Rookie RHP Chris Heston No-Hits Mets In Giants' 5-0 Win
RONALD BLUM, AP Baseball Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — Chris Heston put his name alongside Hall of Famers Sandy Koufax and Jim Bunning.
And also Bob Moose, Bill Stoneman, Ed Halicki and Darryl Kile.
All those pitchers threw no-hitters against the New York Mets. But it had been 22 years since someone accomplished the feat — until Tuesday night.
"Nobody wants to get no-hit, so it's a little deflating," Michael Cuddyer said after a 5-0 loss to Heston and the San Francisco Giants. "But we'll go home tonight, get some sleep and come back and have a good attitude tomorrow."
Even with the defeat, which dropped New York to 31-28, the Mets maintained their NL East lead at a half-game over Washington, which lost to the Yankees in the Bronx.
"Game's over. Got to play tomorrow," Mets manager Terry Collins said. "We've got Tim Hudson. He' no fun, either."
New York may have been held hitless at home for the first time since 1969, but Mets batters got hit three times — the team's only baserunners. The closest the Mets came to a hit was when Eric Campbell grounded to deep shortstop with two outs in the eighth, and Brandon Crawford made a backhand stop and threw strongly to first for the inning-ending out.
"It took kind of an in-between hop. It wasn't an easy one, for sure," Crawford said. "That was about the toughest play of the game. Usually, there's a really good play that saves a hit, or maybe some hard line drives right at somebody. But there really weren't a lot of balls squared up."
Heston (6-4) struck out 11 — six looking. The 27-year-old right-hander allowed just two balls into the outfield, flyouts by Wilmer Flores in the second inning and Cuddyer in the seventh. The last pitch was a 91 mph sinker that froze Ruben Tejada for a called third strike.
"Stuff was right on the corners, and (he) mixed it up and changed speeds," Collins said. "He just made pitches we couldn't handle. I don't care how hard you throw, if you can locate and locate and change speeds, you can get people out."
Making the 13th start of his big league career, Heston hit Anthony Recker on the left shoulder with his first pitch in the ninth inning, then threw called third strikes past pinch-hitter Danny Muno, Curtis Granderson and Tejada.
Heston hit Tejada just below the left shoulder with one out in the fourth, and two pitches later grazed Lucas Duda's uniform near his right thigh.
Despite leading their division, the Mets are 25th among the 30 teams in runs, a dearth partly due to injuries to David Wright, Daniel Murphy and Travis d'Arnaud.
"Obviously, those guys would have helped tonight, there's no question of that. But you don't want to take anything away," Cuddyer said. "He had a really good sinker and he kept everybody off balance with a couple of different kinds of breaking balls, curveballs, one obviously slower and one a little quicker, good slider."
Heston threw 72 of 110 pitches for strikes in the 35th complete-game no-hitter by a rookie in major league history, according to STATS, the first since Boston's Clay Buchholz in 2007.
Heston hit a two-run single in the fourth off Noah Syndergaard (2-4) and added another single in the eighth. Angel Pagan put the Giants ahead with an RBI groundout in the first, and Matt Duffy homered in the sixth.
San Francisco extended its lead to 5-0 when Joe Panik hit a leadoff homer in the seventh off Dillon Gee, who made his first relief appearance since 2011 and the fourth of his career.
Syndergaard, a 22-year-old rookie right-hander, allowed 10 hits for the second straight start, giving up four runs in six innings.
"I think the last two starts I've had, I've had some of the best stuff I've had probably in my entire life," he said. "They just happened to make contact, some hard hit-balls. I was able to get some ground balls. They just hit it where our infielders weren't. Can't do much about that."
And the Mets couldn't do anything against Heston.
TRAINER'S ROOM
Mets: Rookie catcher Kevin Plawecki was scratched because of dizziness, missing a start for the third time in four games. The Mets plan to activate d'Arnaud on Wednesday. He has been sidelined since breaking his right pinkie on April 19. ... Reliever Bobby Parnell, coming back from Tommy John surgery in April 2014, is 0-4 with a 12.46 ERA in 14 appearances during his minor league rehab assignment and has a .393 opponents' batting average. New York said he will be with the Mets on Wednesday and will be activated in the next few days.
UP NEXT
Giants: Hudson (4-4) is 17-10 in 32 starts against New York.
Mets: Matt Harvey (6-3) is 0-1 in two starts against the Giants, both in San Francisco.
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