Oakland A's Held Hitless for First Time Since 1991

New York Yankees starter Domingo Germán threw the 24th perfect game in MLB history in Oakland on Wednesday night.

It had been 5,010 games since the A's had been no-hit. That streak ended on Wednesday night with a perfect game.  

This has been a pretty tough year for A's players and fans alike for a multitude of reasons, including the squad's 21-61 record and the franchise's efforts to relocate the team to the desert in Las Vegas. There haven't been many good moments at the ballpark this season and Domingo Germán's perfect game just added to the pile. 

Still, this is a historic feat, and one that hasn't been accomplished in baseball since 2012 when Félix Hernández dominated the Tampa Bay Rays in Seattle. The Rays have had three perfect games thrown at their expense in their short history. 

Martín Gallegos of MLB.com tweeted out an outstanding factoid: The only other time the A's have had a perfect game thrown against them was back in 1904 when literal Cy Young perfect game'd the Philadelphia A's. 

Cy Young was pitching for the Boston Americans and the game lasted an hour and 25 minutes. 

The last time the A's were no-hit was back on July 13, 1991 when four Baltimore Orioles pitchers combined to hold the A's squad hitless. 

Here are the starting lineups for each team on that day. 

The A's dropped Wednesday's contest 11-0. Mark Kotsay told reporters after the game that their approach offensively wasn't great. "We didn't make any adjustments tonight to what he was doing. When you try to pull soft [pitches], you're going to hit a lot of ground balls to the pull side. We didn't hit a ball hard tonight." 

Technically the A's had three hard hit balls (95+ mph) per Statcast, but the larger point that the A's manager is making holds true. One of those hard hit balls was a fly out from Shea Langeliers in the third inning that was 102 off the bat, but it had a 54 degree launch angle, which is basically a hard-hit pop-up. 

The other two hard hit balls were from Brent Rooker and Seth Brown at 99.4 mph and 106.5 mph, but both were ground ball outs. 

The month of June has been a better month overall for the Athletics with their record currently sitting at 9-15 (.375) with two games left to play before the calendar flips to July. While that may not seem like a big accomplishment, the team had won just six games in each of the first two months of the season, so the trajectory was pointed slightly up. 

We'll see how the team bounces back on Thursday. 

Wednesday's record-breaking performance may have a new note as well. Dallas Braden tossed a perfect game on Mother's Day in 2010 for the Oakland A's. He is currently part of the A's broadcast team, and could very well be the first person to throw a perfect game and call a perfect game. 

David Cone had been the last Yankee to throw a perfect game, and he is part of the YES Network's broadcast team, but he's not in Oakland for this series. He did ask David Wells if he was watching the game, however. 

Um…@BoomerWells33 …You Up? pic.twitter.com/mIyhpkrXM7

— David Cone (@dcone36) June 29, 2023

Ironically enough, the new longest no-hit streak in baseball belongs to the Washington Nationals, who were the Montreal Expos in 1999 when David Cone threw his perfect game. The Los Angeles Angels are the only other team to have recorded a hit in every game this millennium. 

Last season Shohei Ohtani came close to no-hitting the A's on September 29, going 7 2/3 innings before allowing his first hit of the night to Conner Capel. That late hit just never came against a dominant Domingo Germán.