Fans booed as Lake Bachar took the mound at Sutter Health Park in the eighth inning. But it wasn’t Athletics fans booing the new pitcher for the Miami Marlins; it was mostly Marlins fans. The Marlins were up 8-0 at that point, and fans were upset because Eury Perez was lifted from his outing in the middle of a perfect game.
Perez had gone seven innings without allowing a baserunner and was looking dominant, but as his pitch count climbed into the 90s, manager Clayton McCullough opted to bring in his bullpen.
Perfect games are one of the rarest occurrences in baseball, especially in the Major Leagues. It has only happened 24 times, the most recent being tossed by Domingo German in 2023 for the Yankees.
Fans, especially those who prefer a more old-school style of baseball, have frustratedly pointed out a trend amongst MLB starting pitchers that affects these perfect efforts: pitchers not going deep into games.
They aren’t wrong. Average innings pitched per start has declined steadily since the mid-1900s, dropping from almost seven innings pitched to just above five.
There are many reasons for this trend, the most obvious of which is pitchers throwing harder and attempting to strike more batters out, of which the former can lead to injury. In the same span of years, the average strikeouts per nine innings have ballooned from around five to almost nine.
Many of these same fans don’t tend to recognize things like combined no-hitters, where a starting pitcher leaves the game, and the bullpen continues the effort. The only no-hitter thrown in the last two seasons has been combined, by the Astros in May of 2026.
In Perez’s case, though, there has never been a combined perfect game in MLB history.
That trend continued, as Bachar came into the game and lost the perfect game, no-hitter, and shutout, all in the first three batters he faced. He issued a walk to Lawrence Butler, and then Joshua Kuroda-Grauer and Carlos Cortes recorded hits to put the Athletics on the board. A couple of batters later, Jonah Heim hit a grand slam to bring the A’s to within three.
The Marlins hung on to win the game 9-8, but there were a lot of questions for McCullough about why he lifted Perez from his stellar start.
The answer, according to McCullough in his postgame interview, came down to the long-term health of Perez, who returned from injury less than two weeks ago.
“Us looking to play beyond the regular season, Eury’s going to be an important part of that,” said McCullough. “I made more of a calculated decision with where he was with the pitch count. 90 plus a hitter was the number of pitches I was going to feel comfortable with letting him throw today.”
When asked about if he gave any thought to the importance of a perfect game, McCullough said that the importance wasn’t lost on him, but he felt it was his responsibility to act in the long-term best interests of his team and Perez.
It would have been interesting to have seen if Perez could’ve made history, but whether you prefer more strikeouts or pitchers going deeper into ballgames, it’s important to protect the health of these athletes who put their bodies on the line for our teams.
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