Spring Training Part 3

[Ed.: These posted in reverse order, so feel free to start at the beginning and jump at the end of each post. Sorry about that.]

Thought we forgot about all those no-hitters, didn't you?

March 11: Masahiro Tanaka of the Yankees showed us a sign of things to come when he tossed four perfect innings against the Tigers with seven strikeouts. Since it's against The Unwritten Rules to remove a pitcher with a no-hitter intact, a regular-season comparison doesn't really work here, but in 2016 the Yankees had just two pitchers start a game with four perfect innings... one of them, naturally, was Masahiro Tanaka (May 27). The Rays' Steve Pearce led off the 5th in that game with a single.

March 15: Michael Pineda started the Yankees' game against Philadelphia with five perfect innings, and Aroldis Chapman added the 6th, before Freddy Galvis recorded the Phillies' only hit to lead off the 7th. The Yankees hadn't started a game with six no-hit innings (much less perfect) since June 17, 2015, against the Marlins. That day's starter... Michael Pineda, who issued two walks before Christian Yelich broke it up in the 7th with a solo homer.

The Phillies still managed to score in this game; their last regular-season affair where they got one-hit but still scored was against the Padres on April 5, 1997, when Rico Brogna's double propelled walk recipient Danny Tartabull around the bases.

March 17: Third time's a charm. In another Masahiro Tanaka start, the Yankees finally tossed the combined no-no, with Chasen Shreve and Mike Montgomery picking up the honors at the end. According to no-hitter researcher (and Friend Of Kernels) Dirk Lammers, it was the first known time the Yankees had tossed a spring-training no-hitter since March 14, 1983, when Ron Guidry and Dale Murray combined to blank the Pirates.

Montgomery's outing was unique by itself; only one pitcher in the past 11 regular seasons has gotten a four-inning save without allowing a baserunner (Drew Smyly in April 2013), and no Yankee had done it since Greg Cadaret got credit for one against the Brewers during the final week of the 1990 campaign.

March 24: We here at Kernels recently entered an annual MLB predictions contest. One of the questions was whether there will be at least two no-hitters in 2017. The Angels decided to answer that for us, using eight pitchers in another combined one against the Mariners. The Angels tossed regular-season no-hitters in both 2012 (Jered Weaver) and 2011 (Ervin Santana, who remains the last pitcher to allow a run in one); over the past six seasons, the Angels and Mariners are the only American League teams to be involved in multiple no-hitters (either giving or receiving). It was also the first known occurrence of multiple spring no-hitters in a season since 1966. As for two combined no-hitters, that's only been done once in any regular season in MLB history. The Orioles (July 13) and Braves (September 11) tossed them in 1991, part of that year's seven no-hitters, which tied the modern record from the year before.

However, our favorite part of the Angels' no-hitter is that only two batters reached base-- Zach Shank via a walk... and Jean Segura on catcher's interference. If you're new to Kernels, we find catcher's interference one of the most fascinating (and under-researched) aspects of the game; go ahead and ask us why Jacoby Ellsbury and Paul Goldschmidt are among our favorite players. To that end, the last time a batter was awarded a CI in a regular-season game where his team got no-hit, was on July 29, 1968. Chris Short of the Phillies led off the 3rd inning with one, but Reds pitcher George Culver forced him at second and then went on to complete the no-hitter, albeit with four walks and a run allowed.

March 16: The Nationals and Phillies both came close to adding another no-hitter, with Asdrubal Cabrera's double being the only hit for the Mets against Washington; and the Orioles waiting until the 9th inning to get a base knock (two, actually). Both teams still managed to score runs off those limited hits; for the Mets, their last regular-season game where they scored on just one hit was April 16, 1997, when they pieced four walks and two sacrifice flies around a Carlos Baerga double.

As for the Orioles, the last regular-season game where they scored a run without getting a hit until the 9th inning was on September 3, 2002, against the Rangers. After Alex Rodriguez was plunked in the top of the 1st, Texas starter Aaron Myette threw two pitches behind Melvin Mora and was ejected. Todd Van Poppel worked two innings without a hit, and then Joaquin Benoit worked six more in relief on 72 pitches (remember he began life as a starter?) before Jerry Hairston broke things up with a leadoff triple in the 9th.


March 22: The Padres pitching staff managed to hit four different Royals batters in their 6-2 loss (and remarkably, no one got ejected). San Diego hasn't plunked four batters in a regular-season game since June 5, 2002, when Dennis Tankersley gave out three by himself-- two of them on back-to-back pitches-- against the Giants. The Royals haven't received four since August 3, 1995, from the White Sox.

March 27: Trea Turner, batting first, and Bryce Harper, batting third, each went deep twice as the Nationals blanked the Mets 6-0. Only twice since moving to Washington has the franchise had two players with multiple homers in a regular-season game; Harper was part of the last pair, with Danny Espinosa on May 8, 2015. But never in franchise history (including the Expos years) have two of the top three batters in their lineup had a multi-homer game.

March 27: Gorkys Hernandez of the Giants took a nice tour of Scottsdale Stadium, starting in left field, then moving to right, then moving to center. He also toured the bases, hitting three doubles and scoring two runs. Since the turn of the century, the only Giant to play all three outfield positions in a regular-season game was Randy Winn, who did it thrice during his time there. And in the live-ball era, only two players have done it and collected three extra-base hits in a game: Jeffrey Hammonds of the Orioles in 1997, and Pat Sheridan for the Royals in 1983 (both had a homer and two doubles).

