Twinbill In The Twin Cities
When the Twins got rid of that pesky roof in 2010, they opened themselves up to rainouts and doubleheaders. Sure enough, those happened Saturday and Sunday (respectively) with the Royals in town. Although the teams split the results, the Royals had two players hit two home runs in a twinbill in the Twin Cities. Brandon Moss did the honors in the first game, his 10th career multi-homer game, and easily the most among current members of the Royals.
However, it was catcher Salvador Perez who caught most of our attention; he opened the Royals' scoring in the first game and then homered again in the second, becoming the 15th Royal ever to homer in both halves of a DH. Six of those belong to Amos Otis and Bob Oliver, who did it thrice each in the '70s. Steve Balboni, John Mayberry Sr., and Lou Piniella are on the list as well. Prior to Perez it was Eric Hosmer on August 16, 2013.
When Perez hit another homer in the 4th inning of game 2, he created two more notes. Only once before has a Royals batter homered three times in a doubleheader; Bill Pecota did that against the Yankees on July 14, 1989. And combined with Moss, it was the second time the Royals have gotten a two-homer game in both games of a DH. Jermaine Dye and Mark Quinn teamed up against the Angels on September 14, 1999.
Paging Mr. Martinez
The Tigers notably have two Martinezes in their starting lineup, but this week J.D. didn't need Victor's help. He got on the "two-fer" list by himself, recording a home run and three walks on Tuesday against Baltimore, and then repeating that line on Thursday in the series finale. No Tiger had posted two such games in a month (much less a week) since Charlie Gehringer in August 1937.
As for that Tuesday homer, that was the Tigers' 13-inning, 13-11 escapade with the Orioles, and J.D. would end up collecting two homers and four walks (two intentional) by the time it was over. Only three other players in the live-ball era have done that, all in extra-inning games: Derrek Lee in 2002, Mike Schmidt in 1979, and Eddie Robinson in 1948.
Tyler Collins came along on Wednesday and chipped in a two-homer game, the first time the Tigers had a player hit two homers in two straight games since Ramon Santiago and Gary Sheffield pulled it off in September 2008.
It's Just A Little Crush
Now back to that 13-11 mess on Tuesday. It began with a seven-run 3rd inning by the Orioles, their largest in Detroit since September 21, 1995, a frame capped by a Cal Ripken three-run double. (That was game 2145 of The Streak; Cal had broken the record just two weeks earlier.) The Tigers put together a four-run 7th before Mark Trumbo hit the first tying or go-ahead homer of his career when down to the last out (i.e., he was "the last hope", as they say). The last Oriole to hit such a homer in the Motor City was Floyd Rayford at Tiger Stadium on June 10, 1985.
So we play on. Chris Davis shone a light on the end of the tunnel with a homer in the 12th inning, just the second of his career hit that late in a game (June 25, 2009, in Arizona). Detroit amazingly answered with a three-run B12, marking the first game in nearly four years where teams had traded 3's (or more) in the 12th or later. The White Sox and Mariners matched 5's in the 14th on June 5, 2013.
So we play on. And here's Crush's chance to get into the "2" column. Deciding "let's try this again", Davis homered again in the 13th, matching the feat of Matt Adams of the Cardinals (September 4, 2013) as the only two players ever to hit two homers in the 12th or later of the same game. Davis was also just the second player in Orioles history (which is 1954) with two extra-inning homers in one game; Mike Young went deep in the 10th and 12th to beat the Angels on May 28, 1987.
It was the first time in Comerica Park history that the Tigers had scored 11 and lost.
Paging Mr. Garcia
The White Sox, of course, counter the Tigers' Martinezes with two Garcias of their own (it was briefly three early in the season).
Avisail hit two home runs off Yovani Gallardo (more on him later) in Saturday's 16-1 thumping of the Mariners, and then added two doubles off Dillon Overton. That's four extra-base hits and six RBIs, both career highs, and just the third such game in White Sox history. Robin Ventura had the same combo of two and two against Milwaukee on July 19, 1991; while Pat Seerey has the only four-homer game in Sox lore, July 18, 1948, in Philadelphia.
The last cleanup batter with 4 XBH and 6 RBI was Matt Holliday, then with Oakland, on July 20, 2009. And Avisail's 6 RBI, along with the team's 16 total runs, both set Chicago records (including the Cubs) for any game ever played in Seattle.
Meanwhile, Willy Garcia earned himself a Kernel on Friday by being the first White Sock with a home run and two sacrifice flies (and honestly, aren't sac flies just balls that wanted to be homers but didn't make it?) since the great Lyle Mouton did it in Baltimore on April 23, 1997.
900 Feet ≈ 166 Altuves
Avisail, however, was the second player just this week to have four extra-base hits in a game. Jose Altuve accomplished it on Wednesday, and none of his even left the yard. Altuve became the first player in Astros history with two doubles and two triples in a game, and the first in the majors since Carl Crawford of the (still-Devil) Rays on August 2, 2005.
