For most of Tuesday night’s shellacking, the Cincinnati Reds couldn’t find a way to get the Toronto Blue Jays out.
That is, until they turned to their secret weapon out of the bullpen: backup catcher and former Blue Jay Luke Maile.
The 33-year-old backstop entered the game with the Reds down 10-2 in the bottom of the seventh and worked two perfect innings, retiring all six hitters he faced. Maile threw 28 pitches — 20 for strikes — mixed in a knuckleball and topped out at 76.9 m.p.h.
Maile started his outing by forcing Joey Loperfido to fly out, then forced Leo Jiménez to ground out before winning a nine-pitch battle when Addison Barger flew out to left, securing his first scoreless frame.
In the eighth, Maile needed just 11 pitches to mow down George Springer, Steward Berroa and Davis Schneider, getting a pop-out and two ground balls.
“He’s got good stuff, man,” Blue Jays manager John Schnieder quipped after the game when asked about Maile. “I remember playing catch with him in 2019, featuring that knuckleball. It’s pretty good.”
It was the ninth pitching appearance of Maile’s career and second in Cincinatti’s last four games. With the 2.0 scoreless innings Tuesday, the nine-year MLB veteran now owns an 8.68 career ERA with three strikeouts.
Despite the ugly career line, he has yet to allow a baserunner through two appearances in 2024.
In recording six outs Tuesday, Maile became the first position player of 2024 to pitch multiple perfect innings in one game. Cleveland Guardians catcher Austin Hedges came close in July against the Detroit Tigers but issued one walk.
In fact, no position player has worked six up, six down since Sandy Leon did so for Cleveland against Detroit on July 5, 2022.
Maile spent 2017 to 2019 with the Blue Jays before being non-tendered at the end of his third season with the club. He made his first two career MLB appearances on the mound with Toronto in 2019.
Through 43 games at his actual position with the Reds in 2024, Maile has hit two home runs while posting a .509 OPS.
Since MLB updated the rules to only allow position players to pitch with their team down by eight or more, up by 10 or more in the ninth inning or in extra innings, outings like Maile’s on Tuesday have become less common. But Maile made a pretty solid case with his appearance against his former team to take the mound the next time the Reds need a non-pitcher on mop-up duty.
