Domingo Germán’s perfect game: Weird & Wild rundown of … the least likely perfecto ever?

I don’t say this lightly, but … it might have been the Weirdest and Wildest week of this whole season.

The first 25-1 game in the history of baseball busted out! … A Shohei Shoh for the ages busted out! … An electrifying cycle in Cincinnati busted out — in the midst of a Home Run Derby! … And if the Mets were going to Met, they found a whole new way to do that, even for them!

But because it was that kind of week, we can’t begin this Weird and Wild adventure with any of that … because Wednesday night in Oakland, we got mesmerized by …

Domingo’s perfect storm

(Stan Szeto / USA Today)

Have I mentioned lately that the best thing about baseball is … It. Makes. No. Sense? On that note, let’s talk about Domingo Germán’s where-the-heck-did-that-come-from perfect game Wednesday night at the soon-to-be-defunct Oakland Coliseum.

Was it a game that made no sense? Or was it a game that made, well, perfect sense? Or was it all of the above?

Here at Weird and Wild World HQ, we live for moments like this one. So what makes it such perfect Weird and Wild material? Here’s what:

1) Was this the least likely perfecto ever? If you didn’t see this coming, join the millions of attentive Americans just like you. Could Germán’s last start before this one possibly have been more imperfect?

It happened six days earlier, at Yankee Stadium against Seattle. And here’s how Weird and Wild that one was:

Germán faced 23 hitters that day, gave up 10 runs in 3 1/3 innings, and never even retired three in a row! Then, in his very next start, he faced 27 A’s and retired all 27 in a row? What the heck.

I asked my friends from STATS Perform if this was as rare as I suspected. Here’s what they reported:

There have been 20 perfect games since 1909. What’s the difference between Germán’s perfecto and the other 19? He’s the only one who faced at least 23 hitters in the previous start and never once retired three in a row … because of course he is!

But if we lower the bar slightly, to 20 batters, then we do have one Domingo parallel. On June 17, 1964, in the start before his legendary Father’s Day perfect game, Jim Bunning pitched to 21 hitters without retiring three in a row. So there’s that.

Except wait! There’s also this: Don Larsen. Before Larsen’s fabled perfect game in Game 5 of the 1956 World Series, he started Game 2. He never retired three in a row in that game — but he was only around to pitch to 10 of them.

So if we want to set the bar at 10, he’s also in this club. But does that mean he was the Domingo Germán of his generation? I don’t think so. Read on …

2) This guy wasn’t quite Domingo Koufax before then either — Then again, Germán’s start before the Seattle debacle also was no predictor of future perfection. In that one, June 16 at Fenway, he faced 15 hitters and seven of them scored. He didn’t retire three in a row at any point in that start, either.

So I asked STATS about that game, too. And no matter how low we set the bar, this doesn’t change. He’s still the only pitcher in modern history to have back-to-back starts without retiring three in a row … and then had a game in which he set down all 27 in a row!

3) You know what’s even more rarified than a perfect game? A start that goes like this: 10 runs, 10 outs, four homers served up.

You know who had one of those starts? That was Mr. Perfection himself, in the start before his perfect game. And here’s how hard it was to spin off that box-score line:

There have been 22 perfect games since 1901 … but only 12 games of 10 runs (or more), four long balls (or more) and 10 outs (or fewer).

And you know what else? The Yankees have thrown four perfect games … but had never before thrown any of those 10-run/four-homer/10-out games … so only Domingo Germán gets to be on both of those Weird/Wild lists!

4) If a guy throws a perfect game and nobody is there to see it … You know how this song goes. And since it was a game played in Oakland, you also know attendance was kinda sparse.

The announced “crowd” was 12,479. We can quibble about whether there were really that many living, breathing humans in the house. But all we have to go on is official attendance. So by that standard …

This wasn’t even the lowest attendance at a perfect game in Oakland! Baseball Reference’s awesome Kenny Jackelen looked that up for me. And it turns out this was only the seventh-lowest known attendance at any perfect game. But would you be shocked to learn that three of those seven happened in Oakland?

