HOUSTON \u2013 The Houston Astros haven\u2019t had the start fans hoped for in 2026, but the squad gave its traveling supporters something to cheer about Monday night.<\/p>\n
The Astros threw a combined no-hitter, cruising to a 9-0 victory over the cross-state rival Texas Rangers in the road series opener.<\/p>\n
Rookie Japanese phenom Tatsuya Imai (2-2) got the start for Houston. Across 6.0 innings, he threw 97 pitches while recording two strikeouts and four walks.<\/p>\n
Steven Okert pitched the seventh inning for Houston, tallying one walk and one strikeout in his lone frame.<\/p>\n
To begin the eighth inning, Alimber Santa, a 23-year-old right-hander from the Dominican Republic, made his MLB debut. Santa was selected from Triple-A Sugar Land last Friday and sported a Santa Claus belt during his first major league appearance.<\/p>\n
Santa threw 24 pitches across the game\u2019s final 2.0 innings. He recorded one strikeout and did not allow a baserunner, completing the no-hitter in historic fashion in his MLB debut.<\/p>\n
Houston got on the board in the opening frame when a sacrifice fly from Yordan Alvarez brought Jeremy Pe\u00f1a home. Alvarez added a solo homer in the fourth inning to extend the lead to 2-0.<\/p>\n
The Astros added two more runs in the fifth before Christian Walker blew the game open with a three-run homer to left-center field in the seventh inning.<\/p>\n
A single by Nick Allen later in the inning plated the game\u2019s final run, making the score 9-0.<\/p>\n
Kumar Rocker (2-5) started for Texas, recording five strikeouts while allowing four hits, four earned runs and two walks across 5.0 innings.<\/p>\n
The win lifts Houston to 24-31 on the season, while Texas falls to 24-29.<\/p>\n
Game 2 of the series in Arlington is scheduled for Tuesday, with first pitch set for 7:05 p.m.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by KPRC Click2Houston – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOUSTON \u2013 The Houston Astros haven\u2019t had the start fans hoped for in 2026, but the squad gave…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":694089,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[7676,3307,49,48,1506,1337,462,44,82],"class_list":["post-694088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-astros","tag-baseball","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-houston-astros","tag-local","tag-mlb","tag-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=694088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694088\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/694089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=694088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=694088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=694088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}