'This one had a different feel to it': Remembering an oft-forgotten no-hitter

With baseball on hiatus, it's a good time to look back at great moments from the game's past. Today, we're remembering Chris Heston's oft-forgotten no-hitter against the New York Mets on June 9, 2015.

For some pitchers, throwing a no-hitter remains their singular accomplishment, and their lone imprint on history - forever the begrudging, unavoidable cocktail party anecdote. For others, it's but a prominent thread within the rich tapestry of a dazzling career. Chris Heston falls into the former category.

Heston, a sinkerballer selected by the Giants in the 12th round of the 2009 draft, had one summer to remember. In 2015, two years after being designated for assignment by San Francisco and re-signed to a minor-league deal, Heston was summoned from the minors in early April as an injury replacement for three-time All-Star Matt Cain. Heston wasn't a prospect - he turned 27 just days after his promotion - nor did his numbers in the minors inspire much excitement. His previous big-league experience consisted of 5 1/3 innings. His appointment with the Giants, who months earlier secured their third World Series title in a five-year span, was expected to last only until he proved incapable. He never did.

Heston improbably spent that entire summer in the Giants' rotation, emerging as the only reliable complement to longtime ace Madison Bumgarner. He wasn't overpowering, but he induced an inordinate number of ground balls and parlayed his knack for suppressing quality contact into a perfectly respectable 3.95 ERA over 31 starts.

Then, swiftly, Heston faded away. In 2016, following the addition of high-priced starters Johnny Cueto and Jeff Samardzija in free agency, Heston was relegated to the bullpen. After four ghastly relief appearances, he was optioned back to the minors, along with his 10.80 ERA. He didn't pitch for the Giants again.

That winter, Heston was traded to the Seattle Mariners, with whom he made two appearances in 2017 before being claimed on waivers by the Dodgers in late May. His stint with Los Angeles was exceedingly brief, and the Minnesota Twins grabbed him off the waiver wire a month later before he ever appeared in a game.

His tenure with Minnesota ultimately comprised one relief appearance, a scoreless inning on June 11, 2017. Heston hasn't pitched in the big leagues since, and shoulder problems have now sidelined him for almost two full years. His career, at this point, is very much in doubt.

Still, Heston had that one summer, and within that one summer, he managed to force his way into baseball's annals, twirling the 17th no-hitter in Giants history with a tour de force against the New York Mets at Citi Field on June 9, 2015.

Owing, perhaps, to the bevy of memorable performances by Giants pitchers in recent years - from Cain's perfect game to Tim Lincecum's two no-hitters to Bumgarner's entire 2014 postseason - Heston's no-no is obscured in our collective memory as more of a footnote than a chapter. But the young right-hander legitimately made history on that oft-forgotten night, becoming just the 23rd rookie to throw a no-hitter. No rookie has done it since.

Maybe, though, Heston's no-hitter only tenuously lingers in our minds because it produced no signature moments. It didn't have a Gregor Blanco catch. It wasn't punctuated with an especially delightful Buster Posey bear hug. It was almost boring, insofar as a no-hitter can be, with the game's outcome decided early. The Giants took a 1-0 lead in the first and owned a three-run advantage three innings later. Heston encountered only one remotely sticky situation: a two-on, one-out jam in the fourth that he quashed with a double-play. (Heston didn't walk a batter but hit three of them to scrap a chance at a perfect game.)

"This one had a different feel to it," Posey, who was also behind the plate for Cain's perfect game and Lincecum's first no-no, told the New York Times after the 5-0 victory.

As is his wont, Heston simply kept the ball on the ground, frustrating the Mets' already frustrated lineup with moving fastballs and slow curves. Only two of the 27 outs he recorded were in the air. Not one of his 110 pitches was hit particularly hard, either; New York's batters didn't record a single triple-digit exit velocity all evening, according to Baseball Savant.

"He didn’t throw hard," then-Mets outfielder Michael Cuddyer told the New York Times. "But his pitches had a ton of movement that got off of our barrels." Uncharacteristically, however, Heston also recorded a career-high 11 strikeouts. Over the course of his abbreviated career, he managed just one other double-digit strikeout performance.

By the time the ninth inning rolled around, the crowd in Queens was pulling for him. A questionable strike-three call on pinch-hitter Daniel Muno, for the first out of the final frame, elicited cheers rather than boos. An even louder roar followed when Curtis Granderson was rung up for the second out, caught looking at a 91-mph sinker that just shaved the plate's inside edge.

When Heston froze Ruben Tejada with another sinker moments later, completing the Giants' first no-hitter by a rookie in more than a century, he was treated to a raucous ovation by his opposing team's fans.

"Definitely something I'll remember forever," Heston, who also recorded two hits himself and drove in a pair of runs, said afterward.

Heston tossed the fourth no-hitter by a Giants pitcher in as many years that night, and it felt, in the wake of his performance, that the organization - whose success over the previous half-decade was largely fueled by high-end, homegrown starters - had found another weapon, an unheralded, soft-throwing kid transformed into a legitimate asset. Quickly, though, that notion collapsed.

Still, Heston made an indelible mark on baseball history that night in New York, even if time and circumstance - and the unfortunate subsequent chapters in his career - have allowed it to fade.

Jonah Birenbaum is theScore's senior MLB writer. He steams a good ham. You can find him on Twitter @birenball.