Michael Soroka Strikes Out Three Batters on Nine Pitches in Diamondbacks Debut

Nine pitches. Nine strikes. Three strikeouts. Michael Soroka announced his arrival in Arizona with an immaculate fifth inning, retiring Javier Baez, Kerry Carpenter and Gleyber Torres in succession to become the fourth pitcher in Diamondbacks franchise history to accomplish the feat.

The 28-year-old right-hander punctuated the sequence by blowing a 95 mph fastball past Torres, registering his 10th strikeout of the game and tying a career high. Soroka was making his first start for the Diamondbacks on Monday night against the Detroit Tigers in Phoenix, having signed a one-year, $7.5 million contract with the club during the offseason.

The stage was already significant before the fifth inning arrived. Soroka drew the Opening Day start, his first competitive outing for the organization after arriving in free agency over the winter. The assignment itself signaled the club's confidence in a pitcher whose professional résumé includes both an All-Star selection and years lost to serious injury.

Soroka earned that All-Star nod with the Atlanta Braves in 2019, but back-to-back Achilles injuries cost him most of the 2020 season and the entirety of both 2021 and 2022. The right-hander, who has also pitched for Canada in the World Baseball Classic, arrived in Arizona having rebuilt from the kind of injury history that ends careers.

Against Detroit, he showed little of those limitations. The immaculate inning requires three consecutive strikeouts on nine consecutive pitches, all of them strikes, making it one of the rarer individual achievements a starting pitcher can produce in a single frame. Soroka's fifth inning placed him in select Diamondbacks company: Randy Johnson recorded the franchise's first immaculate inning in 2001, followed by Byung-Hyun Kim in 2002 and Wade Miley in 2012.

Soroka's $7.5 million one-year deal reflected a calculated investment in a pitcher who, when healthy, had demonstrated legitimate frontline ability. The 10 strikeouts against Detroit on Opening Day offered the most compelling evidence yet that the investment is paying off.