Denver Nuggets
It's become commonplace to look at an 18-4 Rockies score, with 21 hits, and say, oh, Coors Field. But Wednesday's game had the unusual combination of one player going off and all his teammates backing him up. Nolan Arenado's 5-for-6 with three homers and seven RBIs was the eye-catcher, but Gerardo Parra also had four hits, while three others-- Charlie Blackmon, Trevor Story, and Ryan Hanigan-- each had three hits, multiple runs scored, and mulitple runs driven in. It was only the second time in Rockies history that five different batters had three hits and two runs scored, and the other was actually not at Coors. It was a 19-3 win at Minute Maid Park in Houston on September 25, 2011.
Arenado's outburst made him just the second player in Rockies history with a five-hit, seven-RBI game, joining Troy Tulowitzki on August 10, 2009, against the Cubs-- a game in which he hit for the cycle. In the majors this season, three players have done it; the others are Scooter Gennett (in his four-homer game) and Anthony Rendon (in that 23-5 game in April). Since RBI became an official stat in 1920, only one other season has seen three players post that line. The 1987 campaign didn't have anyone do it before August, but Kevin Seitzer of the Royals became the first, and then Mickey Brantley (Mariners) and Dave Parker (Reds) did it on back-to-back days in mid-September.
As mentioned, however, it was a team effort. Trevor Story posted his line of three hits, three runs, and three driven in while batting 7th, just the sixth player in Rockies history to do it from the bottom third of the order. The previous entrant on that list was Bobby Estalella against the Giants on May 24, 2002. And while Charlie Blackmon did not hit a leadoff homer to start the game, he did have three hits and three runs scored out of his leadoff perch, his 14th such game. Since his debut in June 2011, that's two more than anyone else in the majors; Jacoby Ellsbury has done it 12 times and Brett Gardner 11.
Clayton Richard gave up 14 of those hits-- and 11 of the runs-- before departing in the 4th inning. He was the fifth pitcher in Padres history to allow 14 hits in an outing, but the others all lasted at least six innings and gave up no more than six runs. (The most recent of the others was Andy Ashby on August 10, 1999.) The most recent member of the "14/11 club", for any team in any length outing, was Jason Marquis of the Cardinals on July 18, 2006 (he also did it on June 21 of that year). And only one other pitcher in the live-ball era pulled off 14-and-11 in under four innings. Dan Dugan of the White Sox allowed 15 and 13-- in relief!-- to Boston on June 5, 1929.
Blackmon would add a triple and a double in Saturday's 7-3 win over Pittsburgh, his fourth game this season with those hits. Only one other player in Rox history has been that prolific; Dexter Fowler did it five times in 2011. Blackmon's career total of eight is now tied with Fowler; they trail Todd Helton (9) and Larry Walker (12) in the Colorado record book.
Springing A Leake
Although he got pulled before he could reach Clayton Richard levels, Mike Leake of the Cardinals was also not a fan of Wednesday. Leake allowed 10 hits and seven runs (though only four earned) to the Mets, needed 53 pitches to get through two innings, and did not come out for the 3rd.
It's the second time this season that Leake has allowed 10 hits, but the other one (June 8) took five innings and only cost him two earned runs. Adam Wainwright has had three 10-hit outings this season, but again, each of those was between 4 and 5 innings. Leake is the first Cardinal to surrender 10 hits while only getting 6 outs since Brett Tomko did it at Fenway Park on June 11, 2003. Before that it was Sylvester Johnson, also against Boston (the other Boston, the Braves) on June 8, 1932. However, both of them started the 3rd but failed to record an out; Leake is the first Cardinals starter in (at least) the live-ball era to give up 10 hits and not make it beyond the 2nd inning.
Leake's performance from June 8 was matched on Friday by Carlos Martinez, who also gave up 10 hits, but limited the damage to two earned runs in six innings. He and Leake are the first pair of Cardinals to do that in the same season since Matt Morris and Jeff Suppan in 2004.
