August 25, 2018: Matt Crownover throws Potomac Nationals’ first no-hitter

The Potomac Nationals and Lynchburg Hillcats met on Saturday, August 25, 2018, occupying first and second place respectively in the High-A Carolina League’s Northern Division. On the mound for the Nationals was Matthew Crownover, a 25-year-old left-hander in his fourth professional season. The Georgia native had won 2015 Atlantic Coast Conference Pitcher of the Year honors at Clemson University,1 and the Washington Nationals had chosen him in the sixth round of that June’s amateur draft. By the time of his start against the Hillcats, a Cleveland Indians affiliate, Crownover had made 71 professional starts, winning 18 games, losing 26, and reaching as high as Double-A Harrisburg (Eastern League).

Pfitzner Stadium, in Woodbridge, Virginia, had hosted the Carolina League since the Pittsburgh Pirates moved their affiliation from Alexandria to Prince William County, about 25 miles south, in 1984. It was a no-nonsense ballpark, with aluminum bleachers and a small concourse with concession stands, restrooms, and entrances to clubhouses underneath the seats.

One member of Potomac’s 2018 club had already reached the big-league Nationals. Nineteen-year-old Juan Soto had spent 15 games with the PNats in April and May, batting .371 with seven home runs, on his way to making his major-league debut on May 20. 

In their weeklong home-and-home series, the Nationals had lost two games on Tuesday and Wednesday in Lynchburg (approximately 160 miles from Woodbridge), and had won Thursday and Friday nights at home, setting up another dogfight for bragging rights. The 5,788 fans at Northwest Federal Field at the Pfitz settled in at 6:30 P.M. on a calm, cloudy evening. A draw may well have been the Tanner Roark bobblehead giveaway, and a performance by Mad Chad the Chainsaw Juggler. (Roark had played for the big-league Nationals since 2013. He had thrown four innings in a rehab assignment at Potomac in 2015 and pitched four scoreless innings for the US national team in the 2017 World Baseball Classic; hence the bobblehead with an eagle on its shoulder.2)

Crownover recorded a three-up, three-down first inning on a fly out, bunt popout, and groundout. In the bottom of the inning, Lynchburg starter Zach Plesac – the nephew of retired 18-year major-league veteran Dan Plesac and later a major leaguer with Cleveland and the Los Angeles Angels – took the mound. After Plesac yielded a single and a walk, the PNats scored two runs on a passed ball by catcher Gavin Collins, scoring Bryan Mejia and 18-year-old Luis Garcia, Jr., the Nationals’ youngest player.

In the second frame, Crownover walked José Medina with one out, then retired the final two batters. He recorded another one-two-three inning in the third. In the bottom of the third, Potomac added another run on a single by García, making it 3-0. Both sides traded three-up, three-down innings in the fourth inning.

The fifth inning brought some excitement, but no scoring. Crownover hit Jorma Rodriguez in the top half, and the Nationals’ Telmito Agustín was caught stealing in the bottom half. Crownover settled down in the sixth and seventh innings, again allowing no baserunners.

In the bottom of the seventh, Lynchburg pitcher Leandro Linares replaced Plesac, and Potomac added a run on Agustin’s double, scoring Rhett Wiseman with Potomac’s fourth run. These developments chased Linares off the mound. Micah Miniard replaced him and threw a wild pitch and hit the next batter, Mejia, but finally retired the side on a groundout by Ian Sagdal.

Crownover had another clean inning in the top of the eighth. In the bottom half, Potomac added three more runs on an RBI double by Wiseman and Nick Banks’ two-run single.

By the top of the ninth, only a few people in the crowd of nearly 5,800 had left as whispers and insinuations of what was happening had been spreading since the sixth inning. Fans had no interest in jinxing the possible first no-hitter by a Potomac Nationals team. The first Hillcat batter, Tyler Friis, flied out on a 2-and-2 count after fouling off three out of five pitches. The second, Dillon Persinger, walked on five pitches. The third, Trenton Brooks, struck out on the fourth pitch, a foul tip. The fourth, Nolan Jones, walked on Crownover’s sixth pitch to place runners on first and second base for Lynchburg. The crowd stood up for Crownover, clapping, holding their breaths, and doing their best to give him the strength to get through just one more batter. Just one more.

Gavin Collins came to the plate as Lynchburg’s last hope. Crownover’s first pitch was a ball. Collins hit the second pitch, Crownover’s 110th of the game, to Monasterio in left field. The pitcher threw his hands in the air as the ball flew into the outfield. Once ball hit glove, Nationals mobbed Crownover on the mound.3 The pitching line was outstanding: a 7-0 shutout, 110 pitches with 68 thrown for strikes, and only four baserunners allowed.

