Christian Vázquez caught every pitch of a combined no-hitter in Game 4 of the 2022 World Series, guiding four Houston Astros pitchers through 141 pitches in a 5-0 victory over Philadelphia at Citizens Bank Park on November 2, 2022. It was the second no-hitter in World Series history and the first ever accomplished by multiple pitchers.
"That's crazy man, that's a war," Vázquez said after the game.
Houston entered the night trailing the series 1-2, one game removed from a 0-7 loss in which Philadelphia hit five home runs off Astros pitching. The response was zero hits allowed across nine innings and 3 hours and 25 minutes. Five runs in the top of the fifth inning gave the pitching staff a cushion. The rest was execution.
"We started this before the game," Vázquez said. "We play for this and make it like that special is even better."
The only previous no-hitter in World Series play belonged to Don Larsen, who threw a perfect game for the New York Yankees on October 8, 1956. His catcher was Yogi Berra. Sixty-six years separated the two games. What changed was the structure of pitching itself.
Berra caught one arm. He learned one set of tendencies, one release point, one rhythm across 97 pitches. Vázquez caught four — each with a different arsenal, a different sequencing logic, a different set of counts to manage. The shift from complete games to specialized bullpens quietly changed the catcher's job. In a combined no-hitter, the catcher is the only constant.
"Special," Vázquez said when asked about joining Berra as the only catchers to receive a World Series no-hitter. "We're going to remember this game forever."
Cristian Javier started and carried the weight. He threw six hitless innings on 97 pitches, 63 for strikes, walking two and striking out nine. Vázquez kept calling the four-seam fastball.
"The best possible I ever see catch him," Vázquez said. "You can call it anytime you want and you're gonna be effective. You can call it whoever is in the on the batter's box and it's gonna be awesome."
Javier's four-seamer arrived on a rising plane. Vázquez described it simply: "The vertical going up — you never is going to see a fastball of him going down." That quality allowed Vázquez to sequence the pitch against left-handed and right-handed hitters alike without adjusting location strategy.
Ryan Pressly called Javier "the most underrated pitcher in the league."
Bryan Abreu entered in the seventh and needed 15 pitches to record three outs — all strikeouts. The contrast with Javier was immediate. Different velocity band, different movement profile. After six innings of Javier's rising fastball, Philadelphia hitters faced a different set of problems with no time to adjust. Rafael Montero handled the eighth in 10 pitches, one strikeout. From the fourth inning onward, the Astros retired 17 consecutive batters. Of the final 18 outs, 11 came by strikeout.
Pressly took the ninth. With one out, he walked Kyle Schwarber — the only baserunner of the inning.
"A lot of anxiety," Vázquez said of the ninth. "We're facing good team, great lineup. We execute every pitch."
Kyle Tucker caught a line drive about a foot off the ground for the second out. The final play was a ground ball off the bat of J.T. Realmuto to Alex Bregman at third, who threw to first for the last out.
"As soon as that ground ball hit Breggy's glove I was pretty pumped," Pressly said. He had tried not to think about the no-hitter while warming up. "You try not to pay attention to it."
Pressly pointed to the pitching staff's relationship with the coaching infrastructure. "They find the things that we're really good at and they try to expand on it and try to make us better at those things," he said. The bullpen's self-image matched the performance. "We're so loose down there," Pressly said. "Just want to have fun."
Vázquez described the bullpen the same way he described everything else that night — as a collective fact. "The best bullpen in baseball right now. Close your eyes, they're gonna do the job, and they did."
Vázquez had arrived in Houston in an August 2022 trade from Boston, where he had spent the bulk of his major league career. With the Astros, he settled into a role as Javier's primary catcher while Martín Maldonado handled most other starts. Approximately three months separated the trade from the World Series.
Every one of his postgame answers used "we." Not once did Vázquez frame the achievement as personal. Asked about the historic nature of the night, he returned to the series itself: "We're happy to split the series and we can finish home."
The no-hitter is recorded under the names of four pitchers: Javier, Abreu, Montero, Pressly. All 141 pitches landed in the same glove.
Source: Postgame comments