Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Aaron Nola matched Tom Seaver’s 51-year-old Major League Baseball record for consecutive strikeouts in a game on Friday by retiring 10 batters in a row.
The 28-year-old right-hander from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, was throwing against Seaver’s former club, the New York Mets, when he began baffling batters.
Nola started his streak after hitting Jeff McNeil and watching him take third on Francisco Lindor’s double in the first inning.
But Nola escaped the jam by striking out Michael Conforto and Pete Alonso and Dominic Smith was called out on strikes to end the inning.
Nola retired James McCann on a called third strike and got Kevin Pillar and Luis Guillorme to strike out swinging to end the second, then had Taijuan Walker called out on strikes and sent down McNeil and Lindor swinging to end the third inning.
Conforto struck out swining to open the Mets fourth inning at the plate — and match Seaver’s MLB mark — before Alonso blasted a line drive double to right field to snap Nola’s mystifying run.
Nola helped his own cause in the fifth by driving in the first run of the game with a double to right field.
Seaver, a Hall of fame right-hander who helped the Mets capture the 1969 World Series title, set the record strikeout streak on April 22, 1970. He struck out the final 10 San Diego batters in New York’s 2-1 victory over the Padres at Shea Stadium, the Mets’ former home ballpark.
Nola was named the US national collegiate pitcher of the year in 2014 while playing for his hometown school, Louisiana State University. He was a roommate of future Houston Astros slugger and World Series champion Alex Bregman.