Kimbrel joins Pedro Martinez and Clay Buchholz as the only three Red Sox pitchers to strike three batters on nine pitches in a half-inning. Martinez accomplished his feat almost 15 years ago to the date — 18 May 2002 — in the first inning of a game against the Seattle Mariners, while Buchholz did so in the sixth inning of a game against the Baltimore Orioles on 16 August 2012.

The Red Sox have also been victimized by four opposing pitchers in this fashion. The first was Jim Bunning of the Detroit Tigers in the ninth inning of a game on 02 August 1959. Nolan Ryan was the next to accomplish this while pitching for the California Angels on 09 July 1972; he has done the same thing four years earlier with the New York Mets, making him one of four pitchers in MLB history to do so twice and the only one to do so in each league.

Roger Clemens was the next pitcher to fan the side on nine pitches, doing so in the first inning of a game on 18 September 1997 while pitching for the Toronto Blue Jays; it also marked one year to the day that he had struck out 20 batters in a game in one of his last appearances with the Red Sox. The most recent pitcher to accomplish the feat was Justin Masterson, who set down all three batters “by way of the K” on 02 June 2014 while pitching for the Cleveland Indians.

Of note: John Clarkson of the Boston Beaneaters, later to become the Atlanta Braves, is the first pitcher in MLB history to accomplish this feat, striking out Jim Fogarty, Sam Thompson, and Sid Farrar in the third inning of a game against the Philadelphia Quakers, later renamed the Phillies, on 04 June 1889. This makes him the only pitcher to have tossed an immaculate inning in the 19th century.

The Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame Class of 2014 is stacked with some impressive honorees, at least one who will be inducted into Cooperstown next year. Announced by the team this morning, this year’s class includes pitchers Pedro Martinez and Roger Clemens, shortstop Nomar Garciaparra, and radio broadcaster Joe Castiglione. The team also selected one of Martinez’s greatest single game pitching performances as this year’s featured moment.

The Red Sox Hall of Fame, opened in 1995, honors players who spent at least three years with the Red Sox and have been out of uniform as an active player at least three years. Non-uniformed honorees and the memorable moment are chosen by a unanimous vote of the Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame Selection Committee, a 15-member committee of Red Sox broadcasters and executives, past and present media personnel, and representatives from The Sports Museum of New England and the BoSox Booster Club.

Martinez, who played with Boston from 1998 through 2004, was one of the most dominant pitchers to ever play the game. With the Red Sox, the nearly-unbeatable Martinez won two of his three career Cy Young Awards. In 2000, he put together perhaps the best season ever by a modern era pitcher, with an adjusted ERA+ of 291, second all-time only to Tim Keefe, who finished at 293 in 1880; the year before, his ERA+ was 243, ninth all-time in that same category. Known for his strikeout totals, he averaged 10.9 strikeouts per game in 203 appearances with Boston, with a high water mark of 13.2 SO/9 in 1999, a single season mark second only to Randy Johnson, who struck out 13.4 per nine two years later.

Clemens spent 13 seasons with Boston between 1984 and 1996 and was the first pitcher to strike out 20 batters in a nine inning game; in fact, the imposing righthander was also the second pitcher to accomplish that feat a decade later in his second-to-last game pitched with the team. His 192 wins in a Red Sox uniform is tied with Cy Young for the most in team history, which helped him win the honor named after the legendary pitcher three times with Boston between 1986 and 1991. He leads all pitchers in team history in career WAR (81.3) and strikeouts (2590).

Garciaparra spent nine seasons with Boston between 1996 and 2004 and made an immediate impact as American League Rookie of the Year in 1997, collecting 209 hits in 684 at-bats to lead the league and set Red Sox rookie records. 2000 was far and away his best season, as he batted .372 and finished with an on-base percentage of .434 and an OPS+ of 156 while earning the third of five All-Star selections with the team. Not only was he difficult to keep off the base paths, he also showed power, finishing with a slugging percentage of .553 and an OPS+ of 133 during his Red Sox tenure; twice, he hit two grand slams in a single game and six times finished with 21 or more home runs.

Castiglione, who made his broadcast debut for Boston in 1983 partnered with the legendary Ken Coleman, will enter his 32nd season as the radio voice of the Red Sox in 2014. Castiglione was the team’s lead announcer between 1992 and 2010 and continues to do the play-by-play for the team for at least four innings every game, depending on his partner. He also serves as a lecturer at Northeastern University and has authored two books related to his tenure with the team.