(*lowest known attendance at a perfect game since 1901)

5) But what about the Yankees? If you think even a little like I think, I’m worried about you. But it also means you’re no doubt asking right now: Was this the smallest crowd ever to witness a Yankees perfect game? And that answer, according to Jackelen, was: oh yeah — by almost 30,000!

(*only Yankees perfect game not thrown in NYC)

6) Had a guy with a 5.10 ERA ever thrown a perfect game? The last perfect game was twirled by a true ace with a 2.74 ERA (Félix Hernández, in 2012). This one was fired by a man with an ERA almost twice that high — as in 5.10, after 14 starts.

But hey, guess what? That was not a record, even for a Yankee. Germán’s ERA was the second highest by any pitcher who threw a perfect game. The great Katie Sharp of Baseball Reference reports that the record (since earned runs became an official stat, in 1913) was 5.23, by David Wells, before his 1998 perfecto. That was just through eight starts, however.

So who’s the true record-holder? I’m staying out of this!

7) Will there now be a Domingo Germán Award? The last perfect game tossed against the A’s — 119 years and three home cities ago — was authored by a gentleman you may have heard of, Mr. Denton True “Cy” Young. That was on May 5, 1904. We won’t be queuing up the video of that one for you due to extremely technical difficulties.

But I know what you’re thinking: How similar were Cy Young and Domingo Germán anyway? Hmmm. Turns out, not that similar!

Career wins by Cy going into that game — 380
Career wins by Germán going into this game — 30

8) What are the odds that Germán throws six more no-hitters? I’m thinking they’re low. But why do I bring this up? Because the last individual no-hitter thrown against the A’s before this one was the work of Mr. Seven No-Nos, Nolan Ryan, on June 11, 1990.

Career wins and K’s by Ryan going into that game — 293 wins, 5,238 K’s
Career wins and K’s by Germán going into this game — 30 wins, 498 K’s

But somehow, Domingo Germán did that thing that Cy Young once did, that Catfish Hunter once did, that David Cone and Don Larsen once did, no matter what all the other facts swirling around the universe told you was likely to happen. It makes no sense whatsoever, right? Except for one thing. It’s …

Baseball!

Perfect game stuff I loved this week

(Stan Szeto / USA Today)

In other fun perfecto news …

ZERO HITS OFF NO. ZERO – As The Athletic’s Chris Kirschner wrote in his great profile of Germán, this guy switched his uniform number to zero this year. And that worked out well — since he just became the first Zero Hero ever to allow zero hits in any kind of no-hitter.

Lowest previous number? Amazingly, the great Dirk Lammers of NoNoHitters.com actually keeps track of that. And he reports there had never been a no-hitter by anybody wearing a number in the single digits. The old record: No. 11, by Hideo Nomo and Dwight Gooden.

So who’s No. 1? That led me to ask Kenny Jackelen the Weird and Wild question of the day: If this was the first zero-hitter by a No. 0, who’s the last No. 1 to throw a one-hitter?

Sadly, that answer turned out to be … nobody (in the Baseball Reference database). So what about No. 2’s to throw a two-hitter? Nobody there, either!

OK, how about three-hitters by No. 3? Bingo! We’ve had two of those — by Clayton Richard (Aug. 16, 2017) and Syl Johnson (Aug. 26, 1940). You’re welcome!

THESE WEREN’T THE BASH BROTHERS — There once was a time (many times, actually) when the A’s could run out one of the fiercest, most talented lineups in baseball. That time, however, isn’t to be confused with this time.

The A’s had a picturesque record of 21-60 entering this game — and then had a perfect game thrown against them. That .259 win percentage sets the all-time record for lowest by any team heading into a game where they had a perfect game tossed against them.

The old record: ..286, by Lu Blue’s 1922 Tigers, who were 4-10 (.286) when Charlie Robertson perfectoed them for the White Sox on April 30.

THE FIRST NO-NO WAS A PERFECTO — It isn’t every year that the first no-hitter of the season doesn’t arrive until June 28. But here’s what’s really rare:

When the first no-hitter takes that long — and it’s a perfect game.

There has been only one other season when that happened: 1988, when Tom Browning’s Sept. 16 perfect game was the first (and only) no-hitter of that year (H/T Kenny Jackelen).

