ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) \u2014 Tatsuya Imai combined with relievers Steven Okert and Alimber Santa on the 17th regular-season no-hitter in Houston Astros history, and Christian Walker and Yordan Alvarez homered in a 9-0 win over the Texas Rangers on Monday night.<\/p>\n
It was the first no-hitter in the major leagues since Shota Imanaga and two Chicago Cubs relievers combined for a 12-0 win over Pittsburgh on Sept. 4, 2024.<\/p>\n
Imai (2-2) got in a groove after walking three of the first four batters he faced, as the 28-year-old rookie from Japan got 16 outs over his last 16 batters. Okert pitched the seventh inning before the 23-year-old Santa got the final six outs, becoming the first pitcher to be involved in a no-hitter in his big league debut.<\/p>\n
It was the fourth combined no-hitter in the regular season for the Astros, who had another one in the 2022 World Series against Philadelphia.<\/p>\n
Ronel Blanco tossed the previous no-hitter for Houston in a 10-0 victory over Toronto on April 1, 2024. In fact, Houston has authored three of the past seven and five of the last 11 major league no-hitters \u2014 beginning with the one in the World Series.<\/p>\n
Houston’s four-game winning streak is its longest since taking five in a row after starting the season 0-2. This was the team’s sixth shutout of the year.<\/p>\n
Texas, held scoreless for the fourth time this season, was no-hit for the sixth time overall.<\/p>\n
Imai struck out two and walked four in six innings. Okert struck out one of the four batters he faced. Santa ended the game with his first big league strikeout.<\/p>\n
The Astros went ahead to stay with a run in the first without a hit. Texas starter Kumar Rocker (2-5) hit Jeremy Pe\u00f1a with the first pitch of the game before a stolen base, a grounder and a sacrifice fly by Alvarez.<\/p>\n
Rocker struck out five and allowed four runs in five innings.<\/p>\n
Alvarez led off the fourth with his 16th homer and 33rd RBI to make it 2-0. The slugger had only two RBIs in his previous 14 games.<\/p>\n
Walker’s 15th homer was a three-run shot off reliever Peyton Gray in a five-run seventh.<\/p>\n
RHP Jason Alexander (1-0, 7.30 ERA) pitches for Houston on Tuesday night. RHP Jack Leiter (1-4, 4.61) is winless in his last nine starts since winning his season debut for Texas on March 30.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) \u2014 Tatsuya Imai combined with relievers Steven Okert and Alimber Santa on the 17th regular-season…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":708959,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2389],"tags":[42,89005,5,100,139,54,3211,721,11838,360,4,9500,9501,60825,9496,9497,9499,766,770,9278,4658,2264],"class_list":["post-708966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston-astros","tag-astros","tag-astros-rangers-score-nohitter-tatsuya-imai","tag-baseball","tag-christian-walker","tag-houston","tag-houston-astros","tag-houstonastros","tag-jack-leiter","tag-jason-alexander","tag-kumar-rocker","tag-mlb","tag-package-100024-ap-online","tag-package-100502-member-choice-sports-option","tag-peyton-gray","tag-product-30599-ap-sports-news-s-wire-only","tag-product-32562-ap-online-other-sports-news","tag-product-40815-ap-texas-sports-only","tag-ronel-blanco","tag-shota-imanaga","tag-steven-okert","tag-tatsuya-imai","tag-yordan-alvarez"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116639119681624728","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708966","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=708966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708966\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/708959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=708966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=708966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=708966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}