Hisashi Iwakuma, the 34-year-old right-hander for the Seattle Mariners, smiled broadly, jumped with his teammates, wore the contents of the water bucket, and waved his arms to the fans Wednesday afternoon at Safeco Field.
With 116 darting pitches in a 3-0 win against the Baltimore Orioles in Seattle, Iwakuma became the second Japanese pitcher to throw a no-hitter in the U.S. major leagues. Hideo Nomo, who’d set the standard for Japanese pitchers when he arrived in 1995, threw two no-hitters before retiring in 2008.
Pitching to a catcher, Jesus Sucre, catching his 48th big-league game, and against a history of zero complete games in 87 previous major league starts, Iwakuma rode his split-fingered fastball, his slider, and a fastball average in velocity but precise in location to 20-of-29 first-pitch strikes, 12 groundball outs and seven strikeouts. He walked three, two in the fourth inning.
From a unique wind-up in which the 6-foot-3 right-hander stalls at the top, unhinges his left knee twice and then delivers, Iwakuma peppered the bottom of the strike zone with breaking balls, and finished many Orioles with a 90-mph fastball letter high.
It made for mostly difficult at-bats for the Orioles. In fact, as the splitter ran from left-handed hitters and the slider ducked away from righties, many of the at-bats concluded with off-balance swings. At contact, hitters often bore the posture of a man reaching for the mushrooms on the most distant row of the salad bar. That is, on tiptoes, butt back and arms extended beneath the sneeze guard.
“He was unbelievable today,” Kyle Seager, the Mariners' third baseman, told reporters in Seattle. “He was just dominant. Routine ground balls, popups, I mean, he was just phenomenal.”
The no-hitter was the 291st in history, the fifth by a Mariner, and the fourth since June 9, as we appear to be in the midst of another no-hit cluster. Chris Heston, Max Scherzer and Cole Hamels threw no-hitters in the previous 64 days. Iwakuma followed with the first by an American League pitcher – after 12 consecutive National League no-hitters – since teammate Felix Hernandez’s perfect game three years ago.
“It couldn’t happen to a better guy,” said Seager, whose over-the-shoulder catch of a foul ball in the ninth inning was the only difficult defensive play behind Iwakuma.
Iwakuma said family members were among the near-26,000 fans at Safeco on Wednesday, and that he felt “strong on the mound with them here close to me.”
“I was aware of [the no-hitter] obviously,” he said, “but I kind of felt it real deep in my heart in the ninth inning.”
Countryman Nomo, as a Los Angeles Dodger, no-hit the Colorado Rockies in Denver in 1996, then, with the Boston Red Sox, the Orioles in 2001. Those stood alone until Wednesday, until Iwakuma – healthy after spending 2½ months on the disabled list with a side strain earlier this season – was very close to perfect in his 11th start of the season.
An impending free agent, Iwakuma was a long shot to be a Mariner come August, given where the team stands and the league-wide grab for pitching at the trading deadline. The Mariners did not make that trade.
“I woulda been going with him,” said Mariners manager Lloyd McClendon, expressing his fondness for Iwakuma.
While he had not thrown a complete game in four seasons with the Mariners, Iwakuma did have 48 complete games in 11 seasons in Japan. So the ninth inning was a familiar place.
So, with bench players hanging on the dugout rail and relievers hanging on the outfield wall, Iwakuma delivered the last pitch of his no-hitter, which Gerardo Parra lifted to center field. Austin Jackson, a smile spreading over his face as the ball came down, caught it.
It sent Iwakuma off on his celebration, which included two curtain calls.
“I was feeling great,” he said, smiling again.
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