Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

If you've known Kernels for, well, more than about a week, you know we are not fans of no-hitters. This stems from the ESPN days, when someone would take one into the 5th or 6th inning, and the entire place would go into "panic mode" because, just in case he finishes it, people would want notes and graphics and #Analysis instantly when the last out was recorded. So we would spend like an hour churning everything out-- ignoring all the other games that were going on-- only to have some backup outfielder bloop a pinch-hit single in the 8th and we just flushed an hour's worth of work. Thus leadoff hits are our favorite. No drama.

It's also hard to analyze something that didn't happen. We once did a tongue-in-cheek graphic about Mark Buehrle's perfect game where batters went 0-for-13 against his fastball, 0-for-5 against his changeup, he had nine 1-2-3 innings, the Rays did not advance a runner past first base, you get the idea. (No, it never aired.) But several games this week proved to be more interesting than any no-hitter would have been.


One Is The Loneliest Number

Francisco Lindor began Tuesday's game with a home run for the Indians off Doug Fister. Excellent. As mentioned, we like leadoff hits. (Home runs, even better because not only do they generate notes of their own, you can't have a wishy-washy official scorer who later feels the pressure and changes that lone hit into a four-base error.) Lindor's was the fourth leadoff dinger for Cleveland this season, but the oddity is that they've been hit by four different players (Carlos Santana, Jason Kipnis, Bradley Zimmer). Most teams don't shuffle the lineup that often aside from injuries, and thanks to Kenny Lofton, Grady Sizemore, and some others holding down the top spot for multiple years, the last time Cleveland had four different players hit them in the same season was 1971, when Ted Ford, Graig Nettles, Vada Pinson, and Ted Uhlaender each hit one.

Fister, meanwhile, settled down; after a walk to Edwin Encarnacion later in the 1st, he closed out the inning by retiring Jay Bruce, and then didn't allow another hit until... oh. Ohhhh. He didn't allow another hit. Fister issued only one other walk and one hit-by-pitch for the rest of the game, and retired both of those on double plays. The last eight frames were all three-batter innings; he faced only two over the minimum, and both of those were in the 1st. In so doing, he pitched Boston's first complete-game one-hitter since Jon Lester blanked Toronto on May 10, 2013. But that was indeed a shutout (SHO-1). Tuesday's game was the first "CG-1" (complete-game one-hitter that did not rise to shutout status) for the Red Sox since Pedro Martinez's famous 17-strikeout game against the Yankees on September 10, 1999. The one hit in that contest was a 2nd-inning homer by Chili Davis.

The last time a team had a leadoff homer for its only hit of the game was back on September 3, 1996, when Marquis Grissom did the honors for the Braves at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati. However, Reds starter Dave Burba only went six innings in that one (he walked four and threw 99 pitches). Fister was the first pitcher to throw a CG-1 by himself, with the one hit being a leadoff homer, since Jack McDowell did it for the White Sox (in 83 pitches!) on July 14, 1991. The homer was by Paul Molitor.


Nomenclature trivia: Our hierarchy goes PG, NH, FM-X, SHO-X, CG-X, where X is a number. Think on it, we'll 'splain later.


Two Can Be As Bad As One

Although Fister gave up his hit nice and early, Royals starter Danny Duffy waited a little while and got a little too close to that panic zone. Duffy allowed three walks, including one with two outs in the 6th, before Nolan Arenado cranked the Rockies' first hit over the Kauffman Stadium fence. The Rockies' linescore stuck on 2-1-0 for three more innings, primed to become just the third game in team history where a multi-run homer was their only hit, when Jonathan Lucroy hit a 3-2, 2-out pitch for a triple to right field.

It was only the sixth triple in Rockies history hit when down to their final strike, and (not surprisingly) the first to "break up" a one-hitter (if you can do that). Lucroy and Miguel Olivo (May 22, 2010) are the only Rockies to hit a three-bagger at Kauffman. After two walks, and with a 2-0 count on Pat Valaika, closer Kelvin Herrera was pulled from the game with the nebulous "forearm tightness" and Scott Alexander came on for a two-pitch, bases-loaded save. Alas, since a walk is the only thing that can be charged to a pitcher retroactively, Alexander still gets credit for facing the one batter and his line looks fairly unremarkable. But the Rockies didn't get another hit. And that made it just the second time in their history that they'd had multiple base knocks with none of them being singles or doubles. At Cincinnati on May 27, 2012, they had five hits, all homers. All of them were also solo shots and they lost 7-5.

As for the Royals, they gave us another scare on Saturday when Jason Hammel retired the first 16 Cleveland batters before Bradley Zimmer shot one up the middle. Roberto Perez promptly homered to bring him in, and in the 7th Edwin Encarnacion and Carlos Santana both went yard to knock Hammel out of the game. He thus became the first pitcher in Royals history to have a no-hitter through five innings and then give up three home runs after that. Saturday also happened to be the anniversary of the Royals' last no-hitter (and the last one on August 26), by Bret Saberhagen in 1991.


King Of The Hill

Rich Hill is not from Rich Hill. But Rich Hill's day on the hill was rich. With Kernels, that is.
Rich Hill (the pitcher, not ZIP code 64779 in western Missouri, seen above) was already one of the great comeback stories of the last few years; after shoulder surgery in 2009 and Tommy John surgery in 2011, he bounced through several minor-league deals (including two starts for our old friends the Long Island Ducks) before a triumphant return to the Red Sox at the end of 2015. Now with the Dodgers, the 37-year-old secured his place in baseball lore by not finishing a no-hitter.

You know the story. Hill is perfect through eight against the Pirates on Wednesday but the game is scoreless. A leadoff error breaks that up in the 9th but Pittsburgh can't bring Jordy Mercer around. The Dodgers fail to score in the 10th. By going back to the (ahem) hill for the 10th, Hill becomes the first Dodgers starter to go past nine innings since Orel Hershiser did it in the final game of the 1989 season (Hershiser tossed 11 full and 169 pitches in a meaningless game with the Braves; the teams finished a combined 44 games out). And he became the oldest pitcher to do it for any team since Dennis Martinez for the Indians on May 6, 1994.

Four pitches later, Hill was out of the game. As was everyone else. Josh Harrison's line-drive homer just inside the foul pole gave the Pirates the 1-0 walkoff and destroyed the no-hitter, the shutout, and the victory. Forgetting the whole "no-hit" thing for a second, it was just the second time in the past 20 years that the Pirates had won a 1-0 extra-inning game via walkoff homer; the other was by Neil Walker on Opening Day 2014 against the Cubs. And it had been more than 40 years since the Dodgers lost such a game; Dave Kingman of the Mets broke a scoreless tie in the bottom of the 14th at Shea Stadium on June 17, 1976!

Hill's performance was just the second no-hit bid in major-league history to be broken up by a walkoff hit, and the other is a game we've covered before: Harvey Haddix's famous 12 innings of perfection for the Pirates in 1959. That game would have ended on a homer, but Joe Adcock, who hit it, was called out for passing Hank Aaron, who held up thinking it was in play. So it was officially scored a double, not a home run as in Harrison's case.

It had been 75 seasons since Pittsburgh won any game where they only had one hit, regardless of where in the game it was obtained. That was May 2, 1943, when Vince DiMaggio hit a "little league home run", in this case a double plus an error, in the 4th inning against the Cubs and it stood up for a 1-0 final.

Combined with Fister's game on Tuesday, that meant two pitchers threw the rare "CG-1" (again, a complete game one-hitter but not a shutout) on back-to-back days. The last time that happened was September 17 and 18, 1971, when Houston's Don Wilson gave up only a double to the Reds' Tony Perez (but he scored three batters later on a bases-loaded walk), and then the next day Clay Kirby did it for the Padres (homer by Willie McCovey).

And oh by the way, the Pirates won another 1-0 game on Saturday when pitcher Gerrit Cole homered in the top of the 6th at Cincinnati. That marked the first time in franchise history (all of it, to 1882) that a solo homer by the pitcher had given them a 1-0 win, and the first time they'd ever won two 1-0 games via solo homer (by anyone) in the same week.



Intermission (slash, trivia tangent)
A few years ago we created this Venn Diagram of sorts detailing all the possible pitching outcomes, decisions, special situations, whatever you want to call them:

We all know Perfect Game. By definition, a PG is also an NH (no-hitter) where you FM (faced minimum), but either of those can exist on their own as well. Thanks to the rules of proving boxscores, a Faced Minimum must also be an SHO (shutout), and all of the above fall in the larger category of CG (complete game). Note that it's possible for a no-hitter to not only not be a shutout (four walks can equal one run), but it can even be a loss (hi, Andy Hawkins). The "X" we mentioned earlier just lists the number of hits allowed.

The rest of this diagram: GS = Game Started; obviously the starter is the only one who can also get a CG or any of the higher categories, and the starter also cannot get a hold, save, or blown save since those all involve entering in relief. Thanks to rule 9.19(b), a pitcher cannot also get a win and a save (or, by extension, a hold) in the same game. And everyone who appears in the game gets at least a GP (Game Played), the highest-level rectangle. Unless they injure themselves running out of the dugout.


