, too many hits as a reliever and too many walks as a pitcher. And while his cutter grades out as plus, it’s less a building block and more a gorgeous painting hung precariously on a dirty brick wall.
That doesn’t sound so good, does it? Blanco only made the Astros as a fifth starter this year because of injuries to Justin Verlander and José Urquidy. He made his first start on April 1, right after Houston had been swept by the Yankees. He walked Toronto’s George Springer to lead off the game.
And then he retired the next 26 batters in a row, and, finally, after walking Springer again, got Vladdy Guerrero Jr. to ground out to second to complete the earliest-season no-hitter in baseball history. He threw 105 pitches and the Blue Jays put 20 balls in play—seven of them were at an exit velocity below 80. The guy was all but untouchable.
How? What?