As has been the case since the Hall opened in 1995, the Red Sox will also recognize a special moment in team history. This year, it will be Martinez’s one-hit, 17-strikeout performance against the Yankees on Sept. 10, 1999. The official ceremony is expected to take place at a dinner in August.

Martinez, who debuted with the Los Angeles Dodgers at age 20 in 1992, had spent his previous four seasons with the Montreal Expos.  In 1997, he easily won the National League Cy Young Award, posting a 17-8 record with 13 complete games, a 1.90 ERA, an ERA+ of 219, a WHIP of 0.932, and strikeout per nine innings average of 11.4.  In November of that same year, the cash-strapped Expos traded Martinez to the Red Sox, where he would sign a six-year, $75 million contract, at the time the largest deal ever for a pitcher.

In Oakland, Martinez started the game by retiring the first eleven batters he faced; his first strikeout victim while wearing a Boston uniform was Dave Magadan, who would later serve as the Red Sox hitting coach.  In the fifth inning, he struck out the side: Scott Spiezio, A.J. Hinch, and Jason McDonald.  He finished his debut by striking out the last two batters he faced with runners at second and third base.  In total, he threw 116 pitches, 71 for strikes, and walked just two batters while scattering three hits and striking out 11 batters.  He also had at least one strikeout in each inning of work.

Martinez would go on to post a 19-7 record, a 2.89 ERA, an ERA+ of 163, a WHIP of 1.091, and a strikeout per nine innings average of 9.7 in his debut season with Boston.  He would also finish second to former Red Sox ace Roger Clemens in the Cy Young Award vote.

Known early in his Red Sox career for the dramatic, Ortiz has hit 10 walk-off home runs; all but one have come with the Red Sox, though the latest on 26 August 2009 against Chicago White Sox reliever Tony Pena (no relation to former catcher Tony Pena or his son, Tony).  Three of those came in 2006, which was the same season that he set the single-season franchise record for home runs with 54.  In total at Fenway Park, he has left the yard 164 times, all but one time with the Red Sox.

Most of his home runs have come as a DH; 46 have come with him playing first base.  Two home runs have come as a pinch-hitter; his only one with Boston happened 29 May 2011 against Tigers reliever Jose Valverde.

In total, his home runs have plated 627 runners; about one-third of his home runs have come with runners on base.  Ortiz has 11 grand slams in his career, all but one with Boston; his latest came 20 June 2012 off Miami Marlins pitcher Chris Hatcher.  42 of his home runs have come with two runners on base; 110 have been hit with one runner on base.

The pitcher who has surrendered the most home runs to Big Papi is current Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Roy Halladay, who has given up six; all came while Halladay was with the Toronto Blue Jays.  Current Toronto pitcher Jamie Moyer is second with five; seven other pitchers have allowed four.  In his career, the left-handed Ortiz has shown more success against right-handed pitchers, with only 89 home runs coming off southpaws.

Of the 58 Ortiz hit with the Minnesota Twins, with whom he played between 1997 and 2002, four were against Boston pitchers.  The last came against former teammate Pedro Martinez, who served up an offering to Big Papi on 16 August 2002.  Ortiz also hit one against the Red Sox off Pedro’s brother Ramon Martinez on 07 September 2000, which proved to be the one grand slam he would hit with the Twins.

Not surprisingly, most of his home runs have come against American League East Division opponents; Toronto has been victimized 46 times.  Outside Boston’s division, the Texas Rangers lead opponents with 27 home runs surrendered to Ortiz.  The National League franchise with the highest total is the Miami Marlins, who have allowed eight.

Source: David Ortiz Career Home Runs – Baseball-Reference.com

In baseball, a pitcher must face a minimum of three batters in each half inning to record the required three outs.  While it is not uncommon for a pitcher to retire the side on three strikeouts, it is extremely rare to do so on nine pitches, the minimum number required to perform the same task.  According to Wikipedia, 43 pitchers in MLB history have combined to accomplish this feat 46 times; it is commonly referred to as the immaculate inning.  Lefty Grove, Sandy Koufax, and Nolan Ryan, all Hall of Fame pitchers, are the only ones to done so twice (Grove, who pitched for the Sox between 1934 and 1941, did it twice within a span of a month with the Philadelphia Athletics in 1928).

