{"id":654479,"date":"2026-03-31T13:48:31","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T13:48:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/654479\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T13:48:31","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T13:48:31","slug":"haruki-hosono-throws-no-hitter-for-hokkaido-nippon-ham-fighters-in-home-opener","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/654479\/","title":{"rendered":"Haruki Hosono Throws No-Hitter for Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters in Home Opener"},"content":{"rendered":"

Haruki Hosono<\/a> of the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters delivered a historic performance Tuesday night, throwing a no-hitter against the Chiba Lotte Marines in a 9\u20130 win in the Fighters\u2019 home opener at Es Con Field Hokkaido.<\/p>\n

Hosono became the 91st pitcher in Japanese professional baseball history to throw a no-hitter. It marked the 103rd such game in regular-season history dating back to 1936, and the first since Daichi Ohsera<\/a> on June 7, 2024.<\/p>\n

Since 2000, he is just the fourth pitcher to throw a no-hitter with 12 or more strikeouts, joining household names Toshiya Sugiuchi<\/a>, Kodai Senga<\/a>, and Roki Sasaki<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It was also the first no-hitter in franchise history since Cody Ponce<\/a> on August 27, 2022, against the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s slowly starting to sink in that I did something special,\u201d Hosono said postgame.<\/p>\n

The 24-year-old southpaw was in complete control from the outset, dominating after issuing a leadoff walk to Akito Takabe.<\/a> Apart from a hit-by-pitch to Kyota Fujiwara<\/a> in the fourth inning, he was nearly flawless the rest of the way.<\/p>\n

Mixing a mid-90s fastball with a sinker, splitter, slider, and cutter, he struck out 12 over 128 pitches.<\/p>\n

He appeared to have the final out secured on a ground ball from Koki Yamaguchi<\/a> with two outs in the ninth, but a fielding error by Kotaro Kiyomiya<\/a> at first base extended the inning and briefly put the no-hit bid in jeopardy.<\/p>\n

Undeterred, Hosono regrouped and froze Fujiwara with a 93 mph fastball on the outside corner to seal the milestone.<\/p>\n

Offensively, the Fighters provided plenty of support early. They broke the game open with a seven-run second inning against Yuto Kimura<\/a>, highlighted by back-to-back home runs from Kiyomiya and Franmil Reyes<\/a>. The duo homered in consecutive at-bats again in the seventh, adding two more runs.<\/p>\n

Hosono, a 2023 first-round pick out of Toyo University, had been highly touted as a top prospect but had yet to establish himself as a regular in the rotation, as this was only his ninth career start. That certainly changed Tuesday night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Haruki Hosono of the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters delivered a historic performance Tuesday night, throwing a no-hitter against the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":654480,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2302],"tags":[5,2353,2352],"class_list":{"0":"post-654479","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-npb","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-nippon-professional-baseball","10":"tag-npb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116324106551411031","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=654479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/654480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=654479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=654479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=654479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}