Since Coors opened in 1995, 1,892 games ago, there has been one no-hitter, pitched by Hideo Nomo of the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1996.
And there have been only 14 shutouts in Coors.
Montas, an unlikely suspect because the Reds had lost six of his last seven starts, took a no-hitter into the seventh inning.
And the shutout was intact until the ninth when Buck Farmer gave up two hits and a run.
Montas was virtually untouchable throughout. The Rockies did not hit a ball out of the infield until No. 9 hitter Hunter Goodman flied to shallow right field with two outs in the fifth inning — 18 batters into the game.
With the win, the Reds clinched the series, their first series win in Coors since 2015. When the series began, Coors was a House of Horrors for the Reds, a 45-70 record.
Montas’ no-hitter ended in the seventh, a solid double up the left field gap by Elias Diaz.
For his seven innings, Montas gave up no runs, just the one hit, walked two and struck out a season-best nine.
He sloughed aside the first 10 Rockies and the perfect game possibility ended with two outs in the fourth when he walked Ryan McMahon on a full count with two outs.
And when did he knew he had The Right Stuff?
“The first inning ... I hadn’t really been striking out people, so I felt like after I struck out those two batters in the first inning, I thought, ‘OK, my stuff is really fine tonight.’ I just focused on attacking and let my stuff play,” he said in a post-game interview room session.
Montas had the Rockies rocking on their back feet with some futile swings.
“I think I threw really good sliders and cutters,” he said. “My four-seam (fastball) was really good.”
Montas, who hadn’t won a game since his first two starts of the season, was well aware that there was a big fat ‘0′ on the hit column next to Colorado’s line score.
“I knew it but I was just trying to attack the guys and go as long as I can,” he said. “If a no-hitter comes, thank God. I threw seven innings and, like I say, I’m always been a guy who tries to go as long as I can to try to give the team its best chance to win.”
The Reds attacked Colorado starter Ty Blach early and often by scoring a run in the first, a run in the third and two in the fourth en route to winning their seventh game in the last 10.
The game began with two bunts. Leadoff hitter Stuart Fairchild bunted the game’s first pitch up the third base line, a bunt so good the Rockies didn’t make a play on it.
On the second pitch of the game, Elly De La Cruz bunted Fairchild to second and he scored on Spencer Steer’s two-out double.
De La Cruz made it 2-0 in the third with a two-out, full count 448-foot home run to straight-away center that landed in the tall shrubbery behind the wall, his team-leading 10th homer.
Tyler Stephenson opened the fourth with an opposite-field double into the right field corner and Jonathan India was hit by a pitch.
That brought up rookie Blake Dunn, making his major league debut. In the second inning he had his first at bat and swung at the first pitch and hit into a double play.
He almost hit into another one, but the former all-state high school quarterback and track star in Michigan, hustled to first and beat the relay throw.
A double play would have ended the inning. Dunn’s hustle enabled Luke Maile and Fairchild to produce back-to-back two-out run-scoring singles and a 4-0 lead.
Although the Reds didn’t score after the fourth, they collected 10 hits and every starter but Dunn contributed a hit, just as every starter had at least one hit during a 13-3 win Monday night.
Fairchild had two hits, Stephenson had two hits and Spencer Steer had two hits, his fourth straight multi-hit game, longest of his career.
Maile and Montas work as a team and worked in the bullpen between starts, honing the Montas cutter.
Will Benson threw out a positive quote when he said, “Don’t let the Reds get hot, man.”
Well, they’re hot. After taking two of three in Chicago and the first two in Denver, the Reds have won back-to-back series for the first time since the first two series of the season.
“That sounds awesome, man,” said Maile. “We’ve been battling for most of the year and it really hasn’t been paying off for us.
“We’ve had some bad luck halfway through the year, but the guys have worked really hard and the results are starting to come.
“Montas? Outstanding tonight. Everything was working off his fastball,” said Maile. “It’s hard to put your finger on it, but I think his fastball, it always begins and ends with that for him.
“He has put a lot of hard work in the last two weeks, working on some off-speed stuff, mainly a split-finger, so if I had to point to one thing, I’d say it was his split,” said Maile.
Of the possibililty of a no-hitter, Maile said, “Honestly, in this place you just try to keep touchdowns off the board so I wasn’t worried about it. But I was definitely aware.”
So were the Rockies.
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