Hello Baseball Fans,
Recently, Max Scherzer of the Washington Nationals, racked up a whole bunch of strikeouts. Now, that’s not a surprise or hardly even news at all. However, it was the 2nd time in his career that he threw a praised ‘Immaculate Inning’. Some may wonder, what makes for an Immaculate Inning? We all know a Perfect Game is defined as no hits, walks, errors or any reward that allows one batter to reach first base. However, the Immaculate Inning and Perfect Game have nearly nothing in common other than both being ‘perfect’ in their own way. Know what I mean? Yeah, I didn’t think so. Hang on.
The Immaculate Inning consists of nine pitches that are strikes and result in three strikeouts. Three up, three down. Good Morning, Good Afternoon, and Good Night. Three times. It makes sense since the first goal of pitching is to throw strikes. However, some would make the case for three pitches resulting in an Immaculate Inning since that is the perceived fewest number of pitches necessary to complete an inning. We say ‘perceived’ because with today’s rules you could elect to throw zero pitches to the first 2 batters by intentionally walking them (pitch-outs are no longer required) and then throw one pitch to the third batter and induce the ole triple play. That’d be SOMETHING!!
In MLB history, there have been 90 Immaculate Innings with only one known to be prior to the start of the Modern Era (1900), tossed by John Clarkson in 1892. The National League claims 55 and the A.L. with 35. In the Modern Era, there have been 166 MORE no-hitters than Immaculate Innings, which we shall now designate as I.I. WOW, crazy!!! Only five pitchers have more than one I.I. Scherzer just joined the list that includes Hall Of Famers Randy Johnson, Nolan Ryan, and Lefty Grove. And that leaves one more guy. Another HOFer, of course. Sandy Koufax is the only pitcher with three I.I.s to his credit. Koufax accomplished the feat once each year from ’62 to ’64. Even THAT was three in a ROW. Perfect–er Immaculate, whatever!!
There have been 20 I.I.s from 2014 thru Scherzer’s second and that includes 8 in 2017 alone. That’s another sign of the current times of wiffing with no fear and power arms as both starters and bullpen ammunition. There were exactly zero I.I.s from after Grove’s second one in 1928 (Grove is only guy with 2 in same season) until Billy Hoeft of Detroit spun one in 1953. And there have only been two I.I.s in extra innings. The first one came in the 12th inning of a game in 1923 from Sloppy Thurston of the ChiSox and then Juan Perez of the Phillies in the 10th inning in 2011.
As mentioned, Max Scherzer recently really joined some elite company. It’s pretty cool to witness some odd-ball But not only did he become the 5th guy on this list of multiple I.I.s, he became just the 4th member of the Multiple No-Hitter/Multiple I.I. list joining Koufax, Ryan, and Johnson of course (there were no no-no’s for Lefty). Does Scherzer have another I.I. in him to join Koufax? Or how about another No-No to also join Koufax along with Bob Feller and Ryan and Cy Young and Larry Corcoran on the Three Or More No-Hitter list? Time will tell. Hopefully he does and perhaps it will be just….perfect or immaculate? Or perhaps both??
Later Baseball Fans.