Hit Me Baby One More Time

Would you believe we're not done with this yet? Kenta Maeda, who had a dueling no-hit bid with Justin Verlander last Sunday, dispatched with that worry early on Friday, surrendering a 2nd-inning tater to Domingo Santana of the Brewers. But that was all. After a pair of walks in the 4th, Maeda set down 15 of the final 16 batters, retired the other on a walk and a double play, and actually secured the one-hitter when his manager challenged a grounder with two outs in the 9th that Ryan Braun was initially ruled to have beaten. Oh yeah, did we mention Maeda, à la Rich Hill, is also a Dodger? They became the first team in at least the live-ball era (linescores before 1910 are not easily searchable, so it's a convenient cutoff) to throw a pair of one-hitters in a three-day span, where the only hit in each game was a home run. And the Dodgers hadn't thrown two one-hitters (at all, regardless of hit value) in a three-game span in that same time period, though they did do it four games apart in 1965. The last team to pull that off at all was the 2013 Nationals, by Gio Gonzalez (April 25) and Jordan Zimmermann (April 26).

Friday's game was a bit less dramatic, obviously, and the Brewers lost (as you generally expect when you only have one hit), but it still marked the first game where Milwaukee had one hit, and it was a home run, since August 29, 2000. That was also against the Dodgers; Lyle Mouton homered off Chan Ho Park in the 16th-to-last game at Milwaukee County Stadium.


Twin-Bills

It rained a lot in some places this week (and if you are able to contribute to hurricane/flooding relief, please do so), but it also rained a bit in April and May, and August seems to be a popular time for making up those games. The Twins and White Sox got scrubbed on May 10, only to play a doubleheader last Monday which was then delayed by more rain (although only for 19 minutes).

Jorge Polanco's 8th-inning homer in the first game brought the Twins to within 7-6 but no closer; the White Sox pieced together seven runs on just six hits, their first time doing that since September 29, 2008, when they beat the Tigers 8-2. That game was itself an "if necessary" makeup of a September 12 rainout; it would never have been played had the Sox not finished a half-game behind the Twins in the AL Central. They then won the makeup game to force a tie for the division, won Game 163 over Minnesota the next day, and the rest is history. Oh wait, they lost the Division Series to Tampa Bay. Who learned a little about rain later in that postseason. But still.

In the nightcap on Monday, the Twins piled up 10 runs on 10 hits, with a 6-run 2nd inning putting the game away early. They hit four homers, but one of those was also by Polanco, making him the first Minnesotan to homer and have 3 RBI in both games of a doubleheader since none other than Harmon Killebrew did it in Milwaukee in the Brewers' first year of existence. That was a Twins sweep by scores of 4-0 and 7-1 on September 1, 1970.

Polanco then went on to homer again in the scheduled single games in Chicago on Tuesday and Wednesday, making him just the second player in Twins/Senators history to have a four-game home run streak at Comiskey Park (either one, and/or whatever they're calling the new one this month). Marty Cordova was the other, and he needed two seasons to do it, going yard in the last two games of a series in September 1997, and then in the first two games of the Twins' next visit, in June 1998.


Fish Out Of Water

The Marlins haven't worried much about rain for the past few seasons, but they do still have to play about 70 games a year at places that don't have a roof. One of those is Philadelphia, where rain on April 25 postponed Nick Pivetta's major-league debut. Fittingly, Pivetta ended up pitching the second game of Tuesday's resulting doubleheader, and he probably would have liked that rained out also. Pivetta surrendered seven hits and six earned runs while getting just four outs; a three-run tater by Christian Yelich finally knocked him out. He was the first Phillies hurler in two years to give up 6 ER so quickly (Jerome Williams managed it on only two outs in June 2015), but it was also Pivetta's third start this season where he gave up 6+ earned without finishing the 3rd inning. Williams and Severino Gonzalez both did that twice in 2015, but Pivetta is the first pitcher in Phillies history to do it three times in one season (earned runs have been kept officially in the NL since 1912). Not to worry, though; the Phils' career record for that is six such games, and it's held by Steve Carlton. So there's still hope.

Nick Williams, Andres Blanco, and Tommy Joseph would homer later in Tuesday's second game, and while not enough to overcome the deficit, those last two created a whole other storyline. You see, the first game of the doubleheader had also been a homer-fest with the Marlins coming out on top 12-8. Dustin McGowan gave up three longballs in the last two innings to make the final score closer than it needed to be, duplicating his "feat" from June 29, 2016. He's just the seventh reliever in Marlins history to allow three homers in an outing (no matter how long), and the only one to do it twice.

Joseph and Blanco hit two of those dingers off McGowan to bring the Phillies' total for the game to five. Even for the Phillies, that was somewhat of an achievement; the last time they hit five homers and still managed to lose was a 13-10 outburst against the Twins on June 19, 2010. That was also the last time both teams hit at least four homers in a game at Citizens Bank Park (it's happened five times total since its opening in 2004).

So when Blanco homered again in the 4th inning of Game 2, he became the first Phillie to go yard in both games of a DH since Raul Ibañez did it at Nationals Park on May 16, 2009. And when Joseph homered again in the 6th, he became the first to do it since, well, Blanco two innings prior. And the last time two Phillies both homered in both games of a twinbill? That's Del Ennis and Willie Jones in a split with the Cubs at Shibe Park on June 5, 1949.

All told, Tuesday was a good day to have outfield seats or hang out in Ashburn Alley. The two games combined featured 14 homers, the most in any doubleheader since the White Sox and Rangers also clubbed 14 on August 28, 1998. However, the first game of that twinbill went 10 innings; the last 18-inning DH with that many homers is the one which still holds the record (15): May 30, 1956, between the Cubs and then-Milwaukee Braves.



Bottom Of The Bag

⋅ Kolten Wong, Wednesday: First Cardinal with three hits, three runs scored, and two stolen bases since Ray Lankford on May 7, 1997. Last to do it from the leadoff spot was also Lankford, May 6, 1992, against the Giants.

⋅ Gary Sanchez: On Tuesday, became first Yankee catcher with a multi-homer game in Detroit since Thurman Munson on September 3, 1973. Also homered Wed and Thu, and is first Yankee to homer in three straight games in Detroit since Tino Martinez at Tiger Stadium, June 23-25, 1997.

⋅ Clayton Richard, Sunday: First pitcher in Padres history to hit a multi-run homer accounting for all of team's runs in a game.

⋅ Manny Machado, Wednesday: First Oriole to hit two walkoff homers in less than a week (see also last Saturday) since Fred Lynn in back-to-back games on May 10-11, 1985.

⋅ Curtis Granderson, Monday: First player in MLB history to hit grand slams for two different teams in less than a week. Previous record by Don Lenhardt (June 2 for Boston, June 9 for Detroit) in 1952.

⋅ Cesar Hernandez, Friday: Second Phillies leadoff batter ever to have a triple, two doubles, and three RBIs, joining Connie Ryan (at Cubs), June 24, 1953.

⋅ Eric Hosmer, Wednesday: Fifth player in Royals history with three hits and four RBIs including a walkoff homer. Others are Bob Hamelin (July 25, 1994), Frank White (1986), Amos Otis (1973), and George Brett (three times).

⋅ Eugenio Suarez, Tuesday: First Reds batter to have two homers, score three runs, and drive in five in a loss since Dave Parker, also against the Cubs, on September 7, 1985.

⋅ Joey Votto, Sunday: Second game of career drawing five walks but never scoring a run (also September 23, 2013). Only other player in live-ball era to do that twice is Barry Bonds.


Did You Know?

Here's our pitching Venn Diagram from earlier, filled in with the number of pitching appearances this season (through August 26) that qualify in each overlapping section. (Example: 1242 pitchers started but got no decision, 1316 started and got a loss, 12 others (for a total of 1328) have thrown complete-game losses, etc.) There have been 1933 games played this season if you want to play with the totals, and the "1" toward the middle is Edinson Volquez's no-hitter on June 3. Because he allowed two walks but retired both on double plays, it shares the rare distinction of being an NH and an FM, but not also a PG (which again, is both by definition). There have been just eight of those since 1920.

And by the way, the last "FM" in the majors that doesn't rise to either "NH" or "PG" status, still belongs to Josh Collmenter in 2014; it's one of our favorite occurrences at Kernels. There have been just 51 in the live-ball era, versus 195 solo no-hitters.

Spanning The Globe

We freely admit that here at Kernels we do not bring you the constant variety of sport, but more the constant variety within a sport. This week took us everywhere from New York to San Diego, and it found us typing "Span" a lot too.


Sweet Home Chicago

Because it seems like any air travel must pass through O'Hare at some point, let's start with a recap of the week on the north side of Chicago. It started on Monday with the Cubs' 15-5 pounding of the Reds in which they piled up 17 hits. Usually scores like that land on Waveland and Sheffield Avenues, but in this case the famous Wrigley Field wind was only listed at 7 mph, and the Cubs only hit three round-trippers. Their last home game where they scored 15+ with three or fewer homers was eight years earlier to the day, a 17-2 beatdown of the Pirates on August 14, 2009.

