Last night New York Yankees’ righthander Domingo Germán pitched a perfect game against the Oakland Athletics in the Oakland Coliseum. It was only the 24th perfect game in major league history and the first since 2012. The flawless Yankee hurler used only 99 pitches to set down the A’s compiling 9 strikeouts in the process. He used an awesome curveball fifty percent of the time and completely corralled the Oakland batting order. For the most part it was an easy game for the Yankee defense with only a nice, backhanded stop by first baseman Anthony Rizzo needed to preserve the gem. The New York offense came to life providing 11 runs, the most ever in a perfect game. Yankee manager Aaron Boone called Germán’s performance a masterpiece. Catcher Kyle Higashioka agreed saying it all came together for Germán and he was amazing. What is most surprising is that Germán had been awful in his last two games allowing 17 runs in 5 innings. He is the only pitcher ever to pitch a perfect game after giving up ten runs in his prior game. But that was all in the past as the crafty Dominican was in complete control last night.
It was the fourth perfect game pitched by a Yankee. The first one was the memorable performance by Don Larsen in game five of the 1956 World Series against the Brooklyn Dodgers. Almost 43 years later in 1998 David Wells spun a perfect game on Beanie Baby Day at Yankee Stadium. David Cone followed up the next year with a perfect game against the Expos. Ironically that performance occurred on Yogi Berra Day at the Stadium and Larsen was in attendance.
Germán, having been born in the Dominican Republic, is only the third pitcher born outside of the USA to pitch a perfect game; Félix Hernández in 2012 for the Seattle Mariners was born in Venezuela and Dennis Martínez in 1990 pitching for the Montreal Expos was born in Nicaragua.
Of the previous five perfect games three came in 2012 and two in 2010. Hernández pitched his against Tampa Bay on August 15, 2012, Matt Cain against Houston on June 13, 2012, and Philip Humber against Seattle on April 21, 2012. The perfect games hurled in 2010 were by Roy Halladay against Miami on May 29 and Dallas Braden against Tampa Bay on May 9.
It seems as if perfect games occur in bunches so be on the look-out this year!
On a personal note, those of you who are into Fantasy Baseball will appreciate this. Domingo Germán is on my fantasy team and based on his recent miserable performances I strongly considered benching him this week. But I saw that his start this week was against Oakland, the team with the worst offense in the majors. For that reason, fortunately, I kept Germán active this week. What could be worse than to have one of your fantasy pitchers inactive while pitching a perfect game? Whew! That was a close one.
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