Bryce Miller lost his no-hit bid in the seventh inning Thursday night, but by then the Seattle Mariners right-hander had already turned the game into a duel the Los Angeles Angels could not solve for most of the night. Nolan Schanuel led off the seventh with a bloop single to right field, ending the bid after Miller had carried it through six innings.
That is why Miller’s name is drawing attention now. He reached the seventh with seven strikeouts, no walks and 50 strikes among his 69 pitches, a profile that left little room for the Angels to get comfortable at the plate. Even after the no-hitter ended, he got through the seventh with a 1-0 lead, which tells you how little the game had bent against him.
The outing mattered because it came in Miller’s season debut after a strained left oblique muscle in spring training pushed his start back until mid-May. He entered at 3-2 with a 1.97 ERA, and the numbers fit what the night showed: a pitcher working ahead, missing bats, and forcing the Angels to wait for a mistake that never really arrived until Schanuel finally found the softest possible opening.
There was one uneasy moment before that, though. Denzer Guzmán reached second on a throwing error by J.P. Crawford with two outs in the fourth inning, the kind of defensive crack that can turn a no-hit effort brittle. It did not become a hit, but it did put a runner in scoring position and reminded both dugouts that a no-hitter is always one bounce from looking different. The Angels then had another runner in the seventh when Guzmán followed Schanuel with a single, yet Miller still preserved the lead and kept the game on his terms.
The shape of Thursday night also carried a strange symmetry. Angels rookie Walbert Ureña had his own no-hitter through five innings before Crawford doubled to lead off the sixth. That left both teams chasing the same ghost for part of the night, and it underlined how rare these games are even when one side finally breaks through. Seattle’s most recent no-hitter had belonged to James Paxton in Toronto on May 8, 2018, while the Angels had not been no-hit since Sept. 11, 1999, when Eric Milton shut them down in a 7-0 loss at Minnesota.
What remains most important is that Miller’s night did not look like a fluke built on luck. He threw strikes, avoided walks and stayed ahead deep enough to carry a no-hit bid into the seventh, which is the kind of effort that changes how a rotation looks in the days after it happens. For now, the unresolved piece is the result that followed the seventh inning, but Miller had already done the part that matters for a pitcher trying to reestablish himself after a delayed start.
