Domingo Germán achieves 24th perfect game in MLB history, giving Yankees most ever with four

German has thrown MLB's first perfecto since 2012, and is the first Yankees pitcher to throw one since 1999

Yankees starting pitcher Domingo Germán made history Wednesday evening in Oakland. He threw the 24th perfect game in major-league history and the first since 2012 in an 11-0 Yankees win. A perfect game means that Germán faced just 27 batters and got every single one out. Not one opposing player reached base. 

Here's the final out: 

He struck out nine and wasn't even seriously threatened by the lackluster A's offense. He repeatedly worked ahead in the count and allowed mostly soft contact when he wasn't missing bats, illustrated by the A's making hard contact just three times out of the 18 balls in play. 

There were a few quality defensive plays, notably by first baseman Anthony Rizzo here in the fifth inning: 

Still, this was mostly all just dominance on the mound by Germán.  

He only ran a three-ball count twice on the night and the biggest scare on that front came with two outs in the bottom of the eighth. Jonah Bride was ahead 3-1 in the count, and after Germán dropped in a curve for a called strike to run the count full, Bride fouled one off. Then Germán induced a routine grounder to escape. 

That was really about it in terms of having to sweat the perfect game possibly being broken up. 

Germán excelled with the curveball. He recorded 20 of his 27 outs with that pitch. He got 12 swings-and-misses with it out of 51 total curves. 

He was also efficient, needing only 99 pitches to finish the game. This was actually the first complete game of Germán's career, too. 

Germán didn't exactly enter the game on a hot streak. He coughed up 17 runs, 15 earned, on 15 hits in 5 1/3 innings in his previous two starts. He gave up 10 runs alone last time out, making him the pitcher who allowed the most runs in the outing immediately before his perfect game in history. 

It had been a while since the last perfect game in Major League Baseball. Through we've seen our share of no-hitters since then, the most recent perfect game came in 2012, when Félix Hernández of the Mariners accomplished the feat on Aug. 15. It was actually the third one that season, as Matt Cain and Philip Humber also accomplished the feat. 

The most recent Yankees perfect game came on July 18, 1999 when David Cone did it. David Wells (1998) and Don Larsen (the 1956 World Series) have also thrown perfect games with the Yankees. 

With Germán's perfect game here, the Yankees moved ahead of the White Sox for the MLB lead. The two teams were previously tied for the most perfect games with three. 

This was the first perfect game by a Dominican-born pitcher and third from a pitcher born outside the United States, joining Hernández and Dennis Martinez. It was the third perfect game in Oakland Coliseum, joining A's pitchers Catfish Hunter and Dallas Braden. 

No-hitters are much more common than perfect games, obviously, but there still hadn't been one this season before Germán's outing Wednesday. There were four last year, including the Astros using four pitchers to throw a combined no-no in Game 4 of the World Series. The last individual no-hitter came on the arm of Angels lefty Reid Detmers on May 10 of last season. 

The last Yankees no-hitter happened May 21, 2021 and that was Corey Kluber. There had been 12 Yankees no-hitters and over 300 in MLB history to this point. 

[Jun 29, 2023 at 12:11 am ET · R.J. Anderson]

Germán completes perfecto

Fourth in Yankees history, 24th in MLB history. 

[Jun 29, 2023 at 12:11 am ET · R.J. Anderson]

Langeliers flies out

Germán is one out off. 

[Jun 29, 2023 at 12:10 am ET · R.J. Anderson]

Germán retires Díaz

Grounder to short. Two outs left.