Hello and welcome to episode 1835 of Effectively Wild that baseball podcast from

Fangrass presented by our Patreon supporters. I'm Ben Lemberg of the Ringer joined by Meg

Rally of Fangrass. Hello Meg. Hello. I have rarely been happier that I am semi-nacturnal,

at least semi-nacturnal than I was on Saturday night into Sunday morning when I was still awake

at 3.30 or so AM Eastern time and Roki Sasaki was going for his perfect game. Roki Sasaki,

the phenom NPPitcher for the Chibalote Marines I became aware that he was pitching a perfect game.

A couple of innings before it was over and I was able to tune in and catch a feed for the end

and man that was one of the most impressive pitching performances I've ever seen or that there's

ever been. It was unbelievable. Yeah cool. He pitched 90 innings 105 pitches. He pitched a perfect

game the first in NPP in 28 years since 1994. He struck out 19 batters which tied the NPP record

and he struck out 13 consecutive batters. Wow. Not only broke the NPP record which was 9 in a row

but shattered it. That's kind of incredible to break that record and then surpass it by four

strikeouts. Yeah. The record in MLB is 10 so he went way beyond that and for those who don't know

Sasaki he's 20 years old and he is if not the best pitcher in Japan maybe the second best pitcher

in Japan. He debuted last year and he's been basically incredible since then but he was just

unhittable this game like his fastball was averaging maybe just a tick under 100 miles per hour

so he was hitting 100 or over 100. He basically threw fastballs and splitters almost exclusively

to get through this game and he was still throwing absolute seeds in the ninth inning like he struck

out the last batter on three pitches just perfectly located and it was just wild like 13 strikeouts

in a row and this is a league where the strikeout rate is a little bit lower on the whole. It's

not like dramatically lower but it's you know 20% instead of say 23% which over the course of

27 batters is not much that's like less than a strikeout expected but still to strike out 13

...