Kenley Jansen throws third immaculate inning in past seven days, joining Max Scherzer & Craig Kimbrel
Good things come in threes, apparently.
Los Angeles Dodgers closer Kenley Jansen threw the MLB’s third immaculate inning in the past seven days in the top of the ninth inning of Thursday’s 7-2 win over the Miami Marlins. An immaculate inning is when a pitcher strikes out the side on nine pitches – and MLB pitchers have done it a whopping three times in the past week.
Boston Red Sox closer Craig Kimbrel threw an immaculate bottom of the ninth on May 11 against the Milwaukee Brewers, and Washington Nationals ace Max Scherzer struck out the side in nine pitches in the top of the fifth of a second-game doubleheader May 14. Earlier this year, Cincinnati Reds reliever Drew Storen also threw one on April 18. Take a look at the above video to see the the final strike of Scherzer’s immaculate fifth, and see the tweet below for Jansen’s full inning.
You may think these innings happen often. After all, there’s 162 games in a season and 9 innings in a game. In reality, these things are very rare (there has now been 84 total immaculate innings in the history of recorded baseball), and to see three of them in one week is akin to seeing six perfect games in a week.
Don’t believe it? Prepare yourself for some math, courtesy Reddit user r/23coconuts:
“There has been 347,198 games started since 1900, and there has been 3,102,691 innings pitched. This means that 0.00605% (21/347,198) of games started end as perfect games, and 0.00268% of innings pitched being immaculate. That means on a per opportunity basis, perfect games are 2.26 times more common than immaculate innings.“
They can be so sparse in fact, that no one pitched an immaculate inning between Lefty Grove’s on September 27th, 1928 and Billy Hoeft’s on September 7th, 1953. That’s a span of just under 25 years. And we had three this week. Pretty crazy right?
Here is Kenley Jansen’s immaculate inning in 16 seconds: https://t.co/xq5leT3Afr pic.twitter.com/uI8ZKdIisv
— Deadspin (@Deadspin) May 19, 2017
Video via MLB.
