The perfect game — 27 up, 27 down — is the rarest of baseball feats.
There have been only 24 of them in major league history, with the first two coming in 1880. Compare that to the 319 total no-hitters on record (including those 24) and you get a feel for just how difficult it is for a pitcher to navigate a nine-inning game without allowing a man to reach base.
Indeed, whether it’s by error, walk, or — in John Means’ case in 2021 — past third strike that allows a runner to face, the perfect game has a ton of factors working against it in the modern era.
How difficult is it? More than 10 years had passed since the last MLB perfect game before Domingo German logged one on June 29, 2023.
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When was the last MLB perfect game?
The last perfect game thrown in Major League Baseball was June 29, 2023, when Domingo German shut down the Oakland Athletics in succession in an 11-0 Yankees win. German threw 99 pitches in the win with nine strikeouts to achieve the first perfect game since 2012.]
Germán. HISTORY! pic.twitter.com/ktEZbxZNIo
— New York Yankees (@Yankees) June 29, 2023
After that streak, we have seen more than a decade without a perfect game, though there have been numerous near-misses through the years.
How many perfect games have there been since 2000?
For the sake of record-keeping, we’re excluding Armando Galarraga’s infamous 2010 near-perfect game in which a runner was called safe on what would have been the final out of the game by Jim Joyce, breaking it up. With that out of the way, there have been eight perfect games since 2004, starting with Randy Johnson’s gem against the Braves.
| Player, Team | Date | Opponent, Score |
| Randy Johnson, Diamondbacks | May 18, 2004 | Atlanta Braves, 2-0 |
| Mark Buehrle, Chicago White Sox | July 23, 2009 | Tampa Bay Rays, 5-0 |
| Dallas Braden, Oakland Athletics | May 9, 2010 | Tampa Bay Rays, 4-0 |
| Roy Halladay, Philadelphia Phillies | May 29, 2010 | Florida Marlins, 1-0 |
| Philip Humber, Chicago White Sox | April 21, 2012 | Seattle Mariners, 4-0 |
| Matt Cain, San Francisco Giants | June 13, 2012 | Houston Astros, 10-0 |
| Felix Hernandez, Seattle Mariners | August 15, 2012 | Tampa Bay Rays, 1-0 |
| Domingo German, New York Yankees | June 28, 2023 | New York Yankees 11, Oakland Athletics 0 |
The Athletics have been blanked twice in their history, once against German and once in 1904 against Cy Young (as the Philadelphia Athletics). The only other teams to have multiple perfect games thrown against them are the Rays (three times), Dodgers (three times, once as the Brooklyn Dodgers) and the Twins (two times).