Immaculate innings are becoming a thing in baseball these days.
Cleveland Guardians reliever Enyel De Los Santos posted an immaculate inning — three strikeouts on nine pitches — in the seventh inning Tuesday against the Tampa Bay Rays.
9 pitches.
3 strikeouts.
1 immaculate inning. pic.twitter.com/BEYd6YohBL— MLB (@MLB) September 28, 2022
Rays batters Christian Bethancourt, Jose Siri, and Taylor Walls were the unlucky contestants in De Los Santos’ dominant inning, looking helpless against a mix of fastballs and off-speed pitches. Siri once again makes news for the wrong reason — recall the bizarre moment in a game last month when the Rays broadcast booth announced his plate appearance, accidentally triggering the “Siri” function on someone’s iPhone.
An immaculate inning is an impressive and still very rare feat, to be sure. but if it sounds a bit familiar, that’s because it happened just a few days ago. Cubs rookie Hayden Wesneski turned the trick against the Pittsburgh Pirates last Thursday. Incredibly, Houston Astros pitchers Phil Maton and Luis García posted immaculate innings in the same game June 15 against the Texas Rangers.
To put De Los Santos’ immaculate inning in perspective, it’s the 48th time that’s been done this century. After the Astros duo turned the feat, a baseball analyst calculated the odds of such an inning at 1 in 40,000.
The 26-year-old De Los Santos is having the best season of his career, entering the day 4-0 with a 3.10 ERA in 46 appearances. He’s also had stints with the Pirates and Philadelphia Phillies.
