Danny Salazar made history on Thursday night; accomplishing something that has not been seen since 1900: He fanned 10 hitters while only completing 3.2 innings in the game. He finished with the loss, allowing five runs and six hits.
Let’s take a deeper look into his numbers on the night: 24.5 K/9, 1.000 BABIP, 66.7% HR/FB, 9.82 ERA, 0.48 xFIP.
According to his heat map from Brooks Baseball, he left most of his pitches up in the zone leading to all the fly balls. However, he still kept the ball low in the zone which gives hope to the coaching staff that it was one of the unluckiest games ever pitched by a Major League pitcher:
In fact, where he was the most unlucky (BABIP), 3/4 of his pitches were middle of the plate and down; exactly where he needs to be to succeed:
The box score will not be kind to Salazar after this game but we should not worry about his future production.
*It should be noted that while Salazar made history within the parameters given, Dan Osinski on May 29th, 1964 struck out 10 Orioles while facing 16 batters, two fewer batters than Salazar.
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