Lightning strikes, maybe once ... maybe twice.
On July 4, the High-A Greensboro Grasshoppers pulled off baseball's rarest achievement, using three pitchers to spin a combined perfect game victory over Aberdeen. The first perfecto in Greensboro history came almost seven years after the affiliate's last no-hitter, and it marked the first non-complex nine-inning perfect game in all of the Minor Leagues since 2017.
It was the kind of thing that doesn't happen every day. Yet the Grasshoppers pulled off the trick again on Sunday, only nine days later.
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No, this is not a reprint: four Pirates pitching prospects -- Hung Leng Chang, Joshua Loeschorn, Jake Shirk and Jarod Bayless -- combined to throw a nine-inning perfect game for Greensboro in a 4-0 win over Bowling Green on Sunday at First National Bank Field.
Of course, no Major League team has ever thrown two perfect games in the same season. Never mind nine days apart.
Shirk, a 23-year-old right-hander, was the only Greensboro pitcher to contribute to both perfectos. He logged a 1-2-3 eighth inning on Sunday with a strikeout, after punching out four across two perfect innings in the team's July 4 victory.
Bayless locked down the final three outs and Loeschorn recorded six outs in relief of Chang, who struck out five over the first five innings.
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Left fielder Titus Dumitru provided all the offense Greensboro needed with a run-scoring single in the third.
What were the chances of that being enough?
No-hitters happen fairly regularly in the Minors, but true nine-inning perfectos are truly rare. Earlier this season, Mets Double-A prospects combined to throw a seven-inning perfecto as part of a doubleheader. There were a pair of Dominican Summer League perfect games in 2022 and '24, but both went fewer than nine frames.
On July 2, 2022, the Dodgers' Rookie-level Arizona Complex League club utilized five pitchers to throw one that went nine frames.
On Sunday, Greensboro accounted for the 26th no-hitter in the Minors this season. But before July 4, there hadn't been a nine-inning perfecto in the Minors since Connor Grey went the distance for Kane County against Clinton on Sept. 1, 2017. Greensboro has now thrown the seventh and eighth since 2007 this month.