A PERFECTO IN 4-D — One more from Lammers: The Yankees have pitched the most perfect games of any franchise (four), and they’ve all been thrown by pitchers whose first name started with a D!

Don Larsen … David Wells … David Cone … Domingo Germán.

Now here’s the name of that game: All the other teams have combined for only two perfect games tossed by pitchers whose names begin with a D: Dallas Braden and Dennis Martinez. These three paragraphs are made to order for the next episode of “Sesame Street.”

WAS FELIX ONCE THE KING OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE? Finally, it didn’t seem as though Félix Hernández pitched all that long ago … until we realized we’d gone over a decade since his perfect game — and nobody had thrown one since.

Between Felix’s 2012 perfect game and Germán’s gem Wednesday, 3,969 days had gone by. Or, as The New York Times’ Tyler Kepner put it in his fabulous piece on Germán’s game, in those 10 seasons in between, a whole bunch of less-than-perfect pitchers combined to throw 22,765 imperfect games. Glad that’s over with!

This week in useless info

(Kirby Lee / USA Today)

THE SHOH MUST GO ON — You know who doesn’t have a multi-homer game this season? Oh, only Vlad Guerrero Jr. … and Bryce Harper … and Giancarlo Stanton … among many others.

And you know who doesn’t have a double-digit strikeout game on the mound this year? Oh, only Clayton Kershaw … and Justin Verlander … and Corbin Burnes … just to name a few ace types.

But then there’s Shohei Ohtani, who … just for kicks … crammed both of them into the same evening (Tuesday, against the White Sox).

Last American Leaguer to do that: Pedro Ramos, as recently as … July 31, 1963!

Last player to do that and also reach base four times: Joltin’ Jack Stivetts, for the 1890 St. Louis Browns, in a June 10 tussle against the Toledo Maumees. (H/T STATS Perform for that classic!)

THE ARRAEZING — You know what’s cool? A .400 hitter going deep in the last week of June. That’s what’s cool.

So behold Luis Arraez last Saturday against the Pirates. He started the day hitting .402 and then did this …

I don’t know why that got me to wondering how many times we’ve ever seen a .400 hitter (in a qualifying season) thump a home run this late in a season. But I decided to find out.

After way too long a journey on Baseball Reference, I can report: Arraez was only the fourth man in the last 70 years to hit a home run on June 24 or later after entering that game hitting .400 or better. And the other three include a fun smorgasbord of names:

(Source: Baseball Reference)

CENTRALLY LOCATED — It isn’t true that every team in baseball is in the midst of a long winning streak or losing streak at the moment. But it’s felt like it lately. And boy, was that true in the NL Central last week.

Reds: Win 12 in a row.
Pirates: Lose 10 in a row.

You don’t often see two teams in the same division reeling off streaks like that at the same time. But you especially don’t see it when the team on the winning streak had a losing record when that streak began — and the team on the losing streak had a winning record when the streak began.

According to STATS’ Josiah Sukumaran, that’s happened only five times in the entire division-play era (1969-2023):

GIANT KILLERS — Meanwhile out west, the Giants’ magic number was 10. As in … 10 wins in a row … until that streak ended with a messy 10-0 loss to the Padres.

Loyal reader Mark Camp reports it’s the first time a winning streak of 10 games or more has ended with a shutout loss by 10 runs or more since Tim McCarver’s 1977 Phillies ended a 13-game winning streak with a 13-0 loss to Ellis Valentine’s ’77 Expos.

CANNONBALL COMING — But for dramatic ways to pull the plug on a losing streak, you can’t beat the Pirates. They’d lost 10 in a row. They were getting shut out in Miami, 1-0, through eight innings. Then they blew up that shutout and that losing streak with a three-run ninth.

According to my friends from STATS, only three other teams since 1901 have ended a double-digit losing streak that way: shut out through eight, trailing in the ninth, then rally to win.

Jorge Orta’s 1976 White Sox (10 losses in a row) did that in a June 11 game against Kansas City. … Peanuts Lowrey’s 1948 Cubs (10 in a row) did it against the Giants on Sept. 21. … And Pinky May’s 1942 Phillies (13 in a row) sprang a rally like that against the Pirates on Aug. 26.

