{"id":657397,"date":"2026-04-01T21:00:18","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T21:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/657397\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T21:00:18","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T21:00:18","slug":"haruki-hosono-pitches-91st-npb-no-hitter-world-baseball-softball-confederation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/657397\/","title":{"rendered":"Haruki Hosono pitches 91st NPB No Hitter &#8211; World Baseball Softball Confederation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Haruki Hosono became the 91st pitcher to throw a no-hitter in Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB), the first in 2026, as he led the Nippon Ham Fighters to a 9-0 win against the Chiba Lotte Marines in the 2026 Fighters opening game in the Pacific League on Tuesday, March 31. <\/p>\n<p>It was Hosono&#8217;s first career shutout and first career complete game, and it was the first no-hitter at Es Con Field Hokkaido in Kitahiroshima, 26 kilometres east of Sapporo, which opened in 2023.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s gradually starting to sink in that I&#8217;ve done something amazing,&#8221; Hosono said in an interview with the Kyodo News Agency.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s hard to say I&#8217;ll go for another [no-hitter] next time,&#8221; the left-hander added. &#8220;But I&#8217;ll try to keep pitching, looking to put up as many zeros as possible.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.twitter.com\/FightersPR\/status\/2038952306457432467\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><\/p>\n<p>Hosono walked a batter in the first and hit another in the fourth. His lineup gave him a 7-0 lead with a second-inning rally off Chiba&#8217;s starter Yuto Kimura, capped by a three-run homer by WBSC U-18 Baseball World Cup 2017 star Kotaro Kiyomiya.<\/p>\n<p>Born in 2002, Hosono was the Fighters&#8217; No. 1 pick out of Toyo University at the 2023 Draft. He pitched two games in 2024 and six in 2025.<\/p>\n<p>The hard-throwing left-hander represented Japan at the U-18 level and at the 2023 Japan-USA Collegiate Baseball Series.<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Haruki Hosono became the 91st pitcher to throw a no-hitter in Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB), the first in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":657398,"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-657397","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\/116331467730491970","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657397","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=657397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/657398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=657397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=657397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=657397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}