Ronel Blanco<\/a> tossed the most recent no-hitter for the Astros in a 10-0 victory over Toronto on April 1, 2024. In fact, Houston has authored three of the past seven major league no-hitters; Framber Valdez shut down Cleveland 2-0 on Aug. 1, 2023.\n <\/p>\n\n Okert worked the seventh after Imai got 16 outs over the last 16 batters he faced. He walked three of his first four batters but benefited from a double play in the first inning before settling into a groove.\n <\/p>\n
\n Santa entered in the eighth and retired all six batters he faced. His 24th pitch was a called third strike against Brandon Nimmo that ended it after an ABS challenge by the batter was confirmed a strike.\n <\/p>\n
\n The Rangers were held without a hit for the sixth time, the first since Corey Kluber threw a no-hitter against them for the New York Yankees on May 19, 2021.\n <\/p>\n
\n Imai\u2019s fourth walk of the night was to Nimmo leading off the fourth inning, but Ezequiel Duran then grounded into a double play.\n <\/p>\n
\n Imai threw 57 of his 97 pitches for strikes. He struck out two.\n <\/p>\n
\n The 28-year-old Imai is in his first big league season after coming over from Japan. He was 1-2 with an 8.31 ERA in his first five starts for the Astros.\n <\/p>\n
\n Imai joined the Astros in January after agreeing to a $54 million, three-year contract. He was a three-time All-Star during eight seasons in Japan, and went 10-5 with a 1.92 ERA last season for the Pacific League\u2019s Seibu Lions, striking out 178 in 163 2\/3 innings.\n <\/p>\n
\n Rangers leadoff hitter Joc Pederson was retired on a nifty play in the third when shortstop Jeremy Pe\u00f1a made a backhand stop and a twisting throw to first for the out. Justin Foscue and Danny Jansen had deep flyouts in the Texas fifth.\n <\/p>\n
\n Okert walked Nimmo leading off the seventh before retiring the next three batters.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arlington, TXAP\u00a0\u2014\u00a0 Houston Astros right-hander Tatsuya Imai and relievers Steven Okert and Alimber Santa combined to throw a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":665337,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[363,99],"class_list":["post-665336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=665336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665336\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/665337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=665336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=665336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=665336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}