Mickey Welch Strikes Out the First Nine Batters He Faces

On August 28, 1884, Mickey Welch of the New York Gothams struck out the first nine batters he faced against the Cleveland Blues, setting a record that has never been matched. No pitcher before or since has opened a game by retiring the entire opposing lineup on strikeouts through the first three innings.

The record went unrecognized for decades because of a scorekeeping confusion. The ninth Cleveland batter struck out but reached first base on a passed ball, and early recordkeepers interpreted this as something other than a clean strikeout sequence. It was not until after Welch's death in 1941 that researchers confirmed what had happened. The ninth man had indeed struck out. That he reached base on a wild pitch from the catcher didn't change the fact that Welch had fanned him.

Welch finished the game with 14 strikeouts, a dominant total for any era but especially impressive in 1884, when pitchers threw from just 50 feet and batters had different rules about foul balls and called strikes. The game took place during a period of rapid evolution in baseball's rules and playing conditions, and Welch was one of the best pitchers navigating those changes.

The record stood unchallenged for 137 years until Pablo López of the Miami Marlins tied it on July 11, 2021, striking out the first nine Atlanta Braves batters he faced. Before López, only three pitchers had opened with as many as eight consecutive strikeouts, Jim Deshaies in 1986, Jacob deGrom in 2014, and German Marquez in 2018.

Welch won 307 games in a 13-year career spent entirely with New York. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1973, nearly a century after the game that produced his most unusual achievement. He was a workhorse who threw more than 4,800 innings, but the nine consecutive strikeouts on August 28, 1884, remain the statistical line that distinguishes him from every other pitcher who has taken the mound.