Indians starter Danny Salazar had a pitching line for the ages on Thursday.
Danny Salazar strikes out 10, doesn’t make it out of 4th
Cleveland’s second-year hurler did something on Thursday that hasn’t been done in at least 100 years.
Jonathan Daniel
The 24-year-old right-hander kept the White Sox off-balance with 10 strikeouts through 3⅔ innings...except he didn't really keep them off-balance at all. That's because Salazar surrendered five runs -- all earned -- on six hits, including a couple of homers, before being pulled by Indians manager Terry Francona before the fourth inning was over. At that point, every hitter retired by Salazar was via strikeout. The only other out recorded while he was on the mound was when Adam Eaton was thrown out at second after trying to advance on his RBI single in the third. If you're scoring at home, that's a BABIP of 1.000 for the White Sox against Salazar.
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Salazar's strange outing marks the first time since 1914 that a pitcher racked up 10 punch-outs without getting out of the fourth inning. In fact, since that time, only one starting pitcher -- Mariners ace Felix Hernandez -- has ever struck out that many batters in four or fewer innings, according to Baseball-Reference.
The combination of strikeouts, walks and generally deep counts resulted in Salazar throwing 93 pitches in a very short period. That seems like a lot -- and it is -- but pitchers have actually exceeded that pitch count in the same amount of innings or fewer on 147 occasions since the turn of the century.
That, of course, doesn’t make Salazar’s line any less awesome.
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