Immaculate innings are one of the rarest occurrences in Major League Baseball. To give you an idea, of the 11,690 pitchers who have worked at least one inning in the history of the American circuit, only 0.009% have achieved such a feat. That’s 107 pitchers with a perfect inning: nine pitches, nine strikes and three strikeouts
In recent years, there have always been cases of immaculate innings. In fact, to find a season without one of these episodes, we have to go back in time to 2005, two decades ago
Since 2006, a chain of 20 consecutive campaigns has been linked with at least one perfect entry. The streak was already extended in 2025, as on May 18, Miami Marlins right-hander Cal Quantrill struck out Jonathan Aranda, Christopher Morel and Kameron Misner of the Tampa Bay Rays with nine strikes and three strikeouts.
However, in the last game of the series between the Dodgers and San Diego, umpire Marvin Hudson deprived us of the first immaculate inning by a Japanese pitcher in Major League history. The ace of the reigning champions, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, was one step away from completing the feat against Fernando Tatis Jr
In the third inning of the clash, Yamamoto dominated with three pitches to Bryce Johnson and then repeated the dose against Puerto Rican catcher Martin Maldonado. Six pitches, six strikes and two strikeouts. The perfect formula continued against Tatis, who swung at two breaking pitches and was on the brink of the abyss.
With two strikes, Yamamoto was about to complete the first immaculate inning by a Japanese pitcher in MLB, but umpire Hudson decided that we should keep waiting. A 96 mph fastball that went through the middle of the plate and at the top of the zone was overlooked by the umpire, who continued the game as if nothing had happened.
After that pitch, the Japanese pitcher continued with his work and managed to retire Tatis Jr. by way of the strikeout. As a curious fact, in that at-bat, of the five pitches made by Yamamoto, the only one that fell in the strike zone was called a ball by Marvin Hudson. Unbelievable!
A total of 60 Japanese pitchers have worked in the major leagues, including great stars such as Hideo Nomo, Yu Darvish, Hiroki Kuroda, Masahiro Tanaka, Koji Uehara, Kenta Maeda, Daisuke Matsuzaka and Shohei Ohtani, but none have been able to score an immaculate inning.
Now, with Ohtani still on the scene, plus the presence of Yamamoto, rookie Roki Sasaki, Kodai Senga, Yusei Kikuchi and Shota Imanaga, perhaps one of them will manage to break the curse, as long as no umpire gets in their way with a blunder
The history of immaculate innings
According to the specialized website Baseball Almanac, there have been 115 immaculate innings in Major League history with 107 pitchers as protagonists. According to these data, the first recorded was by John Clarkson in 1889, during a duel between the Boston Beaneaters and the Phillies.
Since then, there have been several cases of this type. One of the most important was Danny Jackson in Game 5 of the 1985 World Series between Kansas City and St. Louis. The Royals pitcher dominated with nine consecutive strikes and three strikeouts in order to Terry Pendleton, Tom Nieto and Brian Harper in a game he won with a complete nine-inning game
That was the first and only immaculate inning in the postseason, and it also represented the beginning of a spectacular comeback by Kansas, who were losing that Fall Classic 1-3. But they reacted in time and won three games in a row to win their first MLB title.
There are other outstanding cases. For example, Sandy Koufax, Max Scherzer and Chris Sale are the only ones with three immaculate innings in MLB history, while Nolan Ryan and Kevin Gausman did it twice, with the peculiarity that they achieved it in both the American League and the National League.
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