What we learned as Snell no-hits Reds, makes Giants history originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area
Giants president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi resisted the urge to trade Blake Snell before Tuesday’s deadline. Now the baseball world knows why.
Six days after his 15-strikeout masterpiece against the Colorado Rockies, the two-time Cy Young Award winner kept his magic going and pitched his first career no-hitter while pacing San Francisco to a 3-0 win over the Cincinnati Reds on Friday night at Great American Ball Park.
Snell had 11 strikeouts and walked three – the only Reds players to reach base – while earning his first win in a Giants uniform.
Snell threw 114 pitches while completely shutting down a Reds offense that has been mostly mediocre for much of the season. He struck out the side twice, in the first and fourth innings.
The no-hitter is the 18th in Giants history and the first since Chris Heston did it on June 9, 2015, against the New York Mets.
Before Friday, Snell never had pitched a complete game, nor even reached the ninth inning, in the majors. His last complete game came in 2014, in A-ball with Charlotte of the Florida State League.
Here are the three other takeaways from Friday’s historic game, which actually was delayed for 1 hour for rain that never came in Cincinnati:
Fitz sizzles in leadoff spot
After trying several different leadoff hitters, including the recently traded Jorge Soler, Giants manager Bob Melvin might have found his guy in Tyler Fitzgerald.
The rookie second baseman basically was unstoppable atop the lineup Friday, coming up a triple shy of hitting for the cycle.
After beginning the game with a swinging strikeout, Fitzgerald gathered himself and hit an RBI double off Reds starter Andrew Abbott in the second.
Fitzgerald touched Abbott for another single to lead off the fifth, then homered off Nick Martinez in the seventh.
It’s the 10th home run in 48 games for Fitzgerald, tying him with Michael Conforto for fourth most on the Giants this season. Conforto and the two Giants ahead of Fitzgerald on the list — Matt Chapman and Heliot Ramos — all have played 72 games or more.
Welcome back to the bigs
Jerar Encarnación returned to the majors for the first time since 2022, when he played for the Miami Marlins, and it was a definite eye-opener for the 26-year-old outfielder.
Encarnación struck out swinging in each of his first two trips to the plate, seeing just 10 total pitches in the at-bats. After…