Domingo Germán throws a perfect game, a breakdown

Domingo Hermann is taking the mound. He is three outs away from completing a perfect game, the first perfect game since 2012. The first perfect game by a Dominican-born player grabs the ball. Let's go, Yankees! The fans are ready, and this breakdown is brought to you by Shady Rays, who work with us a lot, and they're giving you the best discount we ever give anybody. More about that later on. Domingo Hermann's got work to do. The first pitch, change-up away for ball one. Now he went a lot of secondary pitches. That's a curveball, four-strike one-and-one towards the end of this game, and I'm going to break down the pitching and some fun stuff. This is just the ninth inning. Fouled back. He's got two strikes on him. He's taking his time. He's breathing. He's thinking all about it. Ground ball. Volpe gobbles it up. And throws across for the easy first out. Oh, father and son witnessing history. Gotta love that. First pitch, pop up to center field. They're going to make it easy on him. I guess it's been somewhat easy. Let's go! One more! One more out, and only one more pitch needed. A ground ball to Donaldson, and at this moment, before he even throws it, Severino is celebrating and Glaber is looking into the cooler to see if there's any liquid in it because he wants to throw it on Domingo. Then the ball gets thrown. The out gets recorded. We got a little jump spin, and then a kind of like, yes, come hug me, all of you, my children. I thank thee. Big celebration. Everyone's just very happy. Higgy catches a perfect game. He caught a no-hitter a couple seasons ago. Now he catches a perfect game. He's in history. The dugout response, Glaber says, all right, never mind, screw this, I don't have anyone to carry it with me. Judge stays back, kind of limp it, and in that same shot, on the left here is the translator or interpreter, what's the correct word, Marlon, and he's looking on very intense. He spends a lot of time with Domingo, and then you have, I like this, instead of being alone because he's not a player, he's not a coach, but he's part of the team, hitting coach Brad Wilkerson. He celebrates with him right away. Look, let's go, buddy. I like that. That made me smile. That was a nice little wholesome moment. Domingo's uncle passed away a couple days ago. He said he spent all of the day prior crying about that, and maybe that's who he's pointing up to and talking to right there. I don't know. Just making an assumption based on what we know. All right, let's go back to how he got this perfect game. He threw three pitches. He threw a fastball, mostly top of the zone. He threw a changeup that starts left, got arm side run, and he threw a curveball. His curveball is a really tight little humpback curveball, and all three pitches together look like, so they all play off each other well. Now, there's a couple of bats I want to walk through just to show you what I thought was cool, and I've done this with Domingo earlier in the year. I did a breakdown on this, but I like how he pitches because he kind of finds the outside line and then plays with it. Pitch number one, he wants the call there, doesn't get it, so he goes back to the same pitch a little closer in and gets the strike call. Now, this is pitch one and two overlaid, and they are a little different, and the one a little more inside did get called a strike, so now that he's found that outside line, he's going to play with it with the changeup and gets the strike call there as well. Here's the fastball that called strike and changeup called strike, 92 miles per hour, 84, 85, different movement, both get called a strike. He's going to stay outside and try to beat him to that spot again with the fastball. I just love the consistency, so here's the changeup and then the fastball, and then here's all four of those pitches overlaid, and he's just messing with that spot and that line, and now that he's got the hitter reaching out to hit that pitch and kind of thinking about it, he's going to come in with the curveball. That might have been a mistake. I'm not sure if he wanted to come in, but he gets the easy pop-up. Is it easy? IKF. He got it. Imagine that in the third inning. That would have been bad. All right. Now, here's where he started to fall in love with his curveball, but he got a little smart about it. He tries to go curveball first pitch. He doesn't have any break. Curveball second pitch. He tries to find it again. Still no break. Now, it's 2-0. That's a fastball count, and the hitter's like, yep, he can't locate his curveball for a strike. He's going to go fastball, but instead, Hermann triples up the curveball and gets a big swing and a miss. Then, what's he going to do now? He's throwing three curveballs. He can go fastball now. He goes changeup just to mix it up a little bit. 3-1. Another fastball count. He's thrown three balls. He's wild with his off-speed. He's got to throw me a fastball now. Nope. Another curve. Drops the batter to his knee. Full count. Another curve. Threw it three times in a row, and then threw a changeup, then he threw it twice. Now, the next batter comes up, and he's going to open him up. Curveball. And it's working. So, you think the catcher says, hey, let's throw the curveball. No, I don't want to throw that. So, the changeup then? No, I don't want to throw that. I want to stay on my fastball. Fastball. He yanks it. It's not good. Catcher says, all right, let's go changeup or curve. He says, no. Let's stay with the fastball. Let's make them protect the fastball as well. Well, there's a strike with the fastball. And another one. So, he went three fastballs in a row. And then after that, now back to the curve. Foul ball. Now back to the curve. Foul ball. Well, back to it again. Gets him. And on that third one, you can see