Surely, the Astros were not going to go 0-162. That would have been a record.
So, of course, despite opening the season with four straight losses to the despised Yankees, having led in each of the first three games, eventually they would win a game.
Monday night, they beat Toronto 10-0.
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That’s baseball.
But doing so with 10 runs in a five home-run barrage after struggling with just 11 runs in the first four games. That’s Astros’ baseball.
To earn Joe Espada’s first win as a manager in such resounding fashion is Astros’ baseball.
To get their first win thanks in large part to a complete game by a pitcher who didn’t make it to the major leagues until he was 28 and had never thrown a complete game before at any level is Astros’ baseball.
Oh, did I not mention that Ronel Blanco, the pitcher of record, a man who had never pitched more than six innings in the major leagues, tossed the first no-hitter of his life?
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This made Espada the first manager in history to earn his first career win in a no-hitter.
This was all so Astros.
“An impressive performance,” Espada said. “We needed that.”
Astros’ fans perhaps needed it more. That panic that set in on social media after the Yankees celebrated win after win at Minute Maid Park was impressive as well.
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The season was all but over and major changes needed to be made was a common sentiment after the Astros’ bullpen blew several leads against New York, giving up 13 runs in the seventh, eighth and ninth innings.
The Astros were hardly fazed.
“If there’s a team that can turn the page, it’s this team,” shortstop Jeremy Peña said. “This team has done it year in, year out. We have veteran guys that know how to handle these situations and they know how to keep a team even-keeled.
“We know we have a great team, and we’re going to keep showing up every single day, going out and play to win games.”
What a way to end a losing streak to start the season.
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Blanco’s performance wasn’t what the doctor ordered. The Astros’ illness wasn’t that serious.
But this is what they do.
The Astros have delivered more “What did we just witness?” moments than any team in baseball over the last few years. Their fans don’t have to pretend they were in attendance at these events, because there have been so many, odds are you were at one of them.
The 27,285 on hand Monday witnessed something special.
Blanco told me that the closest he had ever come to a no-hitter was he pitched five hitless innings in Class A ball with the Quad City River Bandits.
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The team was rooting hard for Blanco, whose wife delivered a baby last Tuesday.
Peña said he was so excited that as soon as he noticed in the fifth inning that the Blue Jays did not have a hit he started talking about the no-hitter.
“I know you can’t say it, but I was saying it the whole time,” Peña said. “I was like, as long as I don’t tell him, we’re good.
“Everyone’s superstitious in baseball and that’s one of the unwritten rules that you can’t talk about the no-hitter. But (I thought) as long as the pitcher doesn’t hear it, we’re good to go.”
The Astros have always been good to go in the no-hitter category.
Since Cristian Javier, Héctor Neris, and Ryan Pressly combined to no-hit New York at Yankees Stadium in June of 2022, the Astros have thrown four no-hitters.
The rest of baseball, all 29 teams, have combined to throw just three.
The Astros have thrown seven no-hitters since 2015, their first year to make the playoffs under Jim Crane’s ownership. That’s more than 12 franchises have all-time.
Only three teams in the history of baseball have more no-hitters than the Astros’ franchise mark of 17 — the Dodgers, White Sox and Red Sox.
The Dodgers began playing in 1886, 10 years after the first no-hitter in MLB history, while the White Sox and Red Sox each started in 1901.
The Astros, who were born in 1961, are barely old enough to draw Social Security.
That said, a no-hitter for the first win of the season isn’t even on the Astros’ bingo card. It is that improbable.
Yet, so very much Astros.
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