(Photo by Keith Allison/Flickr)

Tonight was an amazing night! You’d have to have been in a coma tonight to not know that Homer Bailey no-hit the Pittsburgh Pirates.  Pittsburgh has always been good to homer, and tonight was the pinnacle of that.

Bailey was amazing just simply tonight, striking out 10, with only 1 walk, and one error – a controversially scored play by Scott Rolen. Homer Bailey looked good starting the game, but not particularly special. But he was really locating the fastball, and his sliders and curveballs were really moving. Bailey was not notably bailed out by spectacular defensive plays, either. All in all it was a performance well deserving of being the 15th Reds no hitter (And the first since Tom Browning’s 1988 perfecto).

Credit to Ryan Hanigan as well, for calling the game, and for catching Andrew McCutchen at third base. (McCutchen walked, and then stole second).

Of course, things were a little complicated by the fact that A.J. Burnett was throwing almost as well/ the Reds hitters were doing almost as badly as the Pirates’. A couple of hits, and a Joey Votto walk loaded the bases  in the first inning, but the Reds got only one run on a sac fly by Todd Frazier before Burnett got Jay Bruce to ground into a double play. The Pirates also doubled off Scott Rolen in the second, but other than that, the Reds had very little offense.

Tonight was definitely a ground-ball-y kind of night. A.J. Burnett has been great at getting groundballs in 2012. His 56.6% groundball percentage is good for 4th among qualified pitchers, and his 15 groundballs out of 24 balls in play was true to that. Homer Bailey was even better – though he had fewer groundball outs. Still 10 out of 15 balls in play for Bailey were groundballs. Homer just replaced the line-drive singles Burnett gave with strikeouts.

In closing: Yay!