Jon Jay was among the Cubs who did not homer; he did, however, do everything else. Jay collected a single, a double, a triple, and three runs scored, something no Cubs hitter had done since Marlon Byrd on July 24, 2011. And no Cub had done it from the leadoff spot since the great Lou Brock against the Giants on June 5, 1963. (Brock, predictably, also stole a base; Jay, um, did not.)

After a lackluster 2-1 game on Tuesday (wind status: "variable"), the Cubs won a wild game on Wednesday, almost literally. Blake Wood's wild pitch in the bottom of the 9th brought home Javier Baez from third for the "bounce-off". The last time the Cubs beat Cincinnati in bounce-off fashion was on September 22, 1967, the offending bounce being by Ted Abernathy who had just entered the game in the 10th inning (we have been unable to determine if it was his first pitch) to score Billy Williams.

The Reds, meanwhile, had also committed a bounce-off last Saturday against the Brewers. They became the first team to do it twice in a week since the 1977 Indians lost to the Yankees on September 27 and then Toronto in the first game of a season-ending doubleheader on October 2. (They won the second game, slash season finale, to finish "only" 28½ games out.)

Aside from that wild pitch, the biggest event of Wednesday was Anthony Rizzo's grand slam in the bottom of the 1st inning. Rizzo bats cleanup most of the time. Obviously the first batter in a game who has the mathematical potential to hit a grand slam is the fourth one. But Rizzo became the first Cub to actually do it since Hank Leiber against the Red Sox on September 12, 1939. Leiber's shot knocked starter Bill Posedel out of the game; John Lanning would throw five innings of relief and the slam held up for an 8-3 win.

Thursday's finale with the Reds looked a lot like Monday's opener; after 25 hits and eight homers (wind status: "16 mph, out to center"), it finally settled 13-10 in favor of Cincinnati. The 13-10 final was the first such score in the majors this year; our famous matrix now awaits 13-9, 13-12, and several 14-somethings. Every score of 12-X and lower has been done.

13-10 is a pretty big score by modern standards, but equally fun was that Thursday's game had separate connections to both of the two highest-scoring games in MLB history. Six of those eight home runs were hit by Chicagoans, making them the first team in the majors this year to hit six homers and lose. The last time the Cubs did it was on May 17, 1979, in a (yes) 23-22 loss to the Phillies. And that's the second-highest score in history.

Meanwhile, the Reds got nine of those 13 runs in the top of the 2nd inning as they sent up 13 batters and collected eight hits. The Cardinals dropped a nine-run 8th inning back on July 21 to beat the Cubs 11-4, and 12 days before that, the Pirates hung a 10-spot in the last game before the All-Star break. That made 2017 just the second season in Wrigley Field's 104-year history where the manual scoreboard has needed the "9" card (or higher) three times. The other was 1922. And two of the three 9-run frames in that season came in the same game: August 25, also against the Phillies, in (still) the highest combined score in MLB history.

While we're in Chicago, it's worth pointing out that the White Sox dropped a 9-8 decision at Texas later on Thursday. It marks the first time that both Chicago teams scored 8 runs and lost on the same day since August 3, 1994.

And one more Cubs nugget to round out their week: When Javier Baez homered in the 8th inning against Toronto on Friday, he destroyed one note (and one baseball) but also created another. (He did not create another baseball, as far as we know.) After Thursday's six-homer loss, the Cubs were on the verge of following that with a zero-homer win for just the second time in team history (April 1955 was the other). Instead that longball was Baez's 20th of the season, joining Kris Bryant, Willson Contreras, and Kyle Schwarber in the "20 HR at age 25 or younger" club. Only two other teams in history have boasted four members of that club: The 2007 Brewers (Ryan Braun, Prince Fielder, J.J. Hardy, Corey Hart) and 1979 Expos (Gary Carter, Andre Dawson, Larry Parrish, Ellis Valentine). Neither of those teams made the postseason either.


New York Minute

Although the novelty of the Mets playing the Yankees (or the Cubs/Sox, Angels/Dodgers, etc.) has kind of worn off through 20 years of interleague play, it still makes for some interesting notes, especially when one of them sweeps the other. Luis Cessa versus Rafael Montero probably wasn't exactly a marquee matchup to open the series Monday; Cessa was already replacing the injured Masahiro Tanaka, and then he got injured himself. Cessa retired in the 5th inning after suffering something called a "right rhomboid" injury (he's now on the DL).

Chad Green not only got eight outs in relief, he got half of them via strikeout and didn't allow a hit. That marked his second relief appearance this year of 2⅔ innings with zero hits and four strikeouts; he also did it against the Red Sox on June 6. And the last Yankee pitcher to do that twice in a season was Joe Page in 1947.

Speaking of injuries, the Mets found themselves third-baseman-less on Wednesday when Wilmer Flores was scratched during batting practice due to sore ribs. Jose Reyes, who had previously played 3B, was also on the shelf, so Terry Collins used what can only be described as a platoon infield, switching Travis d'Arnaud and Asdrubal Cabrera back and forth depending on which side the batter was hitting from and whether there was a potential double play.

Can we just write "4½" on our scoresheet?
If you don't feel like counting, there's 23 separate entries there, meaning 22 switches. That's not something that has an official record, or is really even searchable (it just boils down to, they both played 2B and 3B). But it was only the second time in Mets history that two players had seen both positions in the same game. On April 18, 1992, in Montréal, Willie Randolph pinch hit for starting 3B Dave Magadan, but then stayed in the game at 2B, moving Junior Noboa over to third. Later in the game, Bill Pecota replaced Noboa in a double switch, and then moved over to 2B as part of a double-switch for Randolph. (The Mets lost, 8-6.)

(Not to be outdone, Tommy La Stella played all three bases in Monday's game (though 1B was only for one batter), becoming the first Cub in the live-ball era to pull that off.)

The Yankees completed the Subway Sweep on Thursday with a 7-5 victory in which Gary Sanchez drove in five of the seven. Only one other Yankee has ever had a 5-RBI game in Queens, and it came when they were the home team! During the renovation of Yankee Stadium, when the Bombers "borrowed" Shea Stadium for two seasons, it was leadoff hitter Roy White who drove in five on September 21, 1974. The Yankees beat the Indians 14-7 to temporarily take a one-game lead in the AL East, but starting the next day, the Orioles would win their last nine contests of the season, and the division by two games.

Curtis Granderson did leave his final mark on New York, however, hitting a grand slam in the bottom of the 9th to make the 7-1 score a little more respectable. It was the first Mets slam in B9 that wasn't a walkoff since Carl Everett hit one against the Expos on September 13, 1997. Everett's slam did tie the game to send it to extras, where the Mets won on a Bernard Gilkey homer. Until Grandy, the Mets had never hit one when trailing by 5 or more.

And of course, Granderson was traded to the Dodgers after the game on Thursday, so he will also go down as the 12th player in the live-ball era, and first Met, to hit a grand slam in his final game with a team. The most recent two did it at the end of the season before switching organizations over the winter: Joey Butler of the Rays in 2015, and Ramon Santiago for the Reds in 2014.


It Never Rains In Southern California

In the winter you might want to escape New York or Chicago in favor of someplace like San Diego, which is rumored to have "seasons" but we're skeptical.

The Padres entertained the Phillies in a three-game series this week, and like many people, Phils rookie Rhys Hopkins found San Diego to his liking. Hopkins cranked two homers in the series opener on Monday, in just his fifth big-league game. No Phillie had posted a multi-homer game so quickly into a career since infielder Don Money did it on Opening Day 1969 against the Cubs. (Money had played in four games the previous September, so it was also his fifth career appearance. Money, by the way, made under $25,000 that season.)

Despite Hopkins' efforts, the Phillies lost Monday's game 7-4 behind the efforts of Padres third baseman Cory Spangenberg. He led off the 4th with a single, the 6th with a walk (and scored the tying run), and the 7th with a home run, scoring on all three trips. All told he became the first Padres batter with three hits, three runs scored, a walk, a stolen base, and a homer since Ryan Klesko did it, also against the Phillies, on April 26, 2001. The four other Padres to post that line before Klesko were Ken Caminiti (1996), John Kruk (1988), Luis Salazar (1983), and Dave Winfield (1979).

Spangenberg would then hit a homer and a double in Tuesday's game, making him the second player in Padres history to collect six or more total bases in three straight games. Outfielder Kevin McReynolds did that from September 20-22, 1986.

On Wednesday it was pitching's turn to shine, with Clayton Richard throwing a three-hit shutout with only one walk as the Padres took the finale 3-0. San Diego, which of course has never thrown a no-hitter, hadn't even thrown an individual shutout in almost three years; Andrew Cashner's SHO-2, also against the Phillies on September 15, 2014, was their last. They had the second-longest drought of shutouts in the majors; the Orioles are the only team to have gone longer without one, and then only by 12 days.