March 28: Remember back on the 15th when the Indians scored 11 runs and lost? They did it again. This time it was a 13-12 walk-off at the hands of the Brewers after the leadoff man reached on an error in the bottom of the 9th. The only team in the last 40 years to score 11+ runs and get walked off twice was the 2000 Orioles, who also did it by 12-11 and 13-12 scores (to Cleveland and Oakland respectively).

March 24: The Brewers, for their part, lost a 12-11 walk-off to the Reds just four days earlier despite hitting three triples in the game. The Brewers turn out to also be the last regular-season team to win a walk-off in which they scored 11+ and lose a walk-off in which they scored 11+, having done so against the Marlins and Cubs in 2012. Milwaukee's last game where they hit three triples and lost was on June 29, 1995, a 17-13 slugfest at the hands of the White Sox.

March 23: A day before that, those same Brewers probably felt like walking off in about the 5th inning after Junior Guerra posted the worst pitching line of the entire spring. Guerra gave up 10 hits, two walks, four homers, and 12 runs while not getting out of the 4th inning; depending on which formula you use, his Game Score is either a +2 (Bill James original used by Baseball Reference) or a -21 (Tom Tango's "2.0" now used by FanGraphs and MLB, which docks a pitcher 6 points for each homer).

The Brewers actually have the third-longest "streak" in the majors of having a pitcher not give up four homers in a game; their last to do it was Marco Estrada in May 2014. (The Pirates and Twins are the two teams that go back further.) And Estrada did it in a game they won; the Brewers have never had a pitcher give up 12+ runs and 4+ homers in a regular-season game.

March 29: We had a lot of fun last fall with that tie game the Cubs played, but the Royals and Rangers managed to play to a scoreless tie in the final Arizona game for both teams. There hasn't been a 0-0 tie in the regular season since the Pirates and Cardinals played to one on September 13, 1989, and neither the Royals nor Rangers have been involved in one in franchise history.

March 25: Four days earlier, the Royals had played nine more scoreless innings against the Brewers, but those teams decided to go ahead and play a 10th inning just for fun. Sure enough, Raul Mondesi Jr. smoked a walk-off solo homer for the 1-0 decision. In their regular-season history, the Royals have won just one 1-0 game via walk-off homer; Jim Eisenreich hit it in the 9th inning against Texas on August 14, 1990. Raul Mondesi Sr. decided two 1-0 games with homers in his career, but neither was a walk-off.

March 23-24: Speaking of walk-offs, on the 23rd the Braves and Tigers played at Champion Stadium in Kissimmee with Adam Walker dropping a walk-off single for the 2-1 victory. The next day the two teams walked off again-- in the other direction. Now playing at the Tigers' home in nearby Lakeland, it was JaCoby Jones who line-drove the winning single into right field for a 3-2 walk-off.

Obviously, modern schedules being what they are, teams almost never play each other at opposite sites on consecutive days in the regular season. In fact, in the complete population of play-by-play on Baseball Reference, this "dueling walk-offs" scenario has never happened in either the regular season or the postseason. (It has happened in consecutive postseason games, but travel days.) And only three times since World War II have teams walked off against each other two days apart, and the Dodgers are involved in all three pairings: As part of a four-game interleague series with the Rangers in June 2015; against the Angels in Freeway Series in 1998; and against the Giants on Labor Day weekend 1965.

March 29: The Rays left us one more huge inning, dropping a 12-spot (but only eight earned!) in a 15-batter 6th against the Orioles. If it counted, that would have set a franchise record for runs in an inning; they've posted two 11's in their history, one of them against the Orioles (August 28, 2007). They first set the mark on May 2, 2000, when they put an 11-run 8th on the Mariners and won 14-4. The Orioles have surrendered one 12-run inning since then, to the Yankees on July 30, 2011.

March 30: That leads us nicely into the Yankees' game against the Phillies, where they opened with a nine-run 1st inning that included seven hits, a throwing error on a walk (!), a passed ball, and an interference call. That 2011 game against Baltimore was the last time the Yankees posted a nine-run 1st in the regular season, and their last road game with one (i.e., the top of the 1st) was on June 5, 1988... at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore.

March 26: The Cubs split their huge inning into two, opening with a six-run 1st and then putting a "snowman" on the Reds in the 6th on the way to a 22-4 rout. The Cubs led the National League in five-run innings last year (16; this is another thing we like to track here at Kernels), but only got to six or more on five occasions. In fact, the Cubs have only had one regular-season game in the past 30 years with a pair of six-run innings: April 30, 2008, when they bookended a 19-5 win over Milwaukee with sixes in the 1st and 8th.

Bijan Rademacher, who pinch-ran for Kyle Schwarber following a 1st-inning walk, went on to score four runs and hit the first grand slam of his professional career. No player in the live-ball era has ever done that in a regular-season game he didn't start; the only one to even reach four runs and four RBIs was Kevin Elster of the Phillies on August 18, 1995; Elster hit for the pitcher in the 5th inning and then kept batting as the Phils racked up 15 runs over the final four frames.

And finally, amongst all our "fishing", March 22 gave us the best note of the month... when Mike Trout homered off Anthony Bass. We'll just leave that here.