Shun Yamaguchi threw his first career no-hitter on Friday, when the Yomiuri Giants right-hander stopped the Chunichi Dragons in a 5-0 Central League win.

"I began thinking about it around the sixth inning," said Yamaguchi, who joined the Giants as a free agent ahead of the 2017 season and could have come up short without some solid plays from his fielders. "Of course I'm happy, but I'm even happier that the team won."

Yamaguchi (8-6), who has not lost to the Dragons since August 2015 when he pitched for the DeNA BayStars, got most of his swinging strikes on pitches Chunichi hitters chased out of the zone.

Yamaguchi did not get to three balls in a count until there was one out in the seventh inning, when he issued his only walk. The Dragons then mounted their scoring threat, as Yohei Oshima went to second on a wild pitch. Giants first baseman Kazuma Okamoto made a good stop to prevent an infield single, getting the first out as Oshima moved up a base.

Oshima, however, tried to score on a sharp grounder to Casey McGehee at third base and was cut down at the plate, helping Yamaguchi extricate himself from the jam. It was a huge boost for Yamaguchi, who had allowed seven runs over two innings in his start the week before, while the Giants had lost six straight.

"McGehee made a good play to keep it alive," said Yamaguchi -- relevant because Japanese baseball does not recognize non shutouts as no-hitters.

"I'd been thinking I had to get a strikeout, but afterward I had the sense that things were turning my way, so I had a chance. Turning pro and then throwing a no-hitter or a perfect game has been a dream of mine, so I'm happy to achieved one of those," he said.

(Shun Yamaguchi)

The Giants took the lead against Daisuke Yamai (3-4) in the second inning. Jorge Martinez, who had been signed that day from Yomiuri's developmental roster, homered in his first at-bat. Shinnosuke Shigenobu made it a 2-0 game in the sixth, when he led off with a triple and scored on a McGehee single.

McGehee kept Yamaguchi's no-hit bid alive in the eighth, when he leaped to catch a line drive off the bat of Atsushi Fujii, and the Giants No. 3 hitter singled in the eighth and came home on Okamoto's 18th home run, a three-run shot that put the victory on ice.

In the ninth inning, the 31-year-old Yamaguchi got three relatively easy groundouts to lock up the no-hitter on 103 pitches. He struck out five and walked one.

Yamai, who threw the CL's last no-hitter, allowed two runs on six hits and a walk over seven innings to take the tough loss. The right-hander's August 2013 no-hitter came against the BayStars, although Yamaguchi did not pitch in that game.