The Padres got jump-started in the 4th inning Wednesday when Wil Myers' two-out single plated the first run of the game. On the next pitch Myers stole second. With a 3-2 count to Austin Hedges, and two outs, Myers ran on the pitch, which happened to be ball four, but he ended up stealing third even though he wasn't forced. Two pitches later, those crafty Padres pulled off the delayed steal when Hedges broke for second and drew the throw, and Myers stole home for a 2-0 lead. He's certainly not the first Padre to steal three bases in a game (think Tony Gwynn here), but he is the first ever to steal all three bases on the same trip around.

The aggressive baserunning may have been to counter Phillies starter Nick Pivetta, who was matching Richard with an impressive 11-strikeout performance before giving up a single and a walk (to Myers, of course) to start the 6th. He wound up becoming the first Phillies pitcher in the live-ball era to fan 11 opponents in an outing of 5 innings or less. And the last Phillie to strike out 11, but also give up three runs and lose, was Roy Halladay's complete game against the Diamondbacks six years earlier to the day (August 16, 2011).



Manny Being Manny

Last week we did an entire post on grand slams, and, as Tweeted above, apparently Manny Machado read it and felt left out. (Dare to dream.) So in Monday's series opener with the Mariners, he clubbed one as part of a six-run 2nd inning as the Orioles won easily, 11-3.

It was the second grand slam ever hit by the Orioles at Safeco Field since its opening in 1999. Ramon Hernandez smacked one in a 14-4 win on May 23, 2006. They hit six at the Kingdome, and alas (yes, we checked) none at Sick's Seattle Stadium, home of the Pilots in 1969.

Tim Beckham led off both Monday's and Wednesday's games with a solo homer, the first Oriole to hit two in a series since Melvin Mora did it in back-to-back games with the Phillies on June 28 and 29, 2002. The last to do it on the road was Brady Anderson in Toronto in September 1996.

But back to Manny, who decided to regain that spotlight on Friday back at Camden Yards. The hitter-friendly park, made even more so by a 42-minute rain delay, yielded four Angels homers in the first two innings, the fifth time in team history that they had connected for four longballs in the first two innings (though one of those others came last September).

The Orioles would fight back from an early 5-0 hole with five homers of their own, including a pair from Machado in the 3rd and 5th innings. Mike Trout homered in the top of the 5th to finally knock Jeremy Hellickson out of the game; he became the first Orioles pitcher to surrender five taters since Mike Mussina did it on July 1, 1994. That game, a 14-7 win that was also against the Angels, is also the only other game in Camden Yards history where 10 total homers were hit (again, five by each team; Tim Salmon and Jeffrey Hammonds each had a pair).

But it was with the 10th and final homer that Machado showed us why he deserves his own section. Trailing 7-5, the Orioles loaded the bases with one out on two singles and a walk. You know the rest. Machado became just the third player ever to hit a walkoff grand slam for his third (or fourth) homer of the game. The others are within the last few seasons as well: Khris Davis for the Athletics last May 17, and Joey Votto for the Reds on May 13, 2012.

Machado had another 3-HR, 7-RBI game against the White Sox last August; there have only been seven such games in Orioles/Browns team history (at least since 1920 when RBI were officially recorded), and Eddie Murray is the only other player to have two. Cal Ripken, Curt Blefary, and Hall of Famer Leon "Goose" Goslin in 1932 make up the rest of that list.

Matt Wieters had the Orioles' previous walkoff slam, on April 18, 2013, against the Rays; before that you have to go back to Harold Baines in 1999. It's ironic that Wieters is now with the Nationals; although he didn't hit a walkoff slam last Sunday, Howie Kendrick did. And that makes it the first season in major-league history where Washington and Baltimore (any combination of teams) have both hit one.

And thanks to the lead changing hands on the final pitch, neither Hellickson nor Angels starter Andrew Heaney took the loss, despite the fact that they both allowed at least four homers. There's been only one other game in MLB history where that happened, between Ferguson Jenkins and the Giants' Ron Bryant at Wrigley on August 26, 1972. That game was a 10-9 Cubs walkoff (after both starters were out, obviously) when Joe Pepitone got plunked with the bases loaded.


Ring Around The Rosario

Earlier we touched on Anthony Rizzo hitting a grand slam as the fourth batter of the game and how mathematically he's the first player who can hit one. Twins outfielder (and former New Britain Rock Cat) Eddie Rosario decided to defy that logic on Sunday (after we wrote it, of course) by hitting a 1st-inning slam out of the number-2 spot in the order. Rosario didn't technically break the laws of baseball (that we know of), he just happened to fall into the rare instance where a team bats around in the 1st inning. So he was both the second batter of the game (when he grounded out) and the 11th. Rosario's was the first grand slam in Twins history (1961) to be hit in the 1st inning by one of the top three batters in the order. The last such homer for the Senators was by Hall of Fame LF Heinie Manush, who did it in a 15-2 rout of the Indians on June 28, 1933.

Rosario's slam capped a nine-run 1st inning for the Twins, their most in an opening frame since hanging a 10 against Oakland on April 27, 1980. And they needed those runs; the Athletics fought back to score 11 in the game, although the Twins scored 10 more after the 1st and won 20-11.


Now With Less "genberg"

The other source of a lot of our "Span"ning this week was Giants leadoff hitter (and Former New Britain Rock Cat) Denard Span. While he started Tuesday's game in Miami with a lineout to second, that was the only blemish in the game, as he homered his next time up and later collected two singles, a walk, and a steal of third. It was Span's second game this season with three hits, three runs, a homer, and a stolen base; he also did it June 30 against the Pirates. And that made him the first Giants leadoff man with two such games in the same season since Bobby Bonds in 1973.

Saturday's game started off in even more interesting fashion when Span roped a ball off the bricks in Triples Alley and turned it into an inside-the-park home run. "IHRs", as we score them, are up just as much as out-of-the-park homers; there have been 13 this season (still with over a month to go) versus nine last year. The last season with more was 2011 (16), and combined with the ones Daniel Descalso, Byron Buxton, and Nick Delmonico legged out on Thursday and Friday, it was the most prolific week for IHRs in two decades. The last time there were four of them in a three-day span was May 26 and 27, 1997, which actually saw five just on those two days (and eight total from the 24th to the 29th).

More notably, the last Giants batter to lead off a game with an IHR was Johnny Rucker, who did it (where else?) at the Polo Grounds on June 20, 1945, against the (then-Boston) Braves.


Early Rounds

Span, and the Angels, weren't the only ones homering early in games this week. Friday's games, all combined, featured 20 dingers hit in either the 1st or 2nd inning, the most in any given day's play since there were 21 on July 2, 2002.

The day's real winner came from Pittsburgh, where the Cardinals started with a 1st-inning shot from Tommy Pham, followed in the 2nd by Matt Carpenter, and the 3rd by Paul DeJong to jump to an early 6-2 lead. That marked the team's first time homering in each of the first three innings since July 27, 2012, at Wrigley Field. But guess how the Pirates got their 2. Those would be homers by Josh Harrison in the 1st and former Cardinal (and postseason hero) David Freese in the 2nd.

Even we had to run this search twice out of disbelief, but it was the first game with a home run in each of the first five half-innings (T1, B1, T2, B2, T3) since August 7, 1984! The Tigers and Red Sox hooked up in a game at Fenway Park where, respectively, Alan Trammell, Bill Buckner, Howard Johnson, Tony Armas, and Lance Parrish all went yard. The Red Sox won 12-7, but of course, the Tigers still got a better end to their '84 campaign.


Bottom Of The Bag

⋅ Scooter Gennett, Monday: Became fourth player ever to have hit four home runs in a game, and also pitched (anytime, not same game). Bobby Lowe, Rocky Colavito, and Mark Whiten are the others, but none of them also did it in the same season.

⋅ Athletics, Sunday: First time scoring 3+ runs with 0 RBI (two errors and a passed ball) in their Oakland history. Last such game was as Kansas City, at the White Sox on August 16, 1966.

⋅ Red Sox, Tuesday: First team to turn a triple play and have an 8-run inning in the same game since the Mets did it on May 17, 2002.

⋅ Jose Abreu, Saturday: First White Sock to have four hits, including a homer and a triple, in a loss since Ken Singleton against the Royals on July 6, 1999.

⋅ Yu Darvish, Wednesday: First Dodgers pitcher to give up a leadoff home run on his birthday since Andy Messersmith (to the Braves' Ralph Garr) on August 6, 1975.

⋅ Justin Upton, Friday: First Tiger to come to the plate needing a triple for the cycle, and wind up hitting a second homer instead, since Carlos Peña at Kansas City, May 27, 2004.

⋅ Albert Suarez, Saturday: First Giants reliever to strike out seven batters and allow no more than two hits since Scott Garrelts in a three-inning save at Philadelphia on May 22, 1985.

⋅ Byron Buxton, Friday: First Twins batter with a triple and an inside-the-park homer since Greg Gagne actually hit two IHRs in one game (still the last occurrence) on October 4, 1986.


Did You Know?
"Goose" Goslin did not get his nickname because his last name is so close to "gosling", which is of course a baby goose. It was supposedly ascribed to him by a writer for the Washington Star during his first callup by the Senators in 1921, due to his habit of
flapping his arms while tracking fly balls.

