TORONTO — Sixteen strikeouts in seven innings pitched or nine innings pitched with no hits?

How about both?

Following the most impressive outing of his career in which he struck out 16 Oakland A’s batter in just seven innings pitched, James Paxton did something even better. The kid raised in Ladner, British Columbia, tossed his first career no-hitter in his home country of Canada on Tuesday night.

The score? A 5-0 win for the Mariners. But the most important figure on that electric monstrosity of a scoreboard high above center field at the Rogers Centre was the zero in the hit column.

The last Canadian-born pitcher to throw a no-hitter was Dick Fowler, who no-hit the St. Louis Browns on Sept. 9, 1945 Philadelphia. Paxton’s no-hitter is the sixth in franchise history, and he is the first to do it away from Seattle. The last pitcher to accomplish the feat was Hisashi Iwakuma on Aug. 12, 2015.

The crowd of 20,513 gave Paxton a standing ovation following the final out — a ground ball to Kyle Seager.

In any no-hitter, there usually needs to be at least one play who saves it. Seager provided the save with two outs in the seventh inning. Seager made a difficult diving stop on Kevin Pillar’s hard ground ball down the third-base line. In an instant, he was on his feet firing to first. Ryon Healy dug the one hopper at first and the speedy Pillar was out. Inning over. No-hitter saved.

The Mariners started doing damage against Blue Jays starter Marcus Stroman their second time through the lineup. After Ben Gamel drew a leadoff walk in the first inning, Dee Gordon followed with a double just inside the first-base bag. Robinson Cano scored Gamel from third on a ground ball to first and Nelson Cruz plated Gordon on a looping single to right field to make it 2-0.

The Mariners pushed the lead to 4-0 in the third inning. Healy led off the inning with a single and Mike Zunino gave another example of his raw power, driving a 91-mph fastball that was off the outside of the plate over the wall in right field for a two-run homer.

Mitch Haniger made it 5-0 in the fifth inning with a sacrifice fly.