Marlins pulled Eury Perez from perfection after 7 innings with an 8-0 lead which the baseball gods will never forget

Eury Perez was perfect through seven innings against the Athletics on Sunday in Sacramento with zero baserunners allowed on 92 pitches while the Marlins held an 8-0 lead that made the outcome of the game completely irrelevant and turned the only remaining drama into whether a 24-year-old right-hander was going to join the most exclusive club in the history of professional baseball.

Eury Perez had one task remaining. All that needed to happen was for him to record six more outs to complete the 25th perfect game ever thrown. Then Marlins manager Clayton McCullough walked to the mound and took the ball out of his hand because Perez was a few starts into his return from a groin injury and the organization decided that protecting a young arm was more important than letting him chase baseball immortality with a commanding lead and the finish line in sight.

The Baseball Gods Won’t Forget Eury Perez

Marlins pulled Eury Perez after seven perfect innings with 92 pitches

Fans loudly chanted "SHAME!" as the bullpen promptly walked the first batter to end the perfect game pic.twitter.com/htXAIU0ac4
— Jomboy Media (@JomboyMedia) July 5, 2026

The Sacramento crowd started chanting “shame” at the Marlins dugout because even the home fans who were watching their own team get no-hit wanted to see the perfect game completed, which tells you everything about how rare and sacred perfect games are in baseball because opposing fans were actively rooting against their own team’s chances of reaching base just for the privilege of witnessing something that has only happened 24 times in 150 years of professional baseball.

When the other team’s fans are booing your decision to pull your own pitcher, you’ve made a choice that transcends the normal boundaries of competitive rooting interests and entered territory where the historical significance of the moment matters more to everyone in the building than the final score.

I understand the logic of the decision because Eury Perez was coming back from injury and managers have a responsibility to protect young arms from themselves, especially when the player is 24 years old and the franchise’s future depends on his right arm being healthy for the next decade.

I understand that 92 pitches through seven innings probably meant he needed 110-plus to finish the game and that’s a lot of stress on a recently injured groin in July when the Marlins aren’t competing for anything meaningful. I understand that baseball is a long season and one start in the middle of summer isn’t worth risking a pitcher’s long-term health over regardless of the historical significance of the moment.

I understand all of that but you have to let him go.

You have to let him go because perfect games are the rarest accomplishment in all of sports and being six outs away with an eight-run lead is a situation that might never present itself again in Perez’s entire career regardless of how many years he pitches and how dominant he becomes.

You give him the eighth inning with a short leash and if the first batter reaches base or his pitch count hits 105 or the groin starts barking, you pull him immediately and nobody questions the decision because you gave him the chance and it didn’t work out.

Taking the ball from a pitcher who is perfect through seven innings without even letting him try to get through the eighth is the kind of overly cautious managing that prioritizes process over the actual human experience of playing a sport that is supposed to produce transcendent moments, and McCullough chose the process when the moment was begging him to choose the player.

The baseball gods made their feelings about the decision perfectly clear because the first reliever McCullough brought in, Lake Bachar, walked the very first batter he faced, which means the perfect game, the no-hitter, and the shutout all died on the same pitch from a guy who wasn’t Eury Perez.

The Athletics went on to score eight runs in the final two innings to turn an 8-0 blowout into a 9-8 nail-biter that the Marlins barely survived, which means McCullough pulled his pitcher to protect the lead and the bullpen immediately gave the entire lead back while also destroying any chance of the perfect game in the process.

The Marlins won 9-8 instead of winning something like 8-0 behind a perfect game that would have been talked about for the rest of baseball history, and McCullough protected the arm while endangering the win simultaneously and robbing his pitcher of the chance to do something that only 24 human beings have ever done on a baseball diamond.

The baseball gods don’t forget decisions like that and the eight-run bullpen implosion was their way of telling Clayton McCullough that he made the wrong call in the most emphatic way possible.

There have been 24 perfect games in 150 years of professional baseball and Perez was six outs away from the 25th with an eight-run cushion and 92 pitches on his arm when his manager decided that the potential risk to a groin that had already healed enough to let him throw seven perfect innings was more important than letting the kid chase something that most pitchers never even get close to in an entire career.

The fans in Sacramento chanted “shame” because they knew what they were watching slip away, and the bullpen confirmed their frustration by giving up every run the Marlins had scored within two innings of Perez leaving the mound.

McCullough will say he made the right decision for the long-term health of his pitcher and maybe history proves him right if Perez stays healthy for the next 10 years and throws 200 innings a season without any issues.

If you asked Eury Perez whether he wanted the ball for the eighth inning with a perfect game on the line and an eight-run lead behind him, every single person alive knows what his answer would have been, and the fact that his manager didn’t let him give that answer is the part of this story that nobody in Miami is going to forget anytime soon.