Northwest Arkansas No-Hitter: Chris Dwyer Leads the Way

What started as a simple rehab appearance by Greg Holland turned into history as he and three Royals minor leaguers combined to no-hit the Springfield Cardinals Thursday night in a 2-0 win.

Holland started the night with three strikeouts as he makes his way back to health and the Royals bullpen.

Chris Dwyer took over and, despite struggles all year, rolled through 6.2 innings and left after 103 pitches. Brendan Lafferty finished the eighth inning for him and put the feat in the hands of Kendal Volz.

The first batter Volz faced – Jermaine Curtis – ripped a line drive but it was right at shortstop Christian Colon. Two ground outs later and the Naturals celebrated their second no-hitter in team history. The first came last year when Will Smith and Kelvin Herrera combined to shut down Memphis.

This is encouraging for Dwyer, who hasn’t had a lot of encouraging signs since hitting Double A. Coming into the game, he had a 7.46 ERA and was walking six batters per nine innings. At 24 years old, he’s running out of time to show that he can be an impact prospect anymore. Nights like tonight show that, now and then at least, he can be a dominant pitcher.

You can stay current on all the Kings of Kauffman content and news by following us on Twitter, Facebook, or by way of our RSS feed.