{"id":142,"date":"2019-06-09T17:39:29","date_gmt":"2019-06-09T17:39:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=142"},"modified":"2019-06-09T17:39:39","modified_gmt":"2019-06-09T17:39:39","slug":"after-a-forgettable-april-lakelands-chris-sale-is-the-first-pitcher-in-more-than-90-years-to-repeat-a-remarkable-feat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2019\/06\/09\/after-a-forgettable-april-lakelands-chris-sale-is-the-first-pitcher-in-more-than-90-years-to-repeat-a-remarkable-feat\/","title":{"rendered":"After a forgettable April, Lakeland\u2019s Chris Sale is the first pitcher in more than 90 years to repeat a remarkable feat."},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Chris Sale is the second pitcher in MLB to record multiple immaculate innings in the same season. (Photo by Jamie Squire\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Boston Red Sox ace Chris Sale followed a forgettable April with a respectable May.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now he\u2019s aiming to be untouchable in June.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 30-year-old left-hander got off to a great start on Wednesday. Sale dominated the Kansas City Royals at Kauffman Stadium, pitching a three-hit shutout in the Red Sox\u2019s 8-0 victory<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The entire outing was vintage Chris Sale. He struck out 12, walked none and allowed only singles. But one inning in particular showcased just how dominant Sale can be when he\u2019s locked in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sale struck out all three Royals batters he faced in the eighth inning on the minimum of nine pitches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In baseball, that feat in known as an immaculate inning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Sale, it was his second immaculate inning of the season, which had only been done one other time in MLB history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other man to do it was Baseball Hall of Famer Lefty Grove, who accomplished it back in 1928 while pitching for the Philadelphia Athletics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

#RedSox<\/a> Chris Sale is the first pitcher to throw two Immaculate Innings in a single season since Lefty Grove in 1928.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sale\u2019s immaculate innings were 28 days apart. Grove\u2019s were 35.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hall of Famers Sandy Koufax, Nolan Ryan and Randy Johnson, along with likely future Hall of Famer Max Scherzer, are the only other pitchers to throw at least two immaculate innings in their careers. Koufax did it three times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sale\u2019s first immaculate inning came on May 8, when he set down Hanser Alberto, Dwight Smith Jr. and Steve Wilkerson of the Baltimore Orioles. On Wednesday, Sale mowed down the Royals\u2019 Kelvin Guti\u00e9rrez and Nicky Lopez before putting away Mart\u00edn Maldonado with his ninth pitch of the inning and 92nd pitch of the game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He needed only 10 more pitches in the ninth inning to complete his third career shutout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the shutout, Sale lowered his season ERA to 3.84 after finishing April with a 6.30 ERA. The Red Sox are 4-9 in games he\u2019s started in 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How rare are immaculate innings?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In recent years, not very.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After Grove\u2019s second immaculate inning in 1928, there was not another one in MLB until 1953, a drought spanning 25 seasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For comparison, there have been 61 immaculate innings over the last 25 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More than anything, that speaks to how much baseball has changed over the last quarter century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In past generations, you were far more likely to see a no-hitter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prior to 1994, 36 of the 97 total immaculate innings were recorded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prior to 1994, 235 of the 300 total no-hitters, postseason included, were recorded. That means nowadays it\u2019s close to an even bet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This season, there have been four immaculate innings. In addition to Sale, Josh Hader of the Milwaukee Brewers and Thomas Pannone of the Toronto Blue Jays have each thrown one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There has only been one no-hitter, thrown by the Oakland Athletics\u2019 Mike Fiers<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite immaculate innings being more frequent, and despite the fact Sale\u2019s immaculate innings came against two rebuilding and undeniably light-hitting teams, we shouldn\u2019t discount how tough this feat is to accomplish.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Boston Red Sox ace Chris Sale followed a forgettable April with a respectable May. Now he\u2019s aiming to be untouchable in June. The 30-year-old left-hander got off to a great… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":143,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}