Another President, Harry Truman, is often rumored (though never confirmed) to have said, "If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog." That advice might have rung in the mind of Brewers starter Michael Blazek on Thursday when the Nationals pounded him for six home runs en route to a 15-2 thumping. James Shields of the Rays was the last pitcher to give up six dingers, doing so in Toronto on August 7, 2010, but it took him four innings. Blazek didn't make it out of the 3rd, giving him a dubious honor alongside two other pitchers in major-league history. On September 24, 1940, Athletics starter Ed Heusser gave up five runs to the Red Sox in the first three frames and George Caster was summoned for the 4th. Caster promptly turned a 5-3 game into a 14-3 game by giving up six taters while getting just seven outs, the same as Blazek.
As for starters, Blazek is just the second one ever to allow six longballs in three innings or fewer. To find his "soulmate" we have to journey back to May 9, 1888. John "Egyptian" Healy, so nicknamed because he was from Cairo-- Illinois, not Egypt, but still-- did it while pitching for the NL's Indianapolis Hoosiers. The New York Sun reported the outing as a "mixture of defeat and discomfiture administered to [Healy]... by those expert mixers of singles, doubles, triplets, and quadruples who hail from New York and justly bear the cognomen of 'Giants'." The Expert Mixers won the game 18-4.
Back to present-day Washington, the Nationals proceeded to hit two more home runs off reliever Wily Peralta for a total of eight. That matched the franchise record set on July 30, 1978, in a 19-0 Expos shutout of the Braves. It also set another team mark as six different players combined on those eight dingers; in that 1978 game (as well as others), only five players went yard.
In their previous game on Wednesday, the Nationals had mounted a 7-run rally in the bottom of the 8th to win 8-5; Thursday thus marked the second time in franchise history that they had posted a 7-run inning (or more) in consecutive games. On July 3 and 4, 1973, they topped the Mets by scores of 19-8 and 7-5, all seven runs in the latter game also coming in the bottom of the 8th.
Catch-22
The city of Miami wasn't even an incorporated place in 1888 (though it did celebrate its anniversary-- July 28, 1896-- on Friday), but a mere 105 years later it got itself a Major League Baseball team. In 2012 that team finally moved inside the city limits, and in 2017 that team proved that everything's bigger in Texas by going to Arlington and shelling 22 runs on the Rangers. It was the highest-scoring game in Marlins history, and just the third 22-10 score in the major-league annals. Bizarrely, the Red Sox crushed Felix Hernandez and the Mariners by that same count less than two years ago (August 15, 2015); in the previous 140 years it had only happened once. That was the Giants over the Reds on June 5, 1912.
Christian Yelich became the second Marlin ever to have four extra-base hits and four runs scored in a single game; Miguel Cabrera did that against the Braves in a 20-1 beatdown on July 1, 2003. That game previously held the Marlins record for team runs scored. Meanwhile, Marcell Ozuna also scored four runs behind a triple and two doubles; he and Yelich are just the sixth set of teammates in the live-ball era to each have 3 XBH and 4 runs in the same game. Paul Goldschmidt and Chris Owings of the Diamondbacks were the previous pair, on May 17, 2014.
Ozuna, meanwhile, teamed up with Derek Dietrich as the first Marlins teammates ever to have 5 RBI each in the same contest. And all told only eight teams have ever had seven different players collect two hits, one of them for extra bases, plus a run scored and an RBI. The last of those was the Yankees in what is still the last "20-11" score in the majors, against the Red Sox on August 21, 2009.
The Rangers, who of course know a little something about ridiculous scores themselves, "only" scored 10 runs, their first time posting double digits in a loss to an NL opponent since Opening Day 2014, when the Phillies beat them 14-10.
The whole thing started innocently enough with a Dee Gordon leadoff homer. Only two other players since 1900 have hit a leadoff home run in a game where their team went on to score at least 22 runs. Brady Anderson of the Orioles did it on September 28, 2000 (def. Toronto 23-1), and the Phillies' Von Hayes began a famous 26-7 game against the Mets with a dinger on June 11, 1985.
