Kenta Maeda greeted his Twitter followers early Wednesday morning with the following:
"Throwing a no-hitter is not easy!" the Twins righthander wrote.
While true, he made his run at a no-no look easy, overwhelming Brewers hitters on Tuesday as he entered the ninth inning three outs away from joining Hideo Nomo and Hisashi Iwakuma as the only Japanese pitchers in Major League Baseball to achieve the feat.
The hit Maeda gave up, a soft liner by Eric Sogard to center, wasn't struck well. The Brewers didn't hit a single ball hard all night, the result of Maeda's mastery. Sogard went down and got enough of Maeda's changeup to help the Brewers avoid being no-hit for the fourth time in team history and for the second time by a Twins pitcher, after Scott Erickson did it in 1994.
"It's his go-to pitch, and it's a difficult pitch to pick up a lot of the time," Sogard told the Milwaukee Journal of Maeda's changeup. "I think he throws his fastball enough to keep us off of it. But at that point in the game, it's like we almost have to sit on it 100 percent and stay on it, and I was able to get just enough of it to get it out in the outfield."
Even that hit might have become out No. 25, as shortstop Jorge Polanco appeared to slightly overrun the ball and might have had a shot at catching it with a better line.
It was a magnificent outing for Maeda, who got a whopping 26 swings and misses with his arsenal. He had a total of 25 swings and misses in his previous two outings combined.
What's scary to consider the a night like this might have been coming.