Getty Image / Maddie Malhotra
- Baseball fans were treated to an unusual occurrence in the minor leagues today
- Worcester Red Sox pitcher Darwinzon Hernandez struck out 3 consecutive batters while throwing just 8 pitches
- Read more BroBible articles here
The rise of the Savannah Bananas has allowed baseball fans to become accustomed to some unusual things. There have been flaming bats. We’ve seen a 75-year old former Red Sox pitcher strike out a batter. We’ve seen fans catching foul balls for outs. There has been a pitcher on stilts.
Now we’ve seen another unusual event in minor league baseball. In a Triple-A game today between the Lehigh Valley IronPigs and Worcester Red Sox, we saw something you don’t see everyday in baseball.
Red Sox starting pitcher Darwinzon Hernandez struck out all 3 batters he faced in the 2nd inning while only throwing 8 pitches.
3 strikeouts…..on 8 pitches? Huh? pic.twitter.com/AXwIWqpeFY
— Starting 9 (@Starting9) April 16, 2022
To make this occurrence even more unusual, one of those 8 pitches was actually called a ball.
This anomaly came as the result of a rule that delivered an automatic strike 2 to the second batter Hernandez faced in the inning and that caused the 3rd strike for the last batter Hernandez faced in the inning.
Those strike outs were 3 of the 5 Hernandez racked up in just 3 innings pitched. Those 3 scoreless innings brought his ERA down to 2.08 for the year and brought his strikeout total to 14 in just 8.2 innings pitched.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t eligible for the win in this game because he was pulled before he had pitched 5 innings. That left the man who relieved him, Kyle Hart, to collect the win after throwing 4 scoreless innings of his own.
The Red Sox blew out the IronPigs from start to finish after scoring 9 runs in the first 3 innings en route to a 13-1 win. The win moved them to 9-2 to start the season.