Phil Thine Horn
The Phillies collected 20 hits on Wednesday in Miami, the first visiting team ever to do so at the six-year-old Marlins Park. Even the home team has only done it twice, and the team record is 21.
More notably, although six of those Phillies hits went for extra bases, not one of them was a round-tripper. It's the first game where Philadelphia had 20 hits but no homers since May 2, 1990, in a 14-4 win against Houston.
Rookie Nick Williams, playing in just his 16th MLB game, legged out two triples, the earliest into a career that any Phillie has done that since October 1, 1983, when Jeff Stone, in his ninth game, finally got to play a defensive position (CF) and had a pair of three-baggers and 3 RBI against the Pirates.
Rocky Mountain High
On Friday it was the Pirates' turn to enjoy the altitude at Coors Field, compiling 18 hits and defeating the Rockies 13-5. Josh Bell had four of those-- both hits and RBIs-- despite his only extra-base hit being a double. The great Pokey Reese was the last Pirates batter to have four hits and four RBIs without a home run involved; that was against the Reds back on September 17, 2002.
Although he only had two base hits, leadoff batter Starling Marte reached four times (HBP and a fielder's choice), stole two bases, and scored on all four trips. He was the first Pirates leadoff hitter with four runs and two steals since... Starling Marte on June 12, 2013, against the Giants. Since the definition of a stolen base was made consistent around 1910, he's the first Pirates leadoff batter to post that line twice.
And in between Marte and Bell sat Andrew McCutchen, who had three singles and two walks, but still managed to score three runs and drive in three others. Since RBIs were recognized by both leagues in 1920, only one other Pirate has thrown up a line of reaching base five times, scoring three times, and driving in three runs-- all without an extra-base hit. That was shortstop Tim Foli against the Braves on May 9, 1979.
Cycle Watch
The Indians topped Toronto 13-3 on Friday behind an eight-run 7th inning in which they sent 13 batters to the plate. Edwin Encarnacion had an innocent-looking RBI single to begin the scoring in that frame, notable because he had homered and doubled earlier in the game. Most hardcore baseball fans roll their eyes at the idea of being "a triple shy of the cycle", because literally hundreds of players do it each season. But it was four batters later, when Erick Almonte hit a three-run homer, that it became relevant. Almonte already had the triple, and when he collected the single in the 8th, it marked the first time in 12 years that Cleveland had one player miss by the triple and another miss by the double. Victor Martinez and Grady Sizemore (respectively) did it against the Mariners on July 29, 2005.
And along the way, both Edwin and Erick knocked in three runs (Almonte's all came on the homer), and only once before in Indians history has one player missed the triple, and another missed the double, while both of them had at least three RBIs. Those two were none other than Larry Doby and Al Rosen on April 29, 1951... in a game the Indians lost to the Browns, 13-11.
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Speaking of "checking in", the Royals dropped a season-high 16 runs on the Tigers on Thursday night, throwing in 19 base hits for good measure. Strangely, only two of those hits were home runs-- both of the solo variety-- and just three were doubles, making it the first game in over a decade where Kansas City had collected 19 hits with no more than 5 XBH. That was a 17-3 victory over Seattle on July 3, 2007, in which Billy Butler and Jason LaRue both had a homer and a double.
Unlike the Arenado situation, there was no one Kansas City player who dominated the scoresheet; in fact, eight of their nine starters chipped in two hits each, and the one who didn't was CF Lorenzo Cain, who was removed as part of the standard "mass substitution in a blowout" after the 7th inning. It was just the fifth game in Royals history (and one went extra innings) where eight starters had multiple hits; the last was July 31, 1999, a 12-8 win at Texas. (The one left out of that outburst was 3B Joe Randa who went "only" 1-for-6 with a double.)
But at the risk of burying the lead, it's how the Royals compiled those 16 runs that is the most interesting. Their linescore was composed of four 4's and four 0's (they did not bat in B9, obviously), and it was the nicely palindromic 4-0-4-0-0-4-0-4. But more notably, it was the first known game in major-league history where a team put up 16 runs in this "perfect square" format of four 4's. (Three 3's to make 9 happens with some regularity.) Friend of Kernels Diane Firstman reports that it's the first linescore she could find with any four 4-run innings, regardless of whether the total ended up being 16 or not.