And, oh yeah, Adrian Beltre got ejected from this game after he and crew chief Gerry Davis, um, disagreed about where the on-deck circle should be placed. We could watch this all week, but please don't. Keep reading. (And congrats to Beltre on finally getting that 3000th hit on Sunday.) Intermission!
In Square Circle
It really doesn't matter where the on-deck circle is if your teammate hits a walkoff home run. (Willie Mays was on deck when Bobby Thomson hit "The Shot Heard 'Round The World"; this was the answer to some trivia question at a game years ago, and it somehow just stuck with us.) Steve Pearce took care of that problem twice this week; on Thursday he blasted just the third walk-off grand slam in Blue Jays history, joining Gregg Zaun in 2008 and George Bell in 1988. That was two days after former Torontan Edwin Encarnacion mashed a walkoff slam for the Indians, and was the first occurrence of two in three days since June 11, 1980. On that otherwise-random Wednesday, Mike Jorgensen of the Mets and Tony Armas for Oakland both hit them in extra innings.
So in Sunday's series finale with the Angels, Bud Norris allows two singles and a walk to load the bases. And guess who's on deck. And guess what he does. Only two other players in the history of the game have hit two walkoff slams in the same season; the others were Jim Presley of the 1986 Mariners and Cy Williams for the Phillies in 1926.
Pearce also joined Bell as the only players in Jays history to hit multiple 9th-inning slams (never mind the walkoff part). And he joined "E.E." as the only Jays to hit two slams in a four-day span (regardless of inning). Encarnacion did that in August 2015; the next closest pair is by Joe Carter two weeks apart in 1997.
Home & Gardy Center
Pearce wasn't the only batter making walkoff noises multiple times this week. Pearce played 12 games with the Yankees during a brief September stint in 2012, and former teammate Brett Gardner also smacked a walkoff homer on Thursday to beat the Rays. Gardner had also tripled to lead off the bottom of the 9th and scored the tying run to send the game to extras; he exactly duplicated the feat of Clint Frazier, who had a triple and a walkoff homer against the Brewers on July 8. And (as reported right here in Kernels) Frazier was only the second Yankee ever to do that in a game, and the other was some guy named Babe Ruth (August 18, 1922). So after exactly one Yankee did it in their first 114 years, two have done it this month.
Gardner then started Friday's game with a leadoff homer as the Yankees topped the Rays 6-1. Usually the name Roberto Kelly comes up when we talk about Jacoby Ellsbury getting yet another catcher's interference call (which he didn't this week), but it turns out Kelly was the previous Yankee to hit a walkoff homer in one game and a leadoff homer the next. That happened against the Indians on August 5 and 6, 1990.
He wasn't done. After Saturday's 9th inning began with a walk, a hit-by-pitch, and an infield single, Gardy strode to the plate to face new pitcher Dan Jennings, and roped the second pitch to center for a walkoff single. Only one other Yankee in the past 25 years had collected two walkoff hits in a three-day span... and that was Brett Gardner. In reverse order (extra-inning single followed by 9th-inning homer), he bookended a three-game series with the Tigers on August 9 and 11, 2013. Prior to that the last Yankee to do it had been Claudell Washington in 1988.
Party Like It's 1946
A few hours up the road, the Red Sox rallied to end the Royals' nine-game win streak when newly-acquired Eduardo Nuñez rolled a ground ball to short, Alcides Escobar (briefly) looked the runner back and threw to first, but then Sandy Leon made a delayed dash for the plate and hurdled the outstretched arm of Drew Butera for the win. It's scored like a normal 6-3 groundout, the first such walkoff in the majors since Chase Headley hit one against Minnesota on August 17, 2015.
That wasn't the biggest play of the day for Nuñez, however; he earlier cranked two homers out of Fenway Park, becoming the first player to have a multi-homer game within his first two appearances as a Red Sock since Gabe Kapler did it on June 29, 2003. And the last Bostonian to have a game with two homers and a walkoff non-homer anything was none other than Carlton Fisk, whose single to score Carl Yastrzemski defeated the Brewers on July 28, 1975.
