Card Of The Week April 10

Roki Sasaki threw a perfect game today against the Orix Buffaloes.  There's so many amazing things about this game that its hard to figure out what to say next.  It was the 16th perfect game in NPB history and the first since Hiromi Makihara of the Giants threw one against the Carp on May 18th, 1994 (although Daisuke Yamai and Hitoki Iwase of the Dragons combined to throw one in Game 5 of the 2007 Nippon Series - NPB does not recognize combined no-hitters as "official" ones).  Sasaki struck out 19 batters in the game, tying the NPB record set by Koji Noda in 1995.  He struck out 13 in a row from the last batter in the first through the last batter in the fifth, shattering the previous NBP record of nine consecutive strikeouts held jointly by Takao Kajimoto and Masayuki Dobashi.  He struck out the side in five innings (2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th & 8th) and struck out the final batter in every other inning.  He threw a total of 105 pitches, 82 of them were strikes.  It was his first complete game victory of his career.  At 20 years and five months of age, he's the youngest pitcher to ever throw a perfect game.  His catcher, Kou Matsukawa, is only 18 years old so the combined age of the battery was just 38 years.  Sasaki's stats for the season now are 42 strikeouts, seven hits, two walks and four earned runs in 23 innings.

There's already a page for the game on Japanese Wikipedia but if you'd rather see the highlights rather than read about it, here's a video that the Marines put out showing all 27 outs:

Since I just did Sasaki for last week's Card Of The Week, I thought I'd share cards commemorating the feats he matched today.  Here are cards for Makihara's perfect game in 1994 and Noda's 19 strikeout game in 1995:

2002 BBM Giants #G112

1996 BBM #543

But I can't resist showing another Sasaki card:

2020 Calbee #094

Maybe I should resist - I only have 20-ish cards of him and if he keeps up these kind of performances, I'll run out of Card Of The Week material by the end of the season!