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On Saturday the Royals clobbered five homers, including two by Mike Moustakas, in defeating the White Sox 7-2. The outburst began with three longballs in the 6th inning, just the third time in the past decade that they've hit three in an inning. Lorenzo Cain, Sal Perez, and Eric Hosmer did it on June 10 in San Diego; and the other was their famous 14th inning against the Rangers on May 27, 2011, when Hosmer teamed with Melky Cabrera and Brayan Peña.
David Holmberg gave up all three of those 6th-inning taters, becoming the first White Sox pitcher in 12 years to give up three dingers while getting fewer than three outs. Shingo Takatsu did it in an 11-3 loss to the Indians on April 7, 2005.
Saturday marked the first time in Royals history that they'd hit five homers from the 6th inning onward (regardless of hitting any earlier in the game), and amazingly, Kansas City had not hit five home runs in a game at Kauffman Stadium since May 26, 2000, when they topped the Angels 9-4. That was easily the longest drought in the majors of doing it in a home game; that honors now passes to the Giants, who haven't done it since April 7, 2003.
It was also odd that the Royals stole four bases in Saturday's game (usually, if you hit a bunch of homers, you don't need to steal). That marked the first game in team history with five homers and four steals; only one other team (the Rays on June 9) has pulled off that combo in the past six years.
Sure enough, the Royals did it again Sunday, hitting four homers in defeating the White Sox 5-4. All were solo shots, and that still wasn't enough; the fifth and final run scored on Brandon Moss's walkoff double. It was the seventh time this season that Kansas City went deep at least four times, setting a new team record. The 2001 squad did it six times (and lost one of them).
Similar to Saturday, three of Sunday's homers came back-to-back-to-back to lead off the 4th inning; it was easily the first time in team history that the Royals had a three-homer inning in consecutive games. Their previous record for the closest such innings was a whopping 41 days; the 1988 squad did it on May 19 at the Metrodome, and then again on June 29, also against the White Sox at Kauffman Stadium (though it wasn't called that yet).
Not Going Anywhere For A While?
The Tigers piled up 16 hits in Sunday's 9-6 win over the Twins, a game that needed 11 pitchers throwing 377 pitches, a combined 25 hits, 10 walks, 26 strikeouts, and 18 runners stranded. It clocked in at a tidy 4 hours 19 minutes, amazingly not even the longest nine-inning game this season. (That "honor" belongs to the 4 hours 32 minutes it took the Rays to beat the Red Sox on May 14.) However, it was believed to be the longest nine-inning game in Minnesota Twins history; the great Baseball Reference Play Index appears to have game times all the way back to the team's move from Washington in 1961.
James McCann, Alex Presley, and Jose Iglesias each chipped in three hits and scored two runs. That was only the third time in the live-ball era that Detroit's 7- through 9-hitters had each done that. The more recent of the other games was June 3, 1987, when Pat Sheridan, Chet Lemon, and Tom Brookens did it as part of a 20-hit outburst in Cleveland. The other was just 10 months prior (August 7, 1986), when Sheridan batted 8th and was bookended by Darnell Coles and Dwight Lowry in a 15-1 win, also over the Indians.
For Iglesias, Sunday was his seventh career such game out of the 9-hole, tied for the second-most in Tigers history (at least in the LBE). Deivi Cruz had nine of them from 1998 to 2000, while Alan Trammell also posted seven in his 20-year career with the team, although he stopped batting 9th after the 1983 season.
And The Number-One Hit Is...
And in the midst of all these big outbursts, a nod to one particular game without many hits. That was Wednesday's outing by the Washington Nationals, in which Angels starter Alex Meyer held them at bay for five innings. That set off the no-hitter panic alerts in the final game of the day before Brian Goodwin finally solved him with a two-out double in the 6th. Although Meyer would only go seven innings, David Hernandez and Jose Alvarez would also work 1-2-3 innings for the Angels' first complete-game one-hitter since Ervin Santana did it to the Diamondbacks on June 16, 2012. (Santana, of course, no-hit the Indians the year before.)