Unfortunately, three of Altuve's hits came with two outs and he never advanced even one base. He thus became the third player in the last 100 years to have four extra-base hits and not score a run. Matt Murton had that dubious honor for the Cubs on August 3, 2006, and Willie Jones did it for the Phillies in Boston on April 20, 1949.
Intermission
More baseball in just a second, but I wanna rock right now.
Down With The Ship
The pitching side was not without its 2's this week, mostly in the form of two players having equally bad outings.
Chris Heston, making his first start for the Mariners on Sunday, surrendered a five-run 1st inning to the White Sox, who eventually rolled to an 8-1 win. Jeremy Bonderman (June 2, 2013) was the last pitcher to allow 7 ER in his first start with the Mariners, and Hector Noesi (April 9, 2012) was the last to do it in under four innings.
(Noesi, incidentally, would later become the first pitcher ever to make starts for three different teams before the end of April, when he was traded twice in 2014.)
Aside from the "first start" qualifier, Heston also became the first Mariners starter to allow seven earned runs in less than four innings since... Yovani Gallardo did it on Saturday. That's the game from above where the Garcias did their thing. Not only was it Chicago's most runs ever scored in the Pacific Northwest, but it exactly matched the largest home losses in Mariners history. Oddly, all three 15-run decisions have been by 16-1 counts; the Reds won there in June 2007, and the Royals did it on April 24, 1977.
Saturday was just the second 10-run outing of Gallardo's career, the other being back in 2007 (August 8, and at Coors Field, so does it really count?). But he and Heston became the first pitchers in Mariners history to give up 7 ER in under 4 IP in consecutive home games.
Gallardo's exit on Saturday, and the blowout nature of the game, had us wondering by the 7th inning which position player was going to pitch. That would be 2B Mike Freeman, who never even pitched in college, much less the minors. Sure enough, he gave up three hits and a sacrifice fly, topping out at 78 mph, but he did spell Dillon Overton, whose own outing of 4⅓ innings and 5 ER was a first for the Mariners since Paul Abbott lasted that long on April 30, 2002.
Freeman was the first position player to pitch for the Mariners since Luis Sardiñas on July 29. That's only 10 months ago, BUT guess who took the mound the night before on Friday. That would be Luis Sardiñas, now with the Padres, after Jered Weaver surrendered seven runs and couldn't escape the 1st inning against the Diamondbacks. Weaver was the first San Diego starter to not finish the 1st (aside from injuries) since Tim Stauffer also gave up seven runs to the Diamondbacks in a spot start on May 28, 2014.
Sardiñas was the second Padres Position Player Pitching (that's four P's instead of our usual three) this season; Erick Aybar got the final out of another Diamondbacks blowout on April 18. It's the first time in Padres history that two different position players have taken the mound in the same season, and it's the first time in MLB history that it's happened in west-coast games on back-to-back nights (stay up late with us!).
Tim Stauffer Fans, This Is Your Week!
In between Weaver and Sardiñas, there was the interesting line of Craig Stammen, picked up by the Padres as a free agent in December. Stammen gave up two more runs, both on solo homers, but recorded seven K's among his 10 outs of work. He also issued zero walks (since, clearly, everything's over the plate). The last Padres reliever to strike out seven and walk zero... why, that's Tim Stauffer against the Cardinals on May 22, 2013.
The Nightmare Continues
Weaver's outing on Friday was promptly followed by Luis Perdomo giving up 11 hits and eight runs (although he spread them over 3+ innings) to Arizona on Saturday. The last Padres starters to give up 7 ER in back-to-back games were Cesar Carrillo and Mat Latos in August 2009, while Perdomo was the first San Diegan to allow 11 hits and eight runs in front of his home fans since Jake Peavy did it on April 9, 2006, against the Rockies.
In that 2006 game, Rockies 2B Jason Smith collected three hits and drove in four runs while batting 7th; that feat also hadn't been duplicated in a Rox road game until Alexi Amarista did it against Weaver et al. on Friday.
And in case our pitchers weren't connected enough, in Perdomo's previous start (Monday), he stuck around long enough to also have a triple and a double while batting. Only one other Padres hurler had done that in a game... and of course it's Jake Peavy. Chase Field in Phoenix, April 19, 2007.
Bridge
(Because this is pretty long and there are other songs with the same title.)
It Takes One
(Former New Britain Rock Cat) Danny Valencia led off Friday's 2nd inning for the Mariners with a triple and crossed that game off our no-hitter watch for the evening. To be honest we kinda forgot about it. Until the teams played to a nine-inning tie and Valencia still had Seattle's only base knock. Melky Cabrera's double in the 10th gave the White Sox the lead, and when the Mariners went 1-2-3 in the bottom, we had some notes that were even more fun than if Jose Quintana had thrown the NH.
It was the first time in Mariners history that their only hit of a game was a triple, and the first time they'd been one-hit in an extra-inning contest. They do have two extra-inning games where they've been two-hit, one by Melido Perez (!) and the Yankees on April 24, 1993; and the other against Tampa Bay on August 6, 2004.
