Pitchers are lauded for putting together a perfect game, an accomplishment of precision that's happened only 23 times in all of baseball history.
In a more micro sense, nearly as impressive is the perfect inning, which Indians pitcher Justin Masterson captured Monday night.
Nine pitches, the minimum needed, was all it took to set down the Red Sox's side in the top of the fourth inning. Masterson routinely paints the corners with filthy stuff, and then finishes it off by fooling Stephen Drew with a breaking ball in the dirt.
Those nine strikes were part of a string of 25 straight strikes thrown by Masterson.
Seventy pitchers all-time, and three this season, have achieved the "perfect" or "immaculate inning," as Mike Oz of Yahoo's Big League Stew points out. He also notes that Masterson's 25 consecutive strikes still fall behind the "record" of 38 straight thrown by Bartolo Colon with the A's in 2012.
Masterson struck out 10 total Red Sox in seven scoreless innings, picking up his third win of the season and lowering his ERA from 5.21 to 4.72.