Summer Slam

"SummerSlam", as trademarked by World Wrestling Entertainment, doesn't have a space in it. Go ahead, send us a letter. ☺


Out Like A Lamb

The Dodgers and Diamondbacks played a 6-3 affair on Tuesday, a score which would not suggest we'd be talking about five home runs. But here we are; Justin Turner hit two solo shots, while all six Arizona runs scored via the long ball. Chris Iannetta opened their scoring in the 5th, Jake Lamb added one in the 6th, and then the D'backs batted around in the 7th (we're of the "nine batters" mantra, don't @ us). And after a single, a hit batter, and an intentional walk, Lamb is up again with the bases loaded. By now you've figured out what he did. He thus became the ninth player in D'backs history to have two homers in a game with one of them being a grand slam. But the last was nearly nine years ago; Miguel Montero did it in Houston on August 16, 2008. Among the others on the list are Luiz Gonzalez, Reggie Sanders, Chris Snyder, and even Carlos Baerga.

Both Turner and Lamb were batting third in Tuesday's contest, making it just the second game in the past six seasons where both number-3 hitters went deep twice. Kris Bryant and Joey Votto traded taters in an 11-8 game at Great American Ball Park last June 27.


Seeing Red

Speaking of GABP, its week started with a bang-- er, a slam-- last Sunday when Jose Martinez of the Cardinals inserted a four-run homer into a nine-run 4th inning. St. Louis won the finale with Cincinnati 13-4, and Martinez became the first Cardinal to hit a grand slam within a nine-run inning since Chris Duncan did it at Oakland on June 16, 2007 (won 15-6). That nine-run frame was the second this year; their other was July 21 against the Cubs. The Cardinals last had two such innings in a season in 2007.

Although the Cardinals moved on from GABP-- hold that thought-- the slamming did not. On Monday the Reds' Patrick Kivlehan greeted the first pitch from Padres reliever Phil Maton by sending it out of the park in the bottom of the 8th inning. It was only icing since the Reds were already leading 7-3, but it led to the first game in over 30 years where Cincinnati scored 11 or more runs on eight or fewer hits. They got nine walks as a bonus in an 11-1 win over the Giants on September 6, 1983.

Kivlehan, for his part, had been double-switched into the game in the 7th inning, making him the first Reds batter to hit a slam as a defensive replacement (not a pinch hitter) since Jolbert Cabrera went deep in a 14-9 escapade with the Cubs on September 6, 2008.

Fast-forward to Thursday, when Scooter Gennett hit only one home run against the Padres, which is of course three shy of his season high. However, remember that one of those round-trippers in his four-homer game was indeed a slam as he piled up 10 RBIs. He thus became the first player since GABP opened in 2003 to have hit two grand slams there in the same season. (Adam Dunn leads the way with four total, but they were all in different years.) The last to do it at Riverfront was Todd Walker in 2002.


Cardinal Direction

Now back to the Cardinals. Returning to Missouri for the I-70 Series with the Royals, they hung 6 runs in the 4th on Monday and 6 more in the 5th on Tuesday at Kauffman Stadium. There were no slams involved, but combined with the 9-run frame from last Sunday, it marked the first time since at least 1907 that the Redbirds had posted a 6-run inning (or higher) in three straight games. Prior to that, we don't know for sure that it happened, we just don't have easy access to every linescore to be able to check.

It was the two games at Busch on Wednesday and Thursday when the Cardinals went back to slamming en route to a four-game sweep of the home-and-home affair. (Disclaimer: Kernels does not endorse slamming of Busch, for multiple reasons.) Yadier Molina cranked one in the 6th inning of the first game with St. Louis down 5-4; it was their first slam to turn a deficit into a lead that late in a game since Allen Craig against the Reds on August 26, 2013. (Matt Carpenter did hit a walkoff slam in April, but that was a tie game at the time.)

For Molina it was the fifth grand slam of his career, putting him solely in second place among Cardinals catchers all-time. Ted Simmons had six during his 13 years with the club (1968-80), while Tim McCarver (four), Darrell Porter (three), and Del Rice (three) sit behind Molina.

On Thursday it was Dexter Fowler's turn to give them the lead, breaking a 3-3 tie in the bottom of the 7th with the third slam of his career (each with a different team). It was the first time St. Louis had gotten a slam in consecutive games since September 1, 2011, when Albert Pujols (predictable) followed one the previous day from Jake Westbrook (not so much). According to Elias, they'd never before hit a go-ahead slam in consecutive games all the way back to 1882. And they became the first team in 13 years to score the winning run(s) of back-to-back games on slams in the 6th inning or later. In their final season, the Expos got a 7th-inning slam from the great Terrmel Sledge to beat the Marlins on July 31, 2004, followed by a 12th-inning version from Tony Batista to top, who else?, the Cardinals. (Nick Johnson would hit the final slam in Expos history a couple weeks later.)

Combined with Sunday's slam from Jose Martinez, it was the first time in team history that the Cardinals had unloaded for three slams in any five-day period.


This Is Howie Do It

After about a 2½-hour delay before Friday's game was postponed, a 3-hour delay to start Saturday night's game, and then a day/night doubleheader on Sunday thanks to said postponement, what else could befall the Giants/Nationals series besides extra innings? Although they did play three "nine-inning" games in under 24 hours (with 10 minutes to spare, even!), it took until the 24:29 mark of the marathon before Howie Kendrick stepped to the plate in the bottom of the 11th with the bases loaded. Given our theme for the week, you get three guesses and two of them don't count.

It was Kendrick's 99th career home run, but his first grand slam of any type (walkoff, extra innings, or otherwise). It was the Nationals' first walkoff slam since Ryan Zimmerman hit one in a 9th-inning tie against the Phillies on August 19, 2011. But since the move to Washington in 2005, the team had never hit a walkoff slam in extras, one of just three current teams ("current" in the sense of their current city) still without one. The others are also relatively "new", the two Florida teams (Rays 1998, Marlins 1993). The last extra-inning walkoff slam for the franchise was by Jose Vidro, also to beat the Phillies, on May 25, 2002.

And if you throw on an 11th-inning-or-later qualifier (Vidro's was in the 10th), only two other walkoff slams in Expos history come up: Mike Fitzgerald to beat the Cubs (B11, 2 out) on July 26, 1988; and Moises Alou in the 14th against Pittsburgh on September 23, 1992.

The Nationals at least have a day off on Monday; the Giants have to turn around and go to Miami. And maybe, just maybe, give up the first extra-inning walkoff slam in Marlins history too.


Leftover Salami

Elsewhere in the slam-iverse, former New Britain Rock Cat Brian Dozier hit the Twins' first four-run homer of the season in their 11-4 takedown of Milwaukee on Tuesday. That leaves the Red Sox as the only team left without a slam in 2017. Dozier's hit had to share the limelight with some others, as Eddie Rosario and Max Kepler each went deep twice, and each also homered in the same inning as Dozier's slam. It marked the second game in Twins/Senators history where two players homered twice, and a third different player also had a grand slam. That was another slugfest with the Brewers, at Miller Park on July 12, 2001, the first game out of the All-Star break. Jacque Jones actually hit two home runs including the slam, but teammates Corey Koskie and Torii Hunter also hit two of the non-slam variety.

Kepler and Rosario would also team up on Friday, each belting three hits, a homer, and three RBIs as Minnesota topped Detroit 9-4. Kepler has been a part of all three (heh) sets of Twins to do it this season; he and Dozier both satisfied the criteria on Tuesday, and Miguel Sano was his partner back on May 22 against Baltimore. It's Kepler's fourth game this season with three hits, a homer, and three RBIs; that's the most for the Twins since Joe Mauer, Michael Cuddyer, and Jason Kubel each did it at least five times in 2009.

And at the risk of finding a way to shout-out every grand slam this week, Manny Machado (Monday) became the first Oriole to hit one in Anaheim since Brian Roberts went deep off closer Troy Percival on May 22, 2003; while James McCann (Saturday) became the first Tigers catcher to hit two (other was last July) since Mickey Tettleton in 1992-94.


Combined It's A Slam...

In an effort to speed up the "pace of play", one thing we've seen proposed is shortening games to seven innings. If you don't care for that boring middle part where nobody scores, well, Cleveland was your type of place on Tuesday. Charlie Blackmon started things with a leadoff home run for the Rockies, his fifth of the season. Then nothing happened for about 2½ hours. It stayed 1-0 all the way until the bottom of the 9th when the Indians scored four runs-- not on a grand slam, but close-- to walk off with a 4-1 win. After two walks, Austin Jackson tied the game with a single, and on the very next pitch, Yan Gomes hit a three-run homer.

It was just the second game in the history of Jacobs Field, Progressive Field, whatever it might be called next year, to both start with a homer and end with a homer. The other was July 16, 1995, when Rickey Henderson led off with a dinger for the Athletics. Rickey actually scored the go-ahead run once again in the top of the 12th on a sacrifice fly, but Manny Ramirez walked off with a 2-run homer (scoring Kenny Lofton) in the bottom half.


Have You Met Amed?

