Tuesday night, Alex Cobb was so almost there.
But his brilliant moment was cut short on the 125th pitch of the contest.
On Tuesday night at Oracle Park in San Francisco, the Cincinnati Reds ruined what would have been the fifth no-hitter of the MLB season and the first for the Giants since 2015. The Reds’ lone hit and lone run of the game came in the ninth inning on a double to centre field by Spencer Steer with two outs.
When Cobb had just one out left, that halted his attempt at a no-hit.
The Giants swept to a 6-1 victory in the Bay Area, and Cobb still earned the victory and a huge standing ovation. Cobb’s performance included 131 pitches and eight strikeouts in a complete game.
“It’s still fun,” Cobb said, via The Associated Press. “I wasn’t mad or sad, I was just like, ‘Let’s just finish this thing off.’ That kind of thing. So many things have to go right for it to happen.”
The no-hitter was almost on the verge of being broken by the Reds in the eighth inning, but Austin Slater saved the day with a stunning diving catch after Will Benson drove a ball to short centre field to end the game.
This season, there have been four no-hitters across the league. The most recent one was thrown by Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Michael Lorenzen earlier this month against the Washington Nationals in just his second start with the team after they acquired him before the trade deadline.
This season, Houston Astros pitcher Framber Valdez faced the required minimum of 27 batters against the Cleveland Guardians and threw a no-hitter on 93 pitches. A no-hitter was thrown in July by Matt Manning and the Detroit Tigers, and Domingo Germán of the New York Yankees pitched a perfect game in June against the Oakland Athletics.
Cobb had a 3.74 ERA, a 6-5 record, and had been selected to his first career All-Star game as of Tuesday’s game. Last Thursday, he defeated the Phillies to end a three-game losing streak for the 35-year-old. Cobb has previously played for the Los Angeles Angels, Baltimore Orioles, and Tampa Bay Rays. He is currently in his second season with the Giants.
A pitcher disengagement violation and an RBI double by Luis Matos allowed the Giants to score two runs in the bottom of the second. After Slater scored on a wild pitch and Patrick Bailey afterwards launched a two-run home run to centre, they added three more in the fifth. The Giants led 6-0 going into the ninth after Slater scored once more in the eighth on an RBI double by Thairo Estrada.
The victory was the Giants’ fourth in their last six games and their second over the Reds in this series. They are 13.5 games behind the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NL West, but after Tuesday’s victory, they now hold the final wild card place in the National League. The Reds, on the other hand, have already dropped five of their previous seven games and three straight. They are two games away from the final wild card place and are seven games behind the Milwaukee Brewers in the NL Central.