Clear the decks!

PARTY OF FIVE — How terrifying are the Braves? The Twins apparently ticked them off by taking a 1-0 lead in the top of the first Tuesday — because here’s the long-ball thunder the Braves then unleashed in the first 10 hitters of the game:

Ronald Acuña Jr. — HR
Austin Riley — HR
Sean Murphy — HR
Michael Harris II — HR
Acuña — HR No. 2

So that’s five bombs, just from the first 10 hitters … and the leadoff man hit two of them? That seemed hard to me. Baseball Reference’s Kenny Jackelen confirmed it!

The only other team to do that in the entire Baseball Reference play-by-play database: The 2003 Braves, in a May 28 home game against the Reds. The homers that day came from leadoff dynamo Rafael Furcal, Mark DeRosa, Gary Sheffield, Javy Lopez and Furcal again. Not pictured: Chipper and Andruw Jones!

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN — The two active players who are both older than Justin Timberlake – Nelson Cruz and Rich Hill – got to face each other Tuesday night. And guess what happened?

So how often has a hitter as old as Cruz (42 years, 361 days old) and a pitcher as old as Hill (43 years, 108 days) hooked up in an at-bat that resulted in an RBI hit? Jackelen fired the greatest list ever our way:

We left out a bases-loaded walk by Julio Franco (45-229) off John Franco (43-204) in 2004 because, despite the RBI part, it wasn’t technically “a hit.” But it was also way too much fun not to mention it somewhere!

THE FOREIGN LEGION – Last Saturday in London, the Cubs’ Ian Happ added his name to the list of multi-homer games outside North/South/Latin America. And … it’s not a long list! The only two other names on it look like this:

Michael Chavis vs. Yankees in London, June 29, 2019
Jorge Posada vs. Devil Rays in Tokyo, March 31, 2004

(Source: Baseball Reference)

IT’S ALL CYCLICAL — I’ve already written a piece this week explaining why Elly De La Cruz’s scintillating cycle for the Reds last Friday was the most thrilling cycle ever. I didn’t even include this part:

He hit for the cycle in the middle of a game where the two teams playing (Reds and Braves) combined to hit nine home runs. And yep, that doesn’t happen a whole lot. Here’s every other known instance, courtesy of Jackelen:

YOU CAN CALL ME CAL — It was Sunday at Camden Yards when this special thing happened, and Aaron Goldsmith’s call of it on the Mariners telecast stuck in my head.

Hmmm, I thought. Did I just watch a guy named Cal hit a home run at Camden Yards? That sounded slightly familiar. So of course I had to drop everything and find the last time a “Cal” went trotting in Baltimore. And it was — yep — that Cal:

Sept. 23, 2001 … Calvin Ripken Jr., off El Duque.

It was just another note in the weekly Weird and Wild opus. But it evoked a feeling that somehow captures the essence of …

Baseball!

This week in Strange But Trueness

(William Purnell / USA Today)

BULLPEN ROYALTY — Who’s the most historic “Royal” figure you can name off the top of your head? Warning: It’s a trick question.

So forget Harry, Charles and the usual royal suspects. Correct answer: Royals rookie reliever Austin Cox, who started his career the way no reliever in the expansion era ever had — by allowing zero hits to the first 39 hitters he faced in the big leagues.

OK, what’s so Strange But True about that? Well, just this list of active relievers who have never had a hitless streak that long over any stretch in their careers:

Kenley Jansen
Craig Kimbrel
Edwin Díaz
Emmanuel Clase
Aroldis Chapman
Liam Hendriks

Heard of them! (H/T: MLB Network’s Elijah Ackerman)

ANYBODY SEEN THE ARCH? Thanks to the miracle of baseball globalization and balanced schedulization …

The Cubs played the Cardinals in London this year before they matched up in St. Louis!

YOU CAN’T EXPLAIN BASEBALL — Since the running theme of this week’s column is Stuff that Makes No Sense, try this on for size:

Luke Weaver’s last six starts for the Reds:
41 hits, 27 earned runs in 26 2/3 innings, for a 9.11 ERA. And the Reds won all six of them!

