Manaea no-hit ends 25-year Red Sox streak

OAKLAND ace Sean Manaea tossed the first no-hitter of the 2018 season, getting some ome help from an overturned call ll in the A’s 3-0 victory over the Boston Red Sox on Saturday night.

Manaea’s masterful ul performance saw the left-hander t-hander strike out 10 batters and d walk just two as he clinched d the no-hitter by getting Red ed

Sox designated hitter er Hanley Ramirez t o bounce into a forced d out at second in the e ninth inning.

“Oh man, my heart rt was beating out of my chest,” Manaea said.

Boston appeared to get a hit in the sixth inning when

A n d r e w B e n i n t e n d i smacked a ground ball all to the right side of the infield nfield in front of the crowd of 35,000 at the Oakland Coliseum. He sprinted to first, where he tried to swerve to avoid A’s first baseman

Matt Olson’s tag.

Initiall y

Benintendi was c a l l e d safe but the umpires conferenced on the field and it was ruled that the Red Sox runner illegally ran into foul territory to tr y and avoid the tag from Olson.

Manaea tossed the first nohitter of the Major League Ba Baseball season and the first a against the Red Sox since 1 1993.

The Red Sox had the second longest lon streak (3,987 games) without wi surrendering a nohitter, hit dating back 25 years when wh Seattle’s Chris Bosio no hit them. Oakland is the only team tea with a longer streak.

It I was the seventh no-hitter in franchise history and the first firs since Dallas Braden did it against ag Tampa Bay eight years ago. ag

“I “just kept telling myself [to] keep ke everything the same and not no let anything get too big for me,” me the 26-year-old American Manaea Ma said.

Red R Sox manager Alex Cora was wa unhappy with the umpires’ decision de to call Benintendi out. “Do I agree with it? No,” Cora said. “It is what it is.”

Benintendi was fuming after the call was reversed. “It’s just a missed call,” he said.

After the game the officials released a statement saying: “If he goes more than three feet avoiding the tag, he’s declared out. He was more than three feet away.”

‘Best-executed game’

Manaea’s feat was all the more special because he was able to strong arm the hottest team. The Red Sox had won 17 of their last 19 games but he slashed his way through their batter order l i ke a knife through butter.

“I told him: ‘I’ve caught a lot of pitchers in eight years in this league and that was the most well-pitched, best-exe- cuted game I’ve ever had behind the plate’,” catcher Jonathan Lucroy said.

Manaea walked the first batter he faced but then settled in, getting the next 14 consecutive batters out.

With two outs in the fifth inning, Red Sox Sandy Leon reached base when Athletics shortstop Marcus Semien bobbled a pop fly. The umpires ruled it an error.

Manaea was so focused on throwing strikes that he didn’t pay attention to the call and just assumed his no-hitter ended there. It wasn’t until a few innings later that he caught on.

He also got some help from the A’s batters. Semien blasted a home run and Stephen Piscotty and Jed Lowrie delivered RBI doubles.