The next afternoon, Lynchburg won the rubber match, and the two teams continued their dogfight atop the Northern Division, meeting again in the league semifinals in early September. Crownover again beat the Hillcats to even the series, this time prevailing 4-1 and allowing one earned run in five innings with four walks and six strikeouts.42 The PNats advanced past the Hillcats, meeting the Buies Creek (North Carolina) Astros in a one-game championship before the impending Hurricane Florence. Buies Creek prevailed, 2-1 in 11 innings, bringing the season to a bittersweet conclusion.5

After Crownover’s no-hitter, he and Wiseman were named the Carolina League’s pitcher and player of the week. The club’s previous Woodbridge incarnation, the Prince William Cannons, recorded two no-hitters in 1995, the first by Brian Woods and Archie Vasquez in a combined effort on April 8, and the second by Rich Pratt in a seven-strikeout outing against the Frederick Keys on May 20. Fernando Gonzales recorded the franchise’s only other no-no for the Alexandria Dukes in 1982.6

Many things have changed since that night in August 2018. The major-league Nationals won the 2019 World Series; the Potomac Nationals left Woodbridge and their small, outdated (if personable) ballpark for a new stadium in Fredericksburg; and the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the minor leagues in 2020. The following year, minor-league realignment changed the landscape of the Carolina League, marked by its demotion to low-A from Class A Advanced and its temporary renaming as the Low-A East League. (The league reverted to the Carolina League name after a year.) The Nationals released Crownover in the fall of 2018 after he finished the year with five wins, nine losses, and an ERA of 4.42, ending his professional career after four seasons.

As of 2025, several players on both sides had moved on to play in the major leagues. In addition to Zach Plesac on the Hillcats, Nolan Jones finished fourth in the 2023 National League Rookie of the Year balloting with the Colorado Rockies.74 On the PNats, Luis García, Jr. debuted with Washington in 2020 and became a regular in the Nationals’ infield by 2022. Catcher Jakson Reetz had call-ups to the Nationals in 2021 and the Giants in 2024. Andruw Montasterio joined the Milwaukee Brewers in 2023.

Author’s Note

In the late 2010s, the author lived in Woodbridge, Virginia, about five minutes from Pfitzner Stadium. He remembers watching this game to the end with both of his kids, and as Crownover recorded his last outs, locking arms and saying nothing until the last out, when the crowd – such as it was on a sleepy summer Saturday night – erupted into the joy of knowing that they had seen something special, whether they had been fans for decades or only for a few years.

What sticks in the mind about this game is that despite the lack of amenities in the ballpark – the team was squarely in the middle of a yearslong effort to move into a more modern ballpark that eventually came to pass in 2020 – the joy of baseball or really any sport is the opportunity to see people who are very good at something, to share camaraderie in the experience, and to feel a connection to other people. It’s probably not a stretch to say that almost 5,800 people had that wonderful experience that night.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Carl Riechers and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Photos courtesy of Adam Korengold.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for relevant records and other information. He drew play-by-play information from MILB.com’s Gameday page for the game.

https://www.milb.com/gameday/hillcats-vs-nationals/2018/08/25/546253/final/wrap

Notes

1 Crownover Earns ACC Pitcher of the Year Honor,” Anderson (South Carolina) Independent-Mail, May 19, 2015: 2B.

2 “Tanner Roark – Potomac Nationals,” Bullpen Bobbleheads, accessed June 4, 2025, https://bullpenbobbles.com/tanner-roark-potomac-nationals-8-25-2018/.

3 “Crownover Throws First No-Hitter in Potomac History,” YouTube video (Carolina Sports Link), 0:23, accessed June 4, 2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irbYAHZZWuw.

4 ”Crownover Helps Potomac Even Up Series.” MiLB.com, September 6, 2018, https://www.milb.com/news/matthew-crownover-helps-potomac-nationals-even-up-semifinals-293640264.

5 Patrick Obley, “Champions: Astros Win Carolina League Championship,” Fayetteville (North Carolina) Observer, September 12, 2018, https://www.fayobserver.com/story/sports/mlb/2018/09/12/astros-win-carolina-league-championship/10731285007/?gnt-cfr=1&gca-cat=p&gca-uir=true&gca-epti=z111309u111909e002800v111309&gca-ft=253&gca-ds=sophi.

6 Jon Siegel, “Cannons 8, Avalanche 0: Pr. William Gets First No-Hitter,” Washington Post, April 8, 1995, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/sports/1995/04/09/cannons-8-avalanche-0/f6126f4c-412d-4545-ac4e-1b4b1fd4dead/; Chad Capellman, “Cannons’ Pratt Pitches No-Hitter Against Keys.” Washington Post, May 20, 1995, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/sports/1995/05/20/cannons-pratt-pitches-no-hitter-against-keys/409ef3a5-1e38-4b35-bf40-03adcc68dbb9/.

7 Corbin Carroll of the Arizona Diamondbacks was voted NL Rookie of the Year in 2023.