from June 19m 2017

By Tom Verducci June 19, 2017This story appears in the June 26, 2017, issue of SPORTS ILLUSTRATED.

When Craig Kimbrel stepped on the pitching rubber at Yankee Stadium on June 6 and took his predatory, pterodactylian pose—bent at the waist, right arm held askance like an open wing—what had been a taut baseball game between New York and Boston, with its usual parry and thrust, instantly became something else. It became a one-man Broadway show, a well-attended game of catch between Kimbrel and his catcher, Christian Vázquez, and an emphatic statement about relief pitching evolved to its highest order.

Summoned in the eighth inning, Kimbrel would throw 30 pitches to close a 5–4 Red Sox win. The Yankees put none of them in play. Kimbrel obtained the final four outs while striking out five batters, the overage due to a devious 88-mph curveball that was as hard for Vázquez to catch as it was for the batter, Didi Gregorius, to hit. The outing made Kimbrel the first pitcher in history with three games in which he recorded more strikeouts than outs while working at least one inning.