Higgy sets up a, well, we got pitches to waste, and he's swinging, so let's move outside a little bit. And they get him. I like that. I like that he was like, I got a nasty curveball right now. But I can't throw just curves. I got to mix in the fastballs. It was three, three, three, three. There's always a defensive play in perfect games. This is the biggest one. It's not huge. It's not like the, you know, Dwayne Wise catch. But it's a nice play by Rizzo. There wasn't a lot of hard hit balls by the A's. I mean, that's a hard hit ball, and that's a nice play by Rizzo. But usually, you get a ton. The Yankees put up 11 runs, so Herman had to do a lot of things. At one point, to stay loose, he starts stretching. I like this. The A's broadcast were showing a lot of the stretching. And then a lot of him talking to the pitching coach, Matt Blake, where he's talking about, no, no, no, not that one. Change up. What's that? And Matt Blake's going over it with them and talking about it and saying where to throw it and all that. In between things, they were going over all the batters. He's like, middle down, you're going to get this swing, and they're going to ground it. But up and away, that's smashed. And he's like, OK, good to know. Good to know. And then this was the plan. You can basically see. He says, oh, keep the fastball up. Change way at the bottom and then hook in the curve. And you got it. You're all good. And he's going over the batters, like the next two batters, all fastballs and curveballs away. All right. Bring it into him. Let him make him try to pull it. OK. So they're going over it in between every inning. Matt Blake was there in his corner, basically. I like seeing that. And then this was kind of funny. Domingo Herman got suspended for sticky stuff on his hands earlier this year. He just reapplied rosin. I'm guessing because it looks like he's messing with his hands. You can see pitching coach Matt Blake be like, hey, hey, hey, hey, give me your hand. Let me feel how sticky are you? Domingo's like, OK, here's my right hand. What do you think? Do you think it's legal? I don't want to get us in trouble. He's like, yep, just making sure. OK, you're all good to go. I gotcha. And yeah, the umpires checked him twice or a couple of times during the game as well. Now let's break down the top hugs at the end of the game. Rizzo has the game ball. He says, here you go, dude. That's history. And then two pats there, two pats down low and then two pats in the front. Then Bader comes in and they're going to jump up. That was a nice one. Pitching coach Matt Blake. Big old hug. Like I said, he was helping him and then Boone's waiting in the wings. And this is a fatherly hug here with some words of wisdom and advice and congratulations and pride in his ear. And Domingo lets him soak it in and he says thank you and all that. And then you got Harky gets a big old bear hug, lifts him up. Everybody love it. Cole. Whoa. Nice hug from Cole. They're also going to embrace for a little bit and chat and Domingo seems happy to chat with him. And then Cole looks at him really proud, like freeze frame ending of a movie proud. They got Jug with a hug, a little bit of a chat, a pull away, pats to the chest, pulls him back in. That's just a guy who knows what he's doing. I'm going to embrace you. We're going to separate. I'm going to look you in the eye and pat you on the chest. I'm going to say, oh, I'm proud of you. And then I'm going to bring you back in for the real deal. Good stuff. Rizzo with the rookie Volpe at the back of the pack while they're doing interviews just gives him a little bump here. He's like, dude, let's go. Part of history, baby. There's also this moment where the Yankees are hanging out in the background behind the interviews and I see Rizzo tapping people and he's like, yeah. So I go to him. I say, you know, he's perfect, right? They're like, perfect game. And then they just laugh. And it's just the boys cracking jokes and sharing stories. Part of history. Now, the catcher and pitcher relationship is always one of my favorites. And you can see that after Domingo looks up to the heavens, he finds Higgy again and gives him a nice embrace. I love the catcher pitcher relationship, but I also love this as Higgy leaves. You got catching coach Tanner Swanson coming up to Higgy like, yeah, baby. And Trevino, the other catcher on the roster. So this is a little catcher threesome right here. All given Higgy props and being proud for him. And I love it because what Higgy did all game was give him props. Give Domingo props. Yep. Oh, beautiful. Yep. Oh, yep. Love it. Good pitch. Love it. So they get their picture together. They'll be signing baseballs together for the rest of their lives. There's another hug for them and looks like Domingo says something that makes Higgy laugh here. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. And then another little hug. And then Domingo is going to turn. Oh, another hug. Oh, my goodness. He's going to turn and say, hey, everybody, I want a picture with all my teammates. Let's do it. So they all get together and judges like, yeah, everybody, hey, hey, you're in the picture. You're in the picture. And you got Kenley standing in the back with all the tall people realizes it's a mistake and he's got to jump to get his face into this picture. Say perfect on three. Perfect. And then another embrace catcher and pitcher with Higgy rubbing his head and pitching coach Matt Blake getting another hug from Domingo saying thank you for getting me through this. And that is everything from perfect game Domingo Hermann. Good job. Congratulations. This one was brought to you by Shady Rays. Shady Rays, use code breakdown for 50% off, 50% off two plus pairs of polarized sunglasses. Shady Rays, 50% off two plus pairs of polarized sunglasses.