'Most underrated pitcher in the league': Cristian Javier makes World Series history in Astros' no-hitter

PHILADELPHIA – Cristian Javier was no secret.

You don’t pitch seven no-hit innings in Yankee Stadium, strike out 194 batters in less than 150 innings, draw some of the most important starting assignments for the game’s greatest powerhouse and go unnoticed.

Yet there is acclaim and then there is water-cooler fame, dinner-table chatter, the sort of recognition that comes when your exploits are amplified by the World Series, where the casual fan and the seamhead come together to observe baseball’s greatest stage.

Wednesday night, with his team in desperate need of a victory in Game 4 of this World Series, Javier bridged that gap in historic fashion.

He pitched six no-hit innings and struck out nine batters on a Philadelphia Phillies team that hadn’t lost a game at Citizens Bank Park all postseason, that one night earlier slammed five home runs off Game 3 starter Lance McCullers, that with one more win could have buried the Astros in this World Series.

And when relievers Bryan Abreu, Rafael Montero and Ryan Pressly picked up where Javier left off, running the Phillies’ strikeout casualties to 14 and finishing off the first combined no-hitter in World Series history, millions of baseball fans unfamiliar with Javier’s body of work are suddenly hip to the fact that Houston’s best pitcher doesn’t come out of the chute until the fourth game of a playoff series.

Didn’t know about Javier before Wednesday?

“They do now,” says Pressly, who walked one batter but retired J.T. Realmuto on a routine grounder to third base to end the game, tie the Series and set off a giddy but relatively muted celebration. “This is the biggest stage, and he goes out and does what he normally does.

“Honestly, I think he’s the most underrated pitcher in the league. There’s not a moment that’s too big. He’s got no emotions. He lets nothing get to him.”

Oh, there were a few emotions circulating Wednesday night.

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Javier, 25, was for the first time pitching in a major league game with his father in attendance. They urged him to throw a no-hitter. He pretty much obliged.

“When they told me that, obviously I got a lot more motivated,” says Javier through a team interpreter. “I kept my faith in God and obviously I knew I had a big commitment today being down 2-1 in the series.

“And obviously with my parents being here, I just tried to give my best, give my family the best that I could.”

His other family, the Astros, are getting used to this.

Javier, Hector Neris and Pressly combined on a no-hitter June 25 at Yankee Stadium, with Javier providing seven innings of no-hit ball and 13 strikeouts. He threw a season-high 115 pitches that day. As a starting pitcher, Javier is working on a 36 ⅔-inning scoreless streak that dates to early September.

Yet on an Astros team where Justin Verlander is on his way to a third AL Cy Young Award, Framber Valdez has proven his postseason mettle and McCullers’ World Series experience dates to 2017, Javier somehow comes out of the chute fourth in this stable. He only appeared in relief in the AL Division Series against Seattle, and started Game 3 of the AL Championship Series only a freak elbow injury to McCullers pushed him back a day.

But Javier shut out the Yankees over 5 ⅓ innings that day, outdueling Gerrit Cole just as he did in the June combined no-hitter.

Wednesday, the Phillies got a jaw-dropping look at what makes Javier special.

It starts and ends with the fastball, really.

Javier threw it for 70 of his 97 pitches in Game 4, and while its average velocity was down .4 mph to 93.4, it doesn’t much matter. Javier’s unique arm angle and release point launch the ball on top of the hitter before they can react. And given how hot the Phillies have been, it was startling to see them go so quietly after their five-homer outburst a night earlier lit up South Philly.

“Clearly unhittable,” Pressly says of Javier’s fastball.

“I think it’s invisible,” says center fielder Chas McCormick. “I think it’s hard to pick up. He throws it a little from the side and he whips it in there and usually when you whip it in there, it will maybe sink or cut a little bit.

“His will rise up.”

Perhaps not literally – gravity will have a say in that – but certainly figuratively, on multiple levels. It largely induced weak contact Wednesday, and made his slider greatly effective; Javier threw just eight of them, and drew swings and misses on five.

Javier saw the Phillies pound McCullers’ bread-and-butter breaking pitches, knew they were a great fastball-hitting team, but never thought about deviating from his plan.

In short: Here it is. Try to hit it.

“I really don't think I could change my plan of attack. I think I just needed to stay positive,” he says. “I thought that my fastball today was really good and definitely I was able to get a lot of swings and misses.”

Says catcher Christian Vazquez: “When they don't show you a good swing with the fastball, we continue to throw it.”

As the innings stacked up Wednesday, the Phillies flailed and the Astros settled matters with a five-run fifth, the specter of history grew. The World Series hadn’t seen a no-hitter since Don Larsen’s perfect game in 1956; the late Roy Halladay was the only pitcher to throw a postseason no-hitter, on the same Citizens Bank Park mound Javier graced in Game 4.

Javier’s pitch count – often high thanks to his penchant for the punchout – meant he almost certainly wouldn’t pull it off himself. His teammates weren’t going to make any suggestions, though.

“We were talking about it. We said, nobody’s moving to stretch or anything,” says Montero through an interpreter. “We’re going to wait for someone to call us to get up.”

Abreu answered the first call and was ferocious, striking out Realmuto, Bryce Harper and Nick Castellanos. Montero pitched a clean eighth. Pressly locked down the ninth inning as he has for eight of the Astros’ nine postseason victories.

“Our pitchers,” says McCormick, “really showed who they are tonight.”

None more than the guy who’s been this great all along. It’s just that a lot more people will know about him, now.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Astros' Cristian Javier 'unhittable' in Game 4 of World Series