Inside Ronel Blanco’s No-Hitter That Brought the Magic Back to Minute Maid — Jeremy Peña Defies Superstition, Yainer Diaz Proves Very Worthy & Mom Wins Big

Jeremy Peña starts calling the no-hitter in the fifth inning, defying the norms of baseball, the most superstitious sport of all. Peña knows that Ronel Blanco is too strong, his story too unbelievably true, for mere superstition to be able to bring it down. The Houston Astros shortstop is certain that there is no stopping Ronel Blanco on his night. No matter what the Toronto Blue Jays — or anyone else — does.

There is no stopping Ronel Blanco on this night, his night of all nights. Not after everything he’s been through to get here.

So Peña blabbers about the no-hitter unfolding in front of everyone’s eyes to anyone who will listen.

“In the fifth inning I was like, ‘Oh, he’s throwing a no-hitter,’ ” Peña says. “I know you can’t say it. But I was saying it to all the guys. I’m like as long as I don’t tell him, we’re good. But I kept saying it in the dugout. ‘He’s throwing a no-hitter.’ ”

Blanco is doing it for his daughter born just six days before, for the wife who’s stood by his side, for his beloved mom Maria who is in Minute Maid Park, praying with every pitch by the end of this 10-0 Blanco blanking. Leave it to Ronel Blanco, a 30-year-old who signed for a mere $5,000 (a sum that will barely get you a beat-up used car) eight years ago making his eighth career Major League start, to bring the magic back to Minute Maid Park.

Maybe this is how the Astros had to exorcise the weird funk they dropped into at home last season and couldn’t just seem to get out of. Maybe this is the only way to throw aside that 0-4 start to the season against the New York Yankees and a Minute Maid malaise that made them losers of 26 of their last 33 games at one of baseball’s most underrated ballparks.

Maybe, they just needed to turn to the most unlikely game changer of all. Ronel Blanco, streak stopper and magic maker.

When the last out is recorded in one of the most unlikely no-hitters in Major League Baseball’s endless history, Blanco lifts his glove to the sky. Then, he lifts Yainer Diaz, the Astros’ 6-foot, 200-pound tank of a catcher, clean up in the air. Yes, Ronel Blanco is plenty strong. In more ways than one.

“It’s been a very long road traveled for me,” Blanco says later in Spanish with Astros interpreter Jenloy Herrera translating. “A lot of ups and downs. A lot of falls and me getting back up.

“But I think all of that has been worth it for me to be able to get to this moment.”

It is a moment no one else but him could have imagined. Back in the Dominican Republic, after getting rejected by almost as many baseball academies as he has fingers on his now history-making right hand, Blanco turned to working part time at a car wash to help support his single mom. The Astros finally signed him at age 22 for about the littlest figure that then general manager Jeff Luhnow had in his budget.

Five grand. What is there to lose? There are team dinners that cost much more than that.

Only Ronel Blanco didn’t look at himself as some no-shot who would just fade away. He kept showing up, kept working, kept tinkering, kept pushing to get better. Year after year after year.

“I’m just so happy that he went out and did that,” Peña says. “Because he’s such a hard worker. He’s quiet. He’s a quiet, hard worker. Goes about his business. Just goes out and competes.”

With his frosted blonde hair, wearing a number (56) more fit for linebacker than a baseball star, Ronel Blanco goes from an unknown no prospect to. . . well, grabbing his own little piece of baseball immortality. And you can be sure that there are plenty who wish they went to Minute Maid on a slow Monday night to see it this Tuesday morning.

Ronel Blanco is the kind of story that can only really happen in baseball, an example of why it’s still hard not to fall in love with this sport if you know what’s going on. There aren’t any 28-year-olds finally being given a chance to make their professional debut in the NBA or the NFL. And Ronel Blanco does not just finally make it. He makes it — and then makes himself so much better.

The changeup that left the Blue Jays as baffled as a 70-year-old trying to follow Love Is Blind is something that Ronel Blanco added after finally getting to the Majors. Something he’s still working to hone. Something he’s never thrown as much in a game as he does on this no-hit night.

“The way it comes out of his hand, it looks just like his fastball,” first year Astros manager Joe Espada says of Blanco’s changeup. “And hitters are committed to potentially swinging at fastballs and that ball just kind of falls in the zone. It’s a pitch that he’s worked really hard on.

“And it paid big dividends tonight.”

The Magic is Back at Minute Maid. Maybe Ronel Blanco is the perfect person, the only person, who could do that.

“It’s been a very long road traveled for me. A lot of ups and downs. A lot of falls and me getting back up. But I think all of that has been worth it for me to be able to get to this moment.” — Astros starter Ronel Blanco

Ronel Blanco and Power of Baseball Belief

All seven of Blanco’s strikeouts come via the changeup, but that does not even begin to tell the true story of this no-hitter, the seventh in this Golden Era of Astros baseball that coincides with when Jim Crane bought the franchise and set new standards of expectations throughout every layer of the organization. No, maybe the most remarkable thing about Blanco’s no-hitter is how it lifts so many other people up too.

Yainer Diaz gets a literal boost, but he’s hardly the only one. Blanco gets Espada his first career managerial win, no small moment for another scraper who worked so hard to get here too. Espada instantly becomes a fun trivia question answer too, the first MLB manager to get his first career win in a no-hitter.

“It’s about Blanco,” Espada insists afterwards. “Blanco should get the lineup card. It’s about him.”

It is also about Diaz, the second-year catcher whose game calling and pitcher handling was questioned by former manager Dusty Baker. Astros owner Jim Crane expressed some of his frustration over Diaz not playing more last season in a one-on-one interview with PaperCity this spring and Diaz guiding Blanco through this game — with the nerves rising by the inning — says plenty about his abilities.

The pitcher only shakes off Diaz twice in his 105 pitch no-hitter. This is very much a victory for the catcher, who hits two of the Astros five home runs in this game, too.

“In the fifth inning I was like, ‘Oh, he’s throwing a no-hitter.’ I know you can’t say it. But I was saying it to all the guys. I’m like as long as I don’t tell him, we’re good. But I kept saying it in the dugout. ‘He’s throwing a no-hitter.’ ” — Astros shortstop Jeremy Peña 

Ronel Blanco’s night pulls Mauricio Dubon and Jose Abreu in too. Dubon replaces Jose Altuve at second base before the eighth inning and is immediately presented with the toughest defensive play of the game so far. Blue Jays catcher Alejandro Kirk sends a little bouncing shot that deflects off Blanco’s instinctively outstretched glove, changing its trajectory, and putting the no-hitter in some jeopardy. . .

No worry, there is No Doubt Dubon adjusting to the ball, scooping it up and still throwing out the slow Kirk with some room to spare.

In the ninth inning, first baseman Jose Abreu has to dive to his right, across the infield dirt, to get to a Cavan Biggio grounder before it can get through. Abreu makes the stop and flips the ball to Blanco in time for the 26th out.

“The play had to be made,” Abreu says simply. “That’s the only thing I was thinking about.”

Everyone feels like part of Ronel Blanco’s unlikely dream night because he is such an everyman. When the last out is secured on the no-hitter, Diaz gets his lift, Yordan Alvarez chases Blanco with a little water bottle, Justin Verlander (he of 509 career starts) can’t stop smiling, Jeremy Peña is safe from baseball’s relentless superstition enforcers and this proud team that hadn’t won a game that counted since last October 21 is jumping up and down together again.

The Magic is Back at Minute Maid. Maybe Ronel Blanco is the perfect person, the only person, who could do that.