Saturday marked the first time the Red Sox and Yankees had both walked off on the same day since September 16, 2009. Ty Kelly also had a walkoff single for the Phillies. Alas, the Nationals spent five-plus innings being perfect-gamed by German Marquez and ended up losing, so we can't get all of Megalopolis involved here. But it was the first day on which Boston, New York, and Philadelphia each celebrated walkoff wins in over 70 years-- a time when each city had one more team than it does now. On August 4, 1946, the Braves rallied for 3 in the 9th to beat the Cubs in the first game of a doubleheader; the Dodgers got a 14th-inning squeeze play from Pee Wee Reese to beat the Reds; and the Phillies capped a doubleheader against the Cardinals with a 12th-inning home run by Jim Tabor.
Return Of The Connie Mack
Speaking of Philadelphia having another team back in 1946, how about those Athletics? They ended the week with a pair of walkoff homers, first by Rajai Davis on Saturday and then by Yonder Alonso on Sunday to shock the Twins. It's amazingly not even the first time this season that Oakland's hit consecutive walkoff homers; Ryon Healy and Jed Lowrie did it on May 7 and 8, albeit against different opponents. The last time they did it against the same opponent was back on June 1 and 2, 2004, when Bobby Kielty and Mark Kotsay ended back-to-back games against the White Sox.
Davis's tater was his fourth hit of the game, making him just the third player since the team moved to Oakland (1968) to have four hits including a walkoff homer. Gene Tenace did it on September 14, 1973, in one of their world-championship years; the other (and most recent) is "only" Reggie Jackson, whose two-run shot in the 13th defeated the White Sox on July 25, 1975.
One throw-in note about Sunday's game: Twins leadoff man (and Former New Britain Rock Cat) Brian Dozier started the game with a home run. And then struck out five times thanks to the extra innings. Only two other players in the live-ball era have posted a game with 5 K's and a homer: Sammy Sosa for the Cubs in 2000, and Ray Lankford for the Cardinals in 1998.
Now With Extra Bases
Back to Philadelphia's National League team for a moment, Wednesday brought them a 9-0 shutout of the old Colt .45s (Astros) in a game where they collected 14 hits. It's who collected them that's interesting.
The Phillies hadn't shut out anyone by a 9-0 score since May 26, 2014, when they blanked the Rockies. Only the Orioles (who haven't done it since September 2012) had gone longer without a 9-0 or larger shutout.
It was the Phillies' first game with at least nine extra-base hits since June 19, 2010, against the Twins, and that was a game they lost! Every other team in the majors has had 9 XBH at least twice since then (and most of them a lot more often).
And most notably, six of those extra-base hits came from the unlikely source that is the bottom of the Phillies' order. Catcher Cameron Rupp, batting eighth, clocked two homers; Tommy Joseph, hitting seventh, had a pair of doubles; and Maikel Franco, hitting sixth, had one of each to raise his average to .226. It was just the second time in the live-ball era that the Phillies' 6- through 8-hitters each had two extra-base hits in the same game. The other such contest was nearly 53 years ago to the day. On July 27, 1954, Danny Schnell, Bobby Morgan, and Willie Jones combined for 6 XBH as the Phils topped Cincinnati 8-2 at (yes, still) Connie Mack Stadium.
Astros reliever Michael Feliz had an interesting line in that game Wednesday as well; he worked two innings but gave up eight hits and six runs, all earned. No Houston reliever had been tagged for those totals in such a short outing since the late Darryl Kile, in his third major-league appearance, did it as part of an eight-run 7th inning against the Giants on April 13, 1991.
Wild Thing
The great Bob Uecker once quipped that the best way to catch a knuckleball is to wait for it to stop rolling and go pick it up. Braves backstop Tyler Flowers pretty much did just that on Monday when R.A. Dickey uncorked four wild pitches and walked five batters in a 10-2 loss to the Diamondbacks. No pitcher in the majors had hit both those marks since Daniel Cabrera of the Nationals on April 30, 2009; and if you guessed that the last Braves hurler to do it was fellow knuckler Phil Niekro, you'd be right. On August 14, 1969, against the Phillies, Niekro also posted that line, with the added bonus that three of the wild pitches scored runs (Atlanta lost 6-0).
