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.

As a team, the Red Sox have finished under .500 only 38 times in 112 seasons.  The worst team ever in terms of both winning percentage and number of defeats was the forgettable 1932 squad, led by former Boston outfielder Shano Collins for the first 55 contests before getting fired and replaced by former utility infielder Marty McManus.  The team finished a dismal 43-111 and dead last in the eight-team American League, 7.5 games behind the seventh place Chicago White Sox and 64 games behind the first place New York Yankees, who finished 107-47, a near-mirror record compared with Boston.

The Sox were actually in the midst of a 15-year stretch between 1919 and 1933 in which they finished under .500 every season.  Eight times, the team finished under the .400 mark, including six straight seasons between 1925 and 1930.  Another particularly bad stretch of seasons happened between 1959 and 1966, when the team went eight straight years under .500, including an abyssmal 62-100 in 1965 with a team that include manager Billy Herman and outfielder Carl Yastrzemski.

Speaking of 100-loss seasons, seven teams in franchise history have earned this mark of shame, including the 1932 and 1965 teams.  Also in the mix are teams from 1926 (46-107), 1925 (47-105), 1906 (49-105), 1927 (51-103), and 1930 (52-102).  12 teams in franchise history have finished last in the league or division.  Surprising, this does not include the 1965 team, which finished three games ahead of the Kansas City Athletics for ninth place in a ten-team league.

It should also be noted that the last time the Red Sox suffered back-to-back losing seasons was a stretch of three sub-.500 seasons between 1992 and 1994.  All three teams were managed by Hobson and the best finish was an 80-82 mark in 1993.  Surprisingly, a three-year stretch between 1906 and 1908 in the only other time, beyond the aforementioned streaks of bad luck, that the franchise team suffered back-to-back losing seasons.  Of note, the 1907 team, which finished 59-90, was managed by four different people that season, including player-manager Cy Young.

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.

Through his last start Friday night against Toronto, an eventual 7-0 win over the Blue Jays, Wakefield has a record of 163-144 with an ERA of 4.32 and 1681 strikeouts in 364 career starts and 501 total appearances as a pitcher in Boston. He also owns 22 saves, including 15 he collected in 1999 after then-closer Tom Gordon went down with an injury at mid-season and before Derek Lowe was moved to that role by manager Jimy Williams. His win total puts him third in franchise history behind Roger Clemens and Cy Young, both with 192, and his total appearances ranks him second behind Bob Stanley, who had 637 trips to the mound over 13 seasons with the club. He is also third in innings pitched (2568-1/3), second in strikeouts with 1786, and second in games started with 364. Unfortunately, he also owns some less-desirable marks with the club, including the most home runs allowed (342), walks allowed (961), losses (144), and wild pitches (95).

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.

Today, Young stands as the second-oldest pitcher to throw a no-hitter in a game; Nolan Ryan threw one at the age of 43 and then another one at age 44. He also stands as the second-old pitcher to throw a perfect game after throwing his at age 37; that record was only recently broken by Randy Johnson, who pitched one at age 40 in 2004. 1908 was his eighth and final season with the Red Sox; he would finish the season at 21-11 with a 1.26 ERA and 30 complete games to his credit. In total, Young won 192 games in a Boston uniform, which ties him with Roger Clemens for a club record, and finished his career with 511 victories, the most by any player in baseball history.