Among the less-depressing stories out of the Mets clubhouse recently has been the rise of Amed Rosario, the Dominican shortstop who made his debut two weeks ago following Jose Reyes's move back to 2B (presumably in preparation for this weekend's trade of Neil Walker). Rosario's breakout game finally came on Friday when he had three hits and three runs scored, including a solo homer in the top of the 9th that would prove to be the winning run in a 7-6 comeback victory over the Phillies.

Rosario won't turn 22 until November. Friday's game thus made him the second-youngest Met ever to have three hits, three runs scored, and a homer in one game. Gregg Jefferies did that against the Cubs on September 8, 1988. Three other younger Mets had the three runs and three hits, but sans homer, and that's a pretty good list too: Reyes, David Wright, and Ed Kranepool.

And forgetting the other hits, Rosario became the fourth-youngest Met to hit any go-ahead homer in the 9th inning or later. All were 21 and some change when they did it; the only difference is in the "change", by about three months top-to-bottom. Rosario trails only Darryl Strawberry (1983), Lee Mazzilli (1976), and David Wright (2004) on that list.


One Sock Can't Just Walk Off

Another highly-touted part of the "youth movement" has been Yoan Moncada from Cuba, who was a huge deal when signed by the Red Sox in early 2015, but languished in the minors and ended up as part of the Chris Sale trade last winter. He's finally come into his own in the past month or so with those other Sox, from Chicago, who on Thursday found themselves trailing the Astros 2-1 going to the bottom of the 9th. With one out, Moncada clobbered a 2-0 pitch from Ken Giles to the seats in left-center for a game-tying homer. It's 2-2 and we play on. The next seven batters combine for two walks and five strikeouts before Leury Garcia singles to start the 11th and gets to second on an error. Which means Moncada is up again, and wham, single to right for the 3-2 walkoff.

He became the first White Sock with a tying hit in the 9th inning, followed by a walkoff hit in extras, since Tyler Flowers also homered and singled to beat the Athletics on September 8, 2014. But having just turned 22 in May, Moncada became the youngest player to hit an extra-inning walkoff of any kind for the White Sox since Jerry Hairston (yes, that's Senior) singled home Bill Melton for a 6-5, 12-inning win over the Indians on August 7, 1973.

Alas glory is short-lived. On Saturday he went 0-for-4 with no walks and four strikeouts... and a caught-stealing? It is these quirky things about boxscores that we enjoy. If he struck out every time, how'd he get on base to be caught stealing? Hit by a pitch? None of those. Catcher's interference (our fave)? No errors in the boxscore. Turns out, in his first at-bat, Moncada swung and missed for strike three, but Drew Butera was charged with a passed ball allowing Moncada to reach. Two pitches later he tried to steal and boom. History! At least in the since-1920 live-ball era (and to be honest, the definitions of steals and caught-stealing changed quite a bit before that), he is the first player, for any team, to have four or more plate appearances in a game, strike out in every one of them, and also, somewhat mysteriously, get caught stealing.


Trivia Time
On Wednesday the Angels' Cesar Puello became the second player ever to record a hit, an RBI, and two stolen bases in his major-league debut. Who was the first?


Merri-Go-Round

The Royals rounded out their trip to Chicago on Sunday with a 14-6 thumping that tied for the team's most runs ever scored in Chicago (at any of the three possible parks). They topped the Sox 14-5 on May 13, 1979, at old Comiskey Park, and have never scored more than 10 in their handful of trips to Wrigley.

Whit Merrifield sat atop both the boxscore and the "star of the game" ballot with his three hits and five driven in out of the leadoff spot. After starter Derek Holland gave up seven hits and seven earned runs in less than three innings (for the third time this year, the most in White Sox history), Merrifield greeted Mike Pelfrey with a three-run homer. He tripled in two more runs in the 6th, thus becoming the first Royal with that HR/3B/5 RBI line since Angel Berroa did it in a 26-5 jamboree at Comerica Park on September 9, 2004-- a game that remains the only 26-5 final score in major-league history. He's the team's first batter ever to do it from the leadoff spot; in fact, only four others have even had the 5-RBI part: David DeJesus (2008), Brian McRae (1991), and Willie Wilson (twice).

Of course, part of the reason Merrifield had those runners to drive in was that number-9 hitter (and former New Britain Rock Cat) Drew Butera was always on base ahead of him. Butera became the Royals' 17th number-9 batter to have a 4-hit game. The last three occurrences have all been against the White Sox; Esteban German did it in an 8-7 loss on July 8, 2008; while Tony Peña pulled it off at Comiskey Park on September 25, 2007.

But only three of those 16 others managed to have zero RBIs as Butera did. The great Onix Concepcion-- still the only "Onix" in major-league history (and no relation to Dave that we know of, aside from both being shortstops)-- accounts for two of those in the mid-1980s; catcher Don Slaught (1983) is the other.


Touchdown, Ravens. No, wait...

From a "Kernels" persepective, the American League West produces some of the blandest games night after night. Every game is something like 4-2 where one guy had a double and a single, someone else had a generic two-run homer, and each pitcher threw 6⅓, allowed two runs, and struck out like five. They're the "bell" in the bell curve. So imagine our excitement at seeing a 12-5 score come out of Oakland on Saturday, especially one where the Orioles hung a 7-spot and knocked Sean Manaea out of the game in the 1st inning.

Manaea became the first starter (for any team) this season to give up six runs while recording only one out. The last A's hurler to accomplish the "feat" was Joe Blanton against the Rays on May 25, 2005. And while it was easily the shortest start of his career, it was also the third start in a row where Manaea allowed six hits, six earned runs, and struck out no more than one batter. No Athletics pitcher had pulled that off since Lynn Nelson did it for Philadelphia from June 29 to July 8, 1938. And that seven-run 1st inning was the Orioles' biggest since May 20, 2008, at (old) Yankee Stadium en route to a 12-2 victory.

Just like the Royals the following day, it was the top and bottom of the Orioles' order that did the damage, although they piled up a season-high-tying 20 hits, so pretty much everyone got involved. Tim Beckham, who has generated no shortage of notes since being acquired from the Rays two weeks ago, had three doubles, three runs scored, and three RBIs, the fourth player in Orioles history (i.e., 1954) to accomplish that in one game. Oddly, the others were all in a span of about three months in 1999, by Will Clark (June 13) and then Albert Belle twice (August 29 and September 23). Extending all the way back, only one other leadoff batter in franchise history had done it; that was Billy Hunter on September 4, 1953, in the final month of the St. Louis Browns moniker.

Of course, once again, Beckham drove in those runs because the number-9 guy, Joey Rickard, kept getting on base first. Rickard became the first Oriole with three hits and three runs scored out of the 9-hole since... Joey Rickard did it last Sunday. He's the franchise's first player in the live-ball era (1920) to do it twice-- at all, much less in the same season or even in a week.

And while they didn't really need a stellar pitching performance, the Orioles got 10 strikeouts from Dylan Bundy, duplicating his effort from Monday against the Angels. Amazingly, he is the first Orioles pitcher to record double-digit strikeouts in back-to-back games since Mike Mussina did it way back in July 1999. Every other team in the majors has had at least one pitcher do it in this decade (2010-17); Baltimore hadn't seen it yet in the millennium.


False Start

We have not spent much time at the Kernels Rules Desk during the season (coming up with hypotheticals and weird scoring things is a good time-waster in the winter), but it lit up on Tuesday thanks to Johan Camargo of the Braves. In case you missed it, Camargo was listed as the starting shortstop in Atlanta's home matchup with the Phillies. Lineup cards were handed over to umpire James Hoye, with Camargo batting 7th, all was well, let's have a small child yell "play ball!" into a microphone and Your Atlanta Braves Take The Field!

And then, well, oops.

After some delay, Camargo hobbles off the field, Jace Pederson runs out to shortstop, becomes the batter in the 7-hole, and the game proceeds as normal. So is Camargo considered as being in the game even though it hadn't started yet? From a practical standpoint, it doesn't actually matter since his knee is in several pieces and he's not going to come back out anyway. But in theory, could he? I mean, pregame scratches happen all the time, what's the difference?

The easy part is that Camargo does get statistical credit for appearing in the game and occupying that 7th spot in the order, even though he never batted. That happens all the time when a pinch hitter is announced and then pulled back due to a pitching change, and there's a rule (9.20) that even speaks to him being on the lineup card. Camargo does not, however, get credit for a game played on defense, or at a position, because he was not in the game for one pitch (or one play, in the case of something like a pickoff):

Rule 9.20, Official Baseball Rules (Office of Commissioner of MLB)
So who's the starting shortstop? Nobody really knows. The rules don't address "games started", except in one case-- the pitcher. To avoid last-minute shenanigans, Rule 5.10(f) (ibid., for you citation fans) states:

(This doesn't always avoid the last-minute shenanigans; Padres manager Preston Gomez "started" righty Al Santorini in a doubleheader in 1971 to make the Astros counter with a bunch of left-handed batters, then yanked him, pursuant to the rule, after one batter. Santorini then started the second game for real and pitched six innings.)