Martinez, in seven years with Boston, was well-known for his high strikeout totals.  In addition to his 117 wins and an adjusted ERA+ of 190, he averaged 10.9 strikes per nine innings pitched, best in team history (his career average of 10.040 ranks him third in MLB history).  Three times, he led the American League in strikeouts and in total struck out 1683 batters, which ranks him third in team history behind Roger Clemens and Tim Wakefield.  He is also the only pitcher in team history to strike out 300 or more in one season, fanning 313 batters in 1999.  The results of his success with Boston were two American League Cy Young Awards and four All-Star game selections, once as the starting pitcher in 1999.

Martinez opened the game facing right fielder Ichiro Suzuki.  Suzuki, the reigning American League MVP and Rookie of the Year, looked at two called strikes before being dispatched with a third strike swinging.  Left fielder Mark McLemore dug in next; after missing strike one and fouling off strike two, he took a third strike for the second out.  Finally, designated hitter Ruben Sierra, like Suzuki before him, took two strikes and then swung and missed on strike three to set a mark unequaled in team history.

In 53 years, three Red Sox pitchers have won a total of six awards; Jim Lonborg, Roger Clemens, and Pedro Martinez. Lonborg was not only the first Boston pitcher to receive the honor, but he was the first pitcher honored by American league voters when the award was split between the leagues in 1967. Clemens won the first of seven total awards in 1986 and repeated as the honoree in 1987, the first since Baltimore’s Jim Palmer won back-to-back awards in 1975 and 1976. Clemens would win one more with the club in 1991 before winning four more as a member of the Toronto Blue Jays (1997 and 1998), New York Yankees (2001), and Houston Astros (2004). Martinez is the only other pitcher in franchise history to win the honor; he won in 1999 and 2000, considered two of the best seasons by a pitcher in modern baseball history, after winning the award with Montreal in 1997.

Red Sox pitchers have also finished twice in five separate votes. In 1990, Clemens finished with a 22-7 record, a 1.93 ERA, and 209 strikeouts, but lost to Oakland’s Bob Welch, who despite winning 27 games finished with an ERA+ nearly half that of Clemens. Martinez also finished twice in the vote during his Red Sox tenure, once in 1998 when he finished second to Clemens, then playing in Toronto, and again in 2002 when Oakland’s Barry Zito won the award. In 2004, Curt Schilling finished his first season in Boston with 21 wins, but was easily bested by Minnesota’s Johan Santana, who finished with a lower ERA and a higher strikeout total.

Most recently, Cleveland’s CC Sabathia finished 2007 with near-identical numbers (19-7, 3.21 ERA, 1.14 WHIP, 209 SO, 143 ERA+) to Boston’s Josh Beckett (20-7, 3.27 ERA, 1.14 WHIP, 194 SO, 145 ERA+); the latter then went 4-0 in four starts during the 2007 postseason, while the former went 1-2 in the playoffs, with both loses coming against the Red Sox in the American League Championship Series. However, as voting takes place before the postseason starts, Sabathia was named the winner with 19 first-place votes to eight for Beckett.

Efforts by the Baseball Writers Association of America eventually led to the creation of the MVP award as it is recognized today, decided by 28 seasoned sportswriters using a positional voting system where each voter ranks his or her top ten players. Jimmie Foxx was the first Boston player recognized by the baseball writers who gave him the honor in 1938, though for him it was his third award after having been recognized twice before with the Philadelphia Athletics in 1932 and 1933. Ted Williams remains the only Red Sox player to have been named twice (1946 and 1949). Other winners have included Jackie Jensen (1958), Carl Yastrzemski (1967), Fred Lynn (1975), Jim Rice (1978), and Roger Clemens (1986). Clemens remains the only Boston pitcher to earn the distinction, though since 1967 only seven pitchers have been so honored.

Of course, due to the subjective native of the MVP vote, Red Sox players have found themselves the focus of controversial outcomes, more often as the odd man out. Though Williams was honored twice in his illustrious career, there were also four instances in which he finished second in the voting where he might have been considered the more deserving candidate. In 1941, he batted .406, the last player to hit .400 or better in the regular season, but lost to New York Yankees outfielder Joe DiMaggio, who has amassed a 56-game hit streak that same year. The next year, he finished second again, this time to Yankees second baseman Joe Gordon, despite having won the batting Triple Crown with more hits in fewer at-bats, twice the number of home runs, and an OPS almost 250 point higher. In 1947, Williams again won the batting Triple Crown, the only player other than Roger Hornsby to win that recognition twice, yet he again lost to DiMaggio by a single point in the vote, again with far better numbers across the board. Finally, in 1957, he won the batting title with an impressive .388 average and hit 38 home runs while setting a modern-day record of reaching base in 16 consecutive at-bats, all at the age of 39, yet finished second once more to another legendary Yankees outfielder, Mickey Mantle.