Tony Zych, who in 2015 replaced Dutch Zwilling as the alphabetically-last player in MLB history, had finished a handful of games before, but they were all blowouts. Because Zwilling had been last since his own debut in 1910, and saves weren't official until 1969, that also made Friday the first time that the alphabetically-last player had been the last pitcher in a game and gotten the traditional "closing" stat, a save.
By the way, if you're thinking the Mariners do this a lot, you'd be right. Since the start of 2011, it's the 11th time Seattle's maxed out at one hit, more than any other team. The Pirates have done it 10 times, while the Padres and Twins are still chasing them with eight each.
Speaking of Mariners triples, Ben Gamel hit one in the 1st inning of their Wednesday game with Oakland. That was notable because Gamel is the only active player born on May 17, and is now the fourth Mariner with a triple on his birthday. The others are Darnell Coles (1989), Ken Phelps (1987), and Dave Henderson (1986).
It Takes Three (Or 17)
For years there's been a superstition about the Yankees being historically bad at Tropicana Field. That seemed to hold true again this week when they lost two out of three and salvaged the final game on Sunday by a 3-2 score despite striking out (on offense) 17 times.
It's the third time already this year that the Bombers have fanned at least 17 times in a game... and they've won all three of them. One was the record-setting 18-inning game with the Cubs on Sunday Night Baseball, and the other was April 15 in a 3-2 win over the Cardinals. They are (already!) the first team in the live-ball era (1920) to win three 17-K games in the same season, and equally strange, the rest of MLB has only done it once. The Nationals held on to beat the Phillies on April 7. The only other team with a pair of 17-K games so far is the Padres, and all other teams (including the Nationals) have a combined record of 1-8 when they do it.
Balks Make Everything Funner
(We know "funner" isn't a real word. Don't @ us.)
⋅ Julio Urias added to our parade of bad pitching lines on Saturday by giving up seven runs to the Marlins before leaving in the 3rd inning. Seven runs on seven hits barely registers one pop on our Kernel-meter; Hyun-Jin Ryu did it two weeks ago (but again, at Coors Field) and Brock Stewart had such an outing for the Dodgers last August.
Even tack on Urias's wild pitch and you only get back to Mike Bolsinger in September 2015. BUT toss in his balk and we have a winner. The last Dodger to do all that in a game (7 H, 7 R, 1 WP, 1 BK) was rookie Leo Dickerman in Boston on June 1, 1923.
⋅ Phillies reliever Joely Rodriguez got rocked for seven runs while getting just two outs on Thursday, becoming their first with that line (< 1 IP) since Hector Mercado against the Astros in 2002. But throw on the balk, and J-Rod is not just the first Phillies reliever ever to do it, he's the first for any team since the immortal Tanyon Sturtze on September 13, 2004.
⋅ Tanner Roark was pulled in the 6th inning of the Nationals' loss to Pittsburgh on Wednesday having allowed seven earned runs and two homers. That by itself wasn't too rare; even the stars like Gio Gonzalez and Max Scherzer did that last season. Add one (1) balk to the search and Roark is the first ever for the Nationals. The only two pitchers in franchise history with 7+ ER, 2+ HR, and a balk were both Expos: Mark Leiter in 1996 and Bill Gullickson in 1982.
Bottom Of The Bag
⋅ Pirates, Sunday: Won 1-0 game thanks to bases-loaded hit-by-pitch of David Freese in 6th inning. Last 1-0 game decided by an HBP: July 5, 1998, when Scott Erickson of the Orioles plunked the Yankees' Chad Curtis in the 3rd.
⋅ Kyle Freeland, Sunday: Third pitcher in Rockies history to homer and double in the same game. Two have come in Cincinnati (Denny Neagle at Cinergy, August 12, 2001), and the first was journeyman Brian Bohanon in Montréal on August 11, 2000.
⋅ Carlos Martinez, Saturday: First Cardinals pitcher to work 9 scoreless innings and get a no-decision (because tie game) since Matt Morris against the Cubs on May 2, 2004.
⋅ Ben Taylor, Saturday: First Boston pitcher to allow two homers, not record an out, and eat the loss for it since Herb Hash against the Yankees on July 4, 1940.
⋅ Mark Canha, Friday: First player with a double, a triple, and an extra-inning walkoff homer in the same game since Dwight Evans did it for the Red Sox on June 28, 1984 (Evans also got the single to hit for the cycle).
⋅ Dansby Swanson, Friday: First Braves player in live-ball era with a homer, a double, and two walks while batting 8th or 9th. Youngest to do it from any spot in the order since Ryan Klesko on April 15, 1994.
⋅ Hector Velazquez, Thursday: First Red Sox pitcher to give up three homers in major-league debut since Pete Smith in Detroit, September 13, 1962.
⋅ Braves, Wednesday: Scored six runs before making an out; team's first time doing that since August 15, 1984.
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