Only five pitchers in the live-ball era have done that and also hit a batter as Dickey did on Monday. Ryan Madson of the Phillies was the previous one; he also did it against Arizona, again almost exactly 11 years ago to the day (July 25, 2006). And our buddy Daniel Cabrera did it again just a month before that (at the time he was with the Orioles and did it against the Nationals); the others are Victor Zambrano in 2003 and Milt Gaston of the Red Sox in 1929.
On Monday the Braves called on Ian Krol for the 7th inning and Luke Jackson for the 8th, and guess what. Each of them also got charged with one wild pitch, making it the eighth game since 1920 where a team combined to throw six of them. The Braves did it once before; that was another Niekro game, against the Astros on August 4, 1979. Niekro unleashed six wild pitches by himself in the complete-game loss, tying the major-league record of Houston's J.R. Richard, who had done it himself earlier in the same season. And four of Niekro's WPs came in the 5th inning alone, a "feat" that's been done by only one other NL pitcher in history-- Ryan Madson in that 2006 contest.
Fast-forward to Dickey's next start on Sunday. Because "day game after night game", it is now Kurt Suzuki behind the dish, but yet again Dickey uncorked four WPs, the first pitcher in (at least) the live-ball era to do that in back-to-back outings. Dickey would actually have thrown a fifth, but Odubel Herrera was cut down at the plate trying to advance on one. And Suzuki got hit with two passed balls as well, one of which scored the only run Dickey allowed. That made it unearned, and gave R.A. the interesting line of bouncing 4 WPs but allowing 0 ER. Only one other pitcher has ever done that, the Dodgers' Fred Morgan against the Cubs on September 14, 1970.
It's Not Polite To Hit People
Sometimes what's destined to be a wild pitch gets interrupted by that pesky batter standing in the way. Cubs starter John Lackey was reminded of this little nugget on Tuesday when he managed to hit four batters in the "Crosstown Cup" series with the White Sox, including three in one inning (you've heard of "walking the bases loaded"?...). That latter part matched a major-league record accomplished about two dozen times, most recently by reliever Cesar Cabral of the Yankees on April 18, 2014.
The only other Cubs pitcher in the last 100 years to hit four batters in a game was Moe Drabowsky, who plunked four Reds on June 2, 1957. And no worries, Lackey also got in one wild pitch for good measure, becoming the first pitcher to hit four and bounce one since Orel Hershiser did it against Houston on April 19, 2000.
All this... and did we mention Lackey got the win?!
Did You Know?
In the first few years of the major leagues, a hit batter was not automatically entitled to first base. The ball was dead and it was counted as just one of the balls required for a walk (the number of which varied from year to year and league to league). Thus throwing at batters was often used as a strategy to prevent stolen bases. It wasn't until 1884 that the National Association awarded the batter first base for getting hit, and the number of balls required for a walk was finally standardized at four... in the winter of 1888.
Bottom Of The Bag
(or, stuff that doesn't quite date to 1888 but is fairly impressive anyway)
⋅ Homer Bailey, Wednesday: First Reds pitcher to give up seven runs to the Yankees since Gene Thompson did it in Game 3 of the 1939 World Series.
⋅ Andrew McCutchen, Sunday: First player in Pirates history to hit three homers in a game and have all of them be solo shots.
⋅ Chris Taylor, Tuesday: First Dodgers leadoff hitter to have two extra-base hits and 3 RBI, but not score a run himself, since Jim Gilliam against the Braves on September 2, 1953.
⋅ Austin Barnes, Friday: First Dodgers catcher to have 0 hits, but walk three times and score twice, since Mike Piazza at Wrigley Field, June 18, 1995.
⋅ Bradley Zimmer, Tuesday: First Indians hitter with three hits, two steals, and 4 RBI since Joe Carter versus Oakland, June 10, 1986.
⋅ Corey Kluber, Saturday: First Indians pitcher to strike out 12, but also allow nine hits, since Charles Nagy against the Tigers on August 26, 1995.
⋅ Sonny Gray, Tuesday: First Athletics pitcher to strike out nine opponents, allow zero earned runs, and take the loss since Ed Rakow against the Red Sox (for Kansas City) on June 2, 1962.
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