Ronel Blanco is a 30 year old pitcher from the Dominican Republic who took a $5,000 signing bonus from the Astros at the age of 22. While serving most of his time in the minor leagues as a bullpen pitcher, he may not have ever gotten a chance to start on a big league mound if it wasn’t for his general manager Dana Brown who convinced his pitching coaches to try Blanco as a starter and see what happens.
Blanco is having a very similar experience as Framber Valdez and Christian Javier had coming up in the Astros organization. Two pitchers who the Astros signed for $10,000 each. And both of these guys have solidified a name in the Houston rotation, only scratching the surface of their potential. What Blanco did last night was put himself right up there with those guys. In only his eighth big league start, one that wasn’t very likely to happen, Ronel Blanco threw the 17th no-hitter in franchise history. The last four of those no-hitters have been started by none other than, Valdez, Javier and Blanco.
In those first seven big league starts, Ronel Blanco had never thrown more than 6 innings and never threw more than 100 pitches. Josh Miller the pitching coach said they intended on keeping him around 90 pitches. It just so happened that he had gone 8 innings only throwing 91 pitches with no hits. He’d be crazy to take him out now. Being in control the whole game and going back out there in the 9th to finish it off in 14 more pitches. He put his name in the history books. “Getting it in that fashion, for a guy that has grinded through the minor leagues and seeing how hard he worked to perform against a really good lineup, it brings everything to another level of emotion.” Said his manager, Joe Espada. If it wasn’t for a couple injuries to Jose Urquidy and Justin Verlander, Blanco most likely wouldn’t have pitched in that game. He already had a slim chance of making the team during spring training but was able to land a spot in the rotation after his last outing.
George Springer was the only Blue Jays player to reach base and he was able to do it twice. Making the story that much better, one of those was a leadoff walk to start the game, which is never a good sign. After throwing 19 pitches in the first inning, he threw no more than 15 pitches for the next eight innings. Controlling most of the at bats with his changeup that seemed to be working whenever he needed it to. Gathering 7 strikeouts in the game with all 7 of them coming via the changeup. A pitch he threw less then 10% of the time last year but making it a priority to further develop the pitch into something that’ll help him throw 9 no hit innings when he needs to.
Blanco now has three very good pitches he can throw for strikes. Throwing 33 fastballs, 34 sliders and 36 change-ups in his no-hitter. The Blue Jays couldn’t really pick a pitch to anticipate. With only four balls being hit harder than 90 mph and only three balls hit made it to the outfield. With really no hard contact and not a lot of stress it almost seemed like a fairly easy accomplishment even though we all know that’s not true. One of the two scares he had late in the game was to lead off the 8th inning. Alejandro Kirk, a player who isn’t known for being very fast, steps up to the plate and hits a hard ground ball up the middle causing Blanco to instinctively reach up and deflected it into no man’s land. Second baseman Dubon ran over, scooped it up and was able to still get the runner out at first.
After the baseball gods tested Blanco making him cover first base as Cavan Biggio hit a hard groundball that forced Abreu to backhand it for the second out. He then went on to walk Springer for the second time to get to Valdimir Guerrero Jr. With the Astros getting someone up in the bullpen you had a feeling this would be his last batter. After getting into a 2-2 count, and everyone on their feet, he was able to get Valdy to hit a soft ground ball to the second baseman to record the last out. The rest is history.