Only once before had the Nationals/Expos franchise been held to one hit by an American League opponent, and that was in a game they won! Mike Lansing's home run was the only base knock against the Red Sox on September 3, 1997, but it was enough to hold up for a 1-0 victory. That was also the last time that the team had been one-hit by anyone with the one hit being an XBH.
That game, of course, was in Montréal; the last time "Washington" was held to one hit, with it being for extra bases, was in a rain-shortened affair with Kansas City on August 11, 1971. Jeff Burroughs had a double before the game was called in the top of the 6th. And bizarrely, the Angels had done it to "Washington" once before as well; Claude Osteen-- the pitcher-- had a double for the Senators' only hit at Griffith Stadium on April 13, 1964.
Minor-League Minute
If you follow on Twitter, you no doubt know that the past week was devoted to a whirlwind tour of the rookie-level Pioneer League which covers the I-15 corridor from Great Falls to Orem, plus a few points on either side. One of those points is Missoula, Mont., which gave us our first-ever double-digit inning on Thursday night. The visiting Ogden (Utah) Raptors, named after the dinosaur which used to roam these parts and was made famous by Jurassic Park, sent 14 batters to the plate in the 5th, collected six hits and four walks, and capped an 11-run frame with a three-run homer by catcher Hedrick Clementina.
The kicker is that Ogden scored only those 11 runs in the game, winning 11-7 after Missoula insisted on trying to mount a comeback. We instantly thought of the Cardinals game from a few years ago, but here are the last occurrences of a major-leaguer team scoring X runs in a game with all of them in one inning.
8: Angels over Athletics, September 28, 2016.
9: Angels over Braves, May 30, 2017.
10: Yankees over Rays, October 4, 2009.
11: Yankees over Blue Jays, July 3, 2010.
12: Cardinals over Cubs, July 21, 2012.
13: Phillies over Reds, April 13, 2003.
To our knowledge it's never happened with a 14-run inning or higher (the MLB record for one inning is 18), but we're on the road, so our reference materials are limited. We will update if this turns out to not be true.
Bottom Of The Bag
⋅ Michael Wacha, Tuesday: First Cardinal to throw an individual shutout with at least 8 K's against the Mets since Joaquin Andujar did it at Shea on April 9, 1983.
⋅ Jaime Garcia, Friday: First Braves pitcher to hit a grand slam since July 3, 1966. That's the famous game where Tony Cloninger became (still) the only pitcher to hit two.
⋅ Matt Adams, Sunday: First Braves player to hit a tying or go-ahead homer with the team trailing by 3 and down to its final out since Nick Green against the Expos, June 1, 2004. First on the road since Francisco Cabrera off Cincinnati's Rob Dibble in the "worst to first" season, August 21, 1991.
⋅ Eduardo Nuñez, Tuesday: 9th-inning single was the second time the Giants have ever walked off against the Indians. The other was in the 1954 World Series, when Dusty Rhodes ended Game 1 with one of the shortest home runs in history, just over the 258-foot fence at the Polo Grounds. (That's also the game where Willie Mays made "The Catch".)
⋅ Chris Taylor, Saturday: Second Dodger in live-ball era to homer and triple in a game he didn't start, joining LF Gordie Windhorn vs Phillies, September 21, 1961.
⋅ Yoan Moncada, Friday: Youngest White Sock with a 4-RBI game since Sammy Sosa at Seattle, September 21, 1990.
⋅ Marwin Gonzalez, Saturday: Third player in Astros history to have a pinch-hit homer, stay in the game, and have another XBH. Others: Jeff Bagwell at Pittsburgh, May 10, 1992; and Jose Tolentino against the Mets, August 26, 1991.
Did You Know?
No, seriously. Does anyone know what this mascot is? We don't have a high-enough resolution to read the logo on its overalls. It showed up as part of Saturday's "Utah Mascot Night" at the Orem Owlz game, and we want to adopt it. Hashtag Kernels. :)
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