Jakob Junis was on and his manager didn't even realize it.
The 25-year-old Kansas City Royals right-hander carried a no-hitter into the seventh inning of Monday night's 10-0 demolition of the Seattle Mariners before Dan Vogelbach squibbed a single up the middle. He finished the inning before being lifted ahead of the eighth.
Manager Ned Yost thought his young righty was laboring in the fifth inning, and told bench coach Dale Sveum that he would pull him from the game if he continued to do so. He didn't know Junis had yet to allow a hit.
"Dale thought I was kidding," Yost told Dave Skretta of the Associated Press, "but I honestly had no idea."
Yost was more focused on his pitcher's mechanics than how many individual baserunners he was allowing to reach.
"I was paying attention to the score, but I wasn’t paying attention to how many hits they had," Yost said. "I looked up and saw he had a no-hitter and I was completely oblivious to it."
Junis was not about to leave the game had Yost made the call to pull him before allowing a hit, either.
"I would have had to tell him to go back," Junis said.
Junis has come out of the gate very strongly, and has yet to allow an earned run over his first two starts. He's 2-0, and has allowed only four hits over 14 innings to kick off a promising sophomore season in the bigs.