Other Boston players who fell just shy in the voting include Pedro Martinez, who had one of the best seasons ever by a pitcher in modern baseball history and won the pitching Triple Crown and the Cy Young award. Yet, despite having more first-place votes, he lost to catcher Ivan Rodriguez from the Texas Rangers by a narrow 13-point margin in the vote. It was later discovered that two sportswriters, which included George King from the New York Post, had omitted Martinez from their ballots with the argument that the contributions made by pitchers were not significant enough to earn MVP consideration, though King had included two pitchers on his ballot the previous season. David Ortiz also fell just short of the honor in 2005 as he finished behind Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez in the vote. Though both players finished the season with impressive numbers, the argument was made that Ortiz, as a designated hitter, did not contribute as much to his team’s success as Rodriguez, so much that two sportswriters left Ortiz off their ballots.

On the flipside, Vaughn finished a mere eight points ahead of Cleveland slugger Albert Belle in the 1995 vote, despite Belle having far more impressive numbers on offense, including a higher number of home runs, runs scored, RBI, slugging percentage, and total bases; he had also become the first player in major league history to hit 50 doubles and 50 home runs in the same season that same year. Vaughn, however, had a far better relationship with fans and the media, whereas Belle routinely refused to grant interviews to reporters and had engaged in several controversial incidents with fans both at and away from the park. Ted Williams was also well-known for his sour relationship with the media, whom he mockingly referred to as the “kinights of the keyboard,” and, like Belle, may have been the reason in part for losing several close MVP ballots.

[1] Deane, Bill, Thron, John, and Palmer, Pete. Total Baseball. HarpersCollins Publishers, New York, 1993.

In team history, Clemens is tied with another former Boston great, Cy Young, for the most shutouts in team history, although Young did that over eight seasons while Clemens accomplished his total over 13 seasons with the club. Standing alone in third place in Smoky Joe Wood with 28 over eight years with the club, while Luis Tiant is fourth with 26 over eight seasons and Dutch Leonard is fifth with 25 over six seasons. The single season record for the franchise is 10, accomplish by Young in 1904 and Wood in 1912; Babe Ruth is third with nine in 1916, and Clemens (1988) and Carl Mays (1918) are tied for fourth with eight.

Martinez would go on to finish second in the American League Cy Young vote that season behind former Red Sox pitcher Roger Clemens, posting a 19-7 record with a 2.89 ERA and 251 strikeouts in 33 starts. The following year, he joined Randy Johnson as the first pitchers to win a Cy Young award in both leagues, the first of two consecutive awards for the ace. In seven seasons with Boston, Martinez would win 117 games against 37 losses, post a 2.52 ERA, and strike out 1683 batters in nearly 1400 innings of work. He would also be part of the club in 2004 that won Boston’s first World Series championship in 86 years, winning Game Three of the series against the St. Louis Cardinals with seven scoreless innings of work. Through 2007, his won-loss percentage of .760 puts him first in franchise history, his win total puts him tied for sixth, and his strikeout total puts him second behind Clemens, though just three ahead of current Sox pitcher Tim Wakefield.

Boston is also one of ten teams in post-season history to climb back from a 3-1 series deficit to win the series.[1] In 1986, the Sox were one out away from losing to the California Angels in the American League Championship Series when Dave Henderson’s two-run home run to left field at Angel Stadium gave Boston a temporary one-run cushion; the Red Sox would eventually win the game 7-6 in extra innings to force the series back to the East Coast. There, perhaps still stunned by the turn of events in Game Five, the Angels easily crumbled under the sodium lights at Fenway Park as Boston won Game Six 10-4 and then took Game Seven 8-1 behind a strong effort by Roger Clemens and home runs by Dwight Evans and Jim Rice to win the pennant. Boston also accomplished the same feat 18 years later in one of the most memorable comebacks in league history. Against the New York Yankees in the 2004 American League Championship Series, the Red Sox found themselves down three games to none after getting trounced 19-8 in Game Three at Fenway Park, but Boston won two extra-inning affairs in Games Four and Five to send the series back to New York. After winning Game Six to force a winner-take-all finale, the Red Sox completed the first-ever comeback from a 3-0 post-season series deficit in Major League Baseball with an easy 10-3 win over a shell-shocked New York ball club, with former Boston outfielder Johnny Damon hitting two home runs and driving home six in the effort.