Clarke Schmidt’s last six starts for the Yankees before Thursday:
Seven earned runs in 32 innings, for a 1.97 ERA. And the Yankees lost all six of them.

How weird is baseball?

FIRST SECOND CHANCES — Help us with this. Here is how the bottom of the first inning started in Colorado last Friday:

• Angels starter Patrick Sandoval throws his first pitch of the game.

• Rockies leadoff man Jurickson Profar hits that first pitch thrown to him for a home run.

• But according to the baseball technicality police, it wasn’t a first-pitch homer.

So why not? I know this seems more like an S.A.T. question than a note in a Weird and Wild column. But think about it. Why wasn’t it a “first-pitch” home run? Because Profar had a pitch-clock violation before that pitch. So the count was  0-and-1, on zero pitches. Only in …

Baseball! (In 2023!)

WE SAID THERE’D BE NO MATH — But now that we’re rolling after that Profar mathematical glitch, how about this one, courtesy of dulcet Nationals radio voice Dave Jageler:

In the 10th inning against the Nats on Tuesday night, the Mariners loaded the bases with nobody out, on a mere three pitches. But here’s the Strange But True part:

None of them was even put in play!

• Zombie runner (no pitches).

• Intentional walk (still no pitches).

• Quick-pitch violation on a 3-and-0 count (walk on three pitches).

So that’s one way to fill up the bases here in 2023. It would have been quite a way to win. Unfortunately, the Mariners started putting the ball in play. And no good came of that. They left the bases loaded, and wound up losing in 11 innings, 7-4. And none of that even mattered … other than the part where it showed up in this column.

PLUNK ROCK — Just when you thought the Mets had run out of inventive ways to lose, Sunday happened.

What transpired in the eighth inning that day is way too long and unsightly a story for a family audience. But here’s the short version of how they managed to cough up a three-run lead to the Phillies. With the bases loaded, still leading by a run, this is what happened to the next two hitters:

• Kyle Schwarber plunked — to drive in the tying run.

• Trea Turner plunked — to drive in the ultimate winning run.

So you’re pretty sure you haven’t seen that one before? You know why? Because nobody has.

Sports Info Solution’s Mark Simon plowed through all 180,000 games in the Baseball Reference database just to answer the question: Had any team ever allowed a game-tying and go-ahead hit-by-pitch in the same inning that late in a game before? And that answer was …

Nope! Just the 2023 Mets.

CROOKED NUMBER DEPT. — The Reds are having themselves a month.

Stolen bases in June: 49
Home runs in June: 39

So what’s so Strange But True about that? The ingenious Reds stats man, Joel Luckhaupt, filled us in. This is only the second time in history that a team had at least 49 steals and that many homers in the same month.

The other time: That would be last month, when the Rays did it (52 steals, 42 homers).

In other words, this happened no times in the first 147 seasons of Major League Baseball. And then … two months in a row.

IT MAKES NO SENSE — Why do people bet on baseball again? Just a reminder, stuff like this actually happens:

Jordan Lyles’ first 15 starts for the Royals: He goes 0-11, with a 6.72 ERA. And his team loses all 15 of those games.

Jordan Lyles’ 16th start for the Royals (last Saturday): He spots the best team in baseball, the Rays, a 4-0 lead … and then the Royals run off nine unanswered runs … so he wins and they win, 9-4.

Now here comes the Strange But True part: How many pitchers with a record like that (0-10 or worse) had ever beaten a first-place team on the road under any circumstances (not even counting the losing, 4-0, part)? That would be never in the modern era, according to STATS. Imagine that. And then this happened.

Not surprisingly, this became a topic for my friends in Kansas City.

Jordan Lyles was the first pitcher in MLB history to have his team lose his first 15 starts of the year.

He then spots the team with the best record in the majors a 4-0 lead.

Naturally, the Royals win, 9-4, their biggest margin of victory since May. What's that line, @jaysonst?

— Rany Jazayerli (@jazayerli) June 24, 2023

What’s that line? Is that what he asked? Gee, let me think. Oh, that’s right …

Baseball!

(Top photo of Domingo Germán: Thearon W. Henderson / Getty Images)