8 notes from Snell's incredible no-hitter

This story was excerpted from Maria Guardado’s Giants Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

CINCINNATI -- Blake Snell is always striving to get better.

Even after he struck out a career-high 15 over six scoreless innings against the Rockies on July 27, Snell wasn’t fully satisfied, noting that he still felt like he could take his game to another level.

“I feel good, but there’s obviously better there,” the two-time Cy Young winner said last week.

But even Snell had to admit that he left very little room for improvement on Friday night, when he authored the 18th no-hitter in Giants history in a 3-0 win over the Reds at Great American Ball Park.

“That’s about as better as I can get,” Snell said. “The fastball command is better. The curveball, I can throw it wherever I want to throw it. The changeup is coming around nice. I’m getting excited about that. The slider to lefties is really good. It can get better against righties. But it’s getting there. I have more confidence in it.”

Here are eight other notes from Snell’s unforgettable performance:

• Before he made history, Snell had to sit through an hour-long rain delay. The 31-year-old veteran said he passed the time by “walking around the clubhouse non-stop.”

“The whole time I just didn’t stop moving,” Snell said. “I got ready to go and I was at the end of my routine and then they were like, ‘Delay.’ And I was like, ‘Do you know when?’ And they said no. So then I kept walking around, walking around. I was walking in circles. Go look at the field, come back. But I knew I didn’t want to stop moving.”

• When did Snell’s teammates begin to believe he had a chance to throw a no-no?

“Pitch one,” said Mike Yastrzemski, who caught Elly De La Cruz’s line drive into the right-center-field gap for the final out of the game. “The fastball was so electric today. It had a different life, and he was commanding his curveball and fastball both [unbelievably]. When he’s got his stuff, he’s got a chance to do it every time he goes out there.”

“I didn’t really realize it until the bottom of the sixth,” shortstop Tyler Fitzgerald said. “I looked up and there were no hits. It kind of takes the focus off yourself thinking about somebody else.”

• The Reds, who drew three walks but didn’t advance a single runner past first base, didn’t come particularly close to recording a hit and saw their best chance at a rally end when Jeimer Candelario lined into a double play in the bottom of the fifth.

“The only one they barreled up was the one to [second baseman Casey Schmitt],” Fitzgerald said. “He was keeping everything low. He gets guys off the heater with that curveball. I faced him last year. It’s almost impossible. You really have to guess up there. It’s not like most pitchers where you can kind of react. It’s just a guessing game with him.”

• The hardest contact against Snell might have come from his own teammates, as Logan Webb and Kyle Harrison inadvertently smacked him on the back of the head with the lid of a water cooler after they doused him with an ice bath during his postgame interview with NBC Sports Bay Area.

“It's cold,” Snell said on the broadcast. “I gotta collect my breath. Get a replay of that. That's how you don't do it. They hit me in the head with the dang lid.”

• Snell couldn’t find his hat following the postgame revelry, which included a champagne toast in the visitors' clubhouse, but the location of his orange Nike cleats is no mystery: They’re heading to Cooperstown.

• Webb and Snell became the first Giants starters to deliver back-to-back shutouts since Liván Hernández and Jason Schmidt did so on Aug. 19-20, 2002. It was welcome news for San Francisco’s bullpen, which ranks second in the Majors with 445 1/3 innings pitched this year.

“The bullpen got a three-day vacation,” Snell cracked. “I didn’t see that coming.”

• Reds reliever Nick Martinez, who played with Snell in San Diego, predicted there would be more no-hitters in the ace left-hander’s future.

“I don’t think that will be his only one,” Martinez said. “He’s very capable of doing that. He’s got some electric stuff. When he’s on, he’s extremely difficult to hit.”

• Snell pitched at Great American Ball Park during the 2015 All-Star Futures Game, when he was an up-and-coming prospect with the Rays, but Friday marked his first official start there as a big leaguer.

“I didn’t know that was going to happen,” said Snell, who has now pitched at all 30 Major League ballparks.

Snell’s 114-pitch gem was only the third no-hitter in the 22-year history of Great American Ball Park, the first of which was Homer Bailey’s no-no against the Giants, on July 2, 2013.