A's beat by perfect game for 2nd time in franchise history; Cy Young threw the first
Martín Gallegos
@MartinJGallegosOAKLAND -- No streak lasts forever, but the one the A’s built for over three decades felt as if it would never be broken.
Eventually, all good streaks come to an end. For the A’s it was their incredible run of 5,010 consecutive games without being no-hit, which stood as the longest such streak in MLB. In an 11-0 loss to the Yankees on Wednesday night at the Coliseum, Domingo Germán snapped that stretch with a historic feat, tossing the 24th perfect game in AL/NL history.
A remarkable 31 years and 339 days had passed since the A’s were last no-hit, when four Orioles pitchers combined for a no-hitter in Oakland on July 13, 1991.
It’s the 15th time in franchise history that the A’s have been no-hit and the second time they’ve had a perfect game thrown against them. The first to do it: Cy Young, who went 27 up, 27 down against the then-Philadelphia Athletics as a member of the Boston Americans for the first perfect game in the Modern Era (since 1900) on May 5, 1904.
In the history of the Oakland Coliseum, Germán became the third pitcher to throw a perfect game in the venue, joining Dallas Braden (May 9, 2010) and Catfish Hunter (May 8, 1968).
“The kid did an amazing job of keeping us off balance all night and we didn’t do a good job of making the adjustment,” A’s manager Mark Kotsay said of Germán. “He threw strikes. He pounded the zone, obviously. You don’t not throw strikes and go nine innings without a baserunner. Overall, offensively, our approach wasn’t great. We didn’t make any adjustments tonight to what he was doing.”
Perhaps the most impressive aspect of Germán’s night of perfection was the efficiency with which he reached it. The right-hander retired all 27 of Oakland’s batters on just 99 pitches, 72 of which went for strikes, with nine strikeouts in what was MLB’s first perfect game since Félix Hernández threw one on Aug. 15, 2012, against the Rays in Seattle.
“He was throwing his changeup and breaking ball until he got two strikes,” Kotsay said. “We hit a ton of balls to the pull side and didn’t make one adjustment to try to hit a ball to the right side or just to the opposite field. That’s what happens. When you try to pull soft. You’re going to hit a lot of ground balls to the pull side and get weak contact. We didn’t hit a ball hard tonight. You tip your cap to the performance.”
Statcast backs up Kotsay’s statement about the lack of quality contact. Of the A’s 18 balls hit in play against Germán, the average exit velocity was 84.1 mph.
There weren’t many close calls, either. Anthony Rizzo’s diving stop at first base to smother a 106.5 mph grounder hit by Seth Brown in the fifth inning was the closest the A’s really came to getting a hit. The groundout carried an expected batting average (xBA) of .480.
“He threw that curveball in any count that he wanted to,” A’s second baseman Tony Kemp said of Germán. “It was spinning differently and moving differently. He put his fastball where he wanted to. Changeup as well. He just kind of mixed them. We got a couple of good swings off him, but no results.”
Kemp had the only other semi-threat to break through against Germán in the fourth inning, when he drove a ball 349 feet to right that was struck 91.7 mph off the bat and was caught near the warning track by Giancarlo Stanton. Funny enough, that flyout would have been a home run at Yankee Stadium and nowhere else, according to Statcast.
“It felt good,” Kemp said. “But in Oakland, you’re not really getting your hopes up. I don’t really have Stanton power.”
As frustrating as it is to be on the wrong end of such history, there really was no time for the A’s to dwell with such a quick turnaround in the form of a Thursday afternoon series finale, which still presents the A’s with a chance at a series victory over the Yankees after they took the first game on Tuesday.
“It’s just another loss for us,” Kemp said. “You just have to move on. At the end of the day, we’re in the history books. Cool. Great. Nothing really more to say.”