We looked back for pitchers to face zero batters, trying to see if there was precedent for a defensive player being replaced before the game started. However, all the starters threw at least one pitch before hearing the proverbial "pop" and taking themselves out. The only one we found with zero pitches is also covered by the rule-- the "ejected" part. On July 17, 1960, Don Newcombe-- by then with the Reds-- took the mound to warm up, the Pirates complained that his sleeves were too long and flappy, the umpire tried to make him go change, Newcombe protested and was thrown out. He is, however, still listed as the starter for that game; presumably getting ejected "incapicitates" him under the rule.

So as for Camargo's plight, Elias has officially credited Pederson with the start; our friends at Baseball Reference, possibly due to software limitations, have Camargo starting but give Pederson credit for a complete game. Shrug. Either way we're guessing he doesn't have any contract bonuses that will depend on this.


Bottom Of The Bag

⋅ Chris O'Grady, Monday: Fourth Marlins starter this season to leave a game at any point, usually due to injury, having not given up a hit yet. Most by any team since the 1958 Dodgers (Koufax was three of theirs).

⋅ Yu Darvish, Friday: First pitcher to record 10 strikeouts in each of first two games with Dodgers since Karl Spooner in September 1954.

⋅ Rangers/Mets, Tuesday: Second game in live-ball era where both teams had at least six hits but no more than one single (the rest were all XBHs). Other was between Cubs and Padres on October 1, 1993 (Cubs won 8-5).

⋅ Brewers, Saturday: Won for second time this year on a "bounce-off" (game-ending wild pitch). No other team has done it at all yet. Brewers did it three times total in their first 48 seasons (including one as the Pilots).

⋅ Matt Joyce, Wednesday: Hit leadoff home run in a game the Athletics were already trailing 3-0. First to do so since Bill Tuttle did it for Kansas City against the Senators on September 13, 1958.

⋅ Rafael Devers, Sunday: Third-youngest Red Sock ever to hit a 9th-inning (or later) home run against the Yankees, tying or not. Trails Bobby Doerr in 1937 and Tony Conigliaro in 1964, both at Fenway. Tris Speaker (1909) is now fourth.

⋅ Mark Leiter, Thursday: First Phillies reliever to record seven strikeouts since... Mark Leiter last Saturday. First to do it twice in a season since Lowell Palmer in 1970.

⋅ Tigers, Saturday: Posted third win in last 70 years by the exact score of 11-10. All have been against the Twins (a home walkoff in 2000 and a road win in 1998).

⋅ Ian Kinsler, Wednesday: First Tigers leadoff batter to score four runs and drive in four runs since Roger Cedeño against the Yankees, July 18, 2001.

⋅ Javier Baez, Monday: First Cubs batter with an inside-the-park homer in San Francisco since Chico Walker at Candlestick Park, August 28, 1991.

⋅ Martin Perez, Wednesday: First pitcher in "Texas Rangers" history to strike out four times as a batter. Last for Senators was Dick Bosman against Kansas City on August 20, 1971.


Trivia Answer
Like us, you probably thought of Billy Hamilton, Rickey Henderson, Lou Brock, or any of the other prolific base-stealers in MLB history. (Ty Cobb is ineligible since RBI are involved, and those weren't officially recorded before 1920.) Nope. That stat line is the claim to fame of yet another former New Britain Rock Cat, Trent Oeltjen. The Australian native did it after signing with the Diamondbacks as a free agent and finally getting his callup on August 6, 2009.

Trading Places

Sometimes the July 31 trade deadline brings us old players flourishing in new homes. And sometimes it brings us some new "stars" who get a chance when a veteran gets traded away. The Red Sox had both cases this week in the forms of Eduardo Nuñez and Rafael Devers.

With the return of Pablo Sandoval to the Giants last week, it appeared likely that at least one infielder had to go, and so it was when Nuñez effectively traded places and headed for Boston. After hitting two homers and a walkoff single in his second game there, Nuñez went for three hits, two doubles, and 2 RBI on both Monday and Tuesday, becoming just the fourth player in Red Sox history with back-to-back such games. The last, not surprisingly, was David Ortiz, but he did it way back in 2004. The others were infielder Billy Goodman in 1950 and Smead Jolley in 1932.

Meanwhile, Devers rattled off a perfect 4-for-4 with a double in Monday's 6-2 win, although he batted sixth and never ended up scoring a run. Only three other Red Sox batters younger than 21 (as Devers is) have had a four-hit game in the live-ball era; they are Tony Conigliaro (who is the answer to most every youth-related Red Sox question), Dalton Jones, and Ted Williams. And the one we know of before the live-ball era (1920) is some kid named Babe Ruth.

Those two doubles for Nuñez in Tuesday's game were hardly the most interesting part; after a 7-5 slugfest in the first five innings, Boston rattled off 4 in the 6th and went to the bottom of the 9th trailing 10-9. With two outs, Mitch Moreland should have ended the game with a strikeout, but he swung at a wild pitch and reached first when Yan Gomes couldn't throw him out in time. The next batter, Christian Vazquez, promptly hit a three-run walkoff homer (Devers was on base ahead of Moreland).

According to Elias, it's the first time a team won a game after seemingly striking out to end it since the Twins did it against the Orioles on July 31, 2003. Michael Restovich fanned on a wild pitch, but catcher Robert Machado's throw to first went into right field and Doug Mientkiewicz scored the tying run from second. Minnesota then walked off in the 10th on a Jacque Jones single.

Moreland had homered earlier in the game Tuesday, marking the first time in Red Sox history that their 8- and 9-hitters both had a homer, three runs scored, and three driven in. The Indians hadn't scored 10 runs at Fenway and lost since September 14, 1957 (13-10).

For his part, Moreland hit his own tater against Chicago on Friday, the first time either Sox had beaten the other on a walkoff homer in the 11th inning or later since Mike Easler's 12th-inning shot (also Red over White) on July 25, 1984.



We Refuse To Call This Part "Bend It Like Beckham". No. Won't Do It.

Elsewhere in the AL East, the Orioles acquired Tim Beckham from the Rays in exchange for a 19-year-old single-A pitcher, and at least in the first week, they've gotten the better part of that deal. Beckham had two doubles in his first game with Baltimore, although he did not drive in a run (which is going to break some streaks here), and then went on to double and triple on Wednesday, and homer in three straight games from Thursday to Saturday. He's the first player in (at least) the live-ball era to have an extra-base hit in each of his first five games with the Orioles/Browns club; Manny Machado in 2012 was the last of several players to do it in four straight.

Beckham is also the first player in that span to have multi-hit games (regardless of XBH or not) in each of his first five Orioles appearances. Ray Knight (1987) and Rich Coggins (1972) had been the only ones to do it for four games.

On Saturday Beckham also became the lucky Oriole to hit the club's 10,000th home run since the move to Baltimore in 1954. They hit only 3,004 during their 52 years in St. Louis, and all the other Baltimore franchises (on and off from 1882 to 1915) combined for just 496.



Wood Pile

24-year-old Brandon Woodruff made his major-league debut for the Brewers on Friday, scattering seven singles and keeping the Rays off the board until departing in the 7th inning. Woodruff joined another Wood- as the only Brewers ever to throw more than six scoreless innings in their debuts; Steve Woodard tossed eight frames and struck out 12 Blue Jays in a 1-0 affair on July 28, 1997. (Other than Stephen Strasburg in 2010, that remains the last occurrence of 12+ strikeouts in a debut.)

The offense for the Brewers came from newly-minted 23-year-old Orlando Arcia, who had a homer, a triple, and a single while batting ninth. No Milwaukee player had pulled that off since Jim Gantner against the Twins on May 9, 1982; and the only one before that was when Charlie Moore hit for the cycle on October 1, 1980. (Jose Valentin did it without the single in 1993, but for the last 20 years of NL play, there have been a lot of pitchers in that 9-hole.)

We say "newly-minted 23-year-old" not because Arcia was new to the team, but because he was new to being 23. Friday was his birthday. And he thus became the 18th player in the live-ball era to homer and triple on his big day. The last was Josh Hamilton on May 21, 2013. But one of the other 17 was his own brother, Oswaldo, who did it two weeks before that on May 9. Naturally they're the only set of brothers on the list. And the Brewers, despite a shorter history, are the only team with three players on that list. Nyjer Morgan (July 2, 2011) and Pedro Garcia (April 17, 1974) also did it in a Milwaukee uniform.

The Rays then got shut out again on Saturday, this time 3-0 in a game where Kyle Davies kept them out of the hit column (much less the runs) until the 6th. That marked the first time Tampa Bay had been shut out by the same opponent in back-to-back games since Seattle did it to them on June 8 and 9, 2014.



Everything's Bigger In Texas

...Including the baseball scores. Which look like football scores, especially Monday's 14-7 defeat of Seattle by Houston. (For the record, neither the Texans nor the Oilers have ever won a 14-7 NFL game.) And as MLB's southernmost team outside of Florida, it's appropriate that the damage would come from the bottom of the order. CF Jake Marisnick had three hits, two homers, a walk, scored four times, and drove in five runs... all out of the 9-hole. He joined Hank Conger (August 1, 2015) as the only Astros to homer twice and drive in five from the bottom of the order (like Milwaukee, they've had pitchers there for a lot of their history), and Marisnick is just the sixth player for any team to have four runs scored and five RBIs while batting ninth. Five of those have been in the 21st century; the only player before that was Indians pitcher Wes Ferrell on August 31, 1931.

George Springer, who generally bats leadoff (but oddly got a "rest day" on Monday), also had a four-run, five-RBI game back on July 7 against the Blue Jays; it's the first time two different Astros have ever done it in the same season.

As for those 14 runs, it was the fifth time this season Houston had hit that bar, trailing only the Nationals (who seem to do it about once a week), and one shy of the Astros team record set in 2000.

And, well, that didn't take long. On Friday the Astros rode a 9-run 4th inning to a 16-7 thumping of the Blue Jays. It was their third 9-run inning this season, the most in the majors, and tying the team record from 1969. Houston had a total of three 9-run frames from 2000 to 2016 combined.

While Marisnick did have an RBI single, this time it was Tyler White, batting one spot higher, who provided the offensive fireworks. White also homered twice and drove in five runs; he also had a double and a single but "only" scored three times. Nonetheless, he's the fourth player in Astros history with four hits and five RBIs from either of the bottom two spots in the order. J.R. Towles (2007), Geoff Blum (2002), and Brad Ausmus (1998) make up the rest of that list, and they each had only one homer in the game in question.

All nine batters in the Astros lineup had at least one hit in the attack, and seven of them had an extra-base knock. All told they collected five homers and five doubles, just the second such game in team history. Jeff Bagwell and Vinny Castilla each homered twice in the other, an 11-3 win over San Diego on July 13, 2001.

The last 16-7 score actually wasn't that long ago (Mets over Phillies, August 24, 2015), but it was only the second one in Astros history (over Pittsburgh, September 15, 2000). And Monday's "14" makes the Astros the first team to score exactly 14, 15, 17, and 19 runs in a season (obscure, we know) since the 2000 Rockies.



Homer Citi
(Ed.: My grandparents lived (and still "reside", as it were) in western Pennsylvania, and Homer City was the tiny little backwoods town up the road that the locals liked to make fun of, especially when it finally got a stoplight. If you're from Homer City and reading this, drop us a line in the comments! We'll come visit!)

The Dodgers visited Citi Field for the weekend, and if that apple in center field moved for visitor homers also, well, it might have run out of juice. Chris Taylor started the series on Friday with a leadoff dinger off Jacob deGrom, becoming the first Dodger ever to hit one at Citi Field. In fact, the Dodgers only ever hit one leadoff homer at Shea: Davey Lopes off Dave Roberts on May 9, 1981. Their last one in New York before that, they were the home team: Charlie Neal off the Cubs' Moe Drabowsky at Ebbets on July 21, 1957.

Michael Conforto would answer that in Saturday's game by hitting his own leadoff homer, his fourth of the year at Citi Field to give him the most at home in a season in Mets history. Curtis Granderson had three last year, as did Len Dykstra (1987) and Tommie Agee (1969) at Shea. Grandy and Wilmer Flores would follow with taters later in the inning, the second time the Mets have hit three 1st-inning homers at Citi (May 2, 2016). They did it once (August 15, 1985) in 45 seasons at Shea Stadium.

Seth Lugo, meanwhile, kept the Dodgers out of that pesky hit column until the 5th inning, but boy, did the floodgates open after that. Taylor and Cody Bellinger took Lugo deep in the 6th to knock him out of the game, and the rest of the game was a home run derby. Los Angeles collected five of them, all by different players, while Rene Rivera added a solo shot in the 9th for the final score of 7-4. It was only the third time in Mets history where they'd scored at least four runs with all of them coming on solo homers; they lost such a game to Boston in 1997, and to the Phillies on August 2, 1962 (loss #78 of the famous 120).

And not only was it the first game in Citi Field history where nine different players homered, there had never been one at Shea. And there's never been one in the Bronx. The last time nine different players went yard in a game played in New York City was July 11, 1954, at (of course) the Polo Grounds. The Giants defeated the Pirates 13-7 behind homers from Willie Mays, Al Dark, and others; Don Mueller hit for the cycle.

We swear this was the first thing that self-labeled when we zoomed in on Homer City, Pa. We do not know if it's a liquor store or some kind of voodoo shop. But either way, you can get rid of those disobedient spirits by exorcising. ☺



Fever Pitch

Big offensive numbers tend to get more attention than big (or small) defensive numbers, but this week brought a rash of pitchers doing pitcher-y things too.

It started with Gio Gonzalez's pursuit on Monday of the year's second no-hitter, a quest which lasted into the 9th inning before Dee Gordon led off with a solid single to center and knocked Gio out of the game. It was the second time a Washington National had a no-hitter broken in the 9th; Ramon Ortiz had one on September 4, 2006, before the Cardinals' Aaron Miles singled. Two pitchers in Expos history also did it, exactly two months apart in 1994 (Pedro Martinez, April 13; Jeff Fassero, June 13).

As Gio was taken out right after the hit, it marked the third time in his career that he's allowed exactly one hit, regardless of length of outing or where in the game it occurred. All other Nationals pitchers since 2005 have combined to do that three times.

Then on Tuesday it was Max Scherzer's turn at perfection. Unfortunately he came up eight innings short of it, retiring the first three Marlins but then experiencing neck spasms while warming up for the 2nd inning and taking himself out.

The old joke is that pitchers suffer "neck spasms" because they keep turning around to watch all the home runs they've given up. Scherzer, however, put that brace on the other foot (mixed-metaphor alert!) by actually hitting a home run in the top of the 2nd before his departure. And a three-run blast at that, just the second ever hit by a Nationals pitcher (Tommy Milone vs Mets, September 3, 2011; five Expos pitchers did it).

But leaving before the start of the 2nd also gave Scherzer one of the oddest lines in recent memory: 1 IP, 0 H, 0 K, and 1-for-1 with a 3-run bomb. The last starting pitcher to throw 1 IP or less, but still homer before leaving the game, was Randy Lerch of the Phillies on May 17, 1979. Lerch went deep as part of a 7-run top of the 1st, but then gave up 5 in the bottom half and was replaced after recording just one out. That game ended up as (still) the only 23-22 final score in major-league history.

Howie Kendrick would record five hits, including a home run of his own, in that Tuesday game, becoming just the third player in Nats/Expos history to do that in a loss. The others were Andres Galarraga (July 2, 1988, vs Braves) and Rusty Staub (May 30, 1970, at Reds).



Hole Camels

One of our favorite MLB spoonerisms ("Cack Zozart" is up there as well) threw his 61st-- er, 16th-- career complete game on Saturday as the Rangers topped the Twins, 4-1. It took Cole Hamels just 96 pitches, but didn't qualify as a "Maddux" because it wasn't a shutout. However, that one run only scored because Robinson Chirinos airmailed a throw that enabled Byron Buxton to go to third after stealing second. He would otherwise not have scored on the infield groundout that followed, and thus Hamels' lone run is unearned. We couldn't find a "baseball twitter" name for this phenomenon (it's a shutout from the "earned runs" perspective), but it's the first such game thrown by a Rangers pitcher since Jose Guzman also "sort of" blanked the Twins on August 13, 1992. Guzman's lone run in that 6-1 game came after a reached-on-error extended the inning.

And as for the "Partial Maddux" (doing it in under 100 pitches), the last pitcher in the majors to pull that off, at least of the 9-inning variety, was John Lannan of the Nationals, who allowed one unearned run to the Mets in 96 pitches on June 6, 2009.



Blach-Out Allstars

Thursday's game of the Bay Bridge Series was over early when A's starter Kendall Graveman gave up seven runs and did not emerge for the 3rd inning. Jesse Hahn (June 22) and Raul Alcantara (April 7) also pulled off the "7 ER in 2 IP" line this year, the first time three different A's starters have done it since 1955.

But staked to a big lead, Giants hurler Ty Blach went to work on the Oakland lineup, allowing just six hits-- half of them in one inning, and otherwise never facing more than four batters in a frame. Blach worked eight innings on just 104 pitches, allowing two earned runs and getting the win.

That's a good night by itself, but Blach blew the game wide open in the 5th inning when he hit his first career homer-- a three-run shot off Chris Smith. That made him only the fourth Giants pitcher ever to homer against an American League opponent; two of those-- by Jack Bentley and Rosy Ryan-- were in the 1924 World Series against the Senators. The other, not surprisingly, was by Madison Bumgarner on July 25, 2015, also against the Athletics (not the game where he batted for himself in Oakland; that was last June).

And taking the two lines together, Blach became the fifth pitcher in "San Francisco" history (1958) to pitch 8+ innings and hit at least a three-run dinger. Shawn Estes combined a seven-hit shutout and a grand slam against the Expos on May 24, 2000; the others were Mike LaCoss in 1986, Juan Marichal in 1971, and Jim Duffalo in 1961.



Redus And Weep
When three different events in 24 hours turn up a connection to Reds-outfielder-turned-Pirates-first-baseman, and zero-time All-Star, Gary Redus, you go with it.

⋅ In the fall of 1990, Redus became a free agent, but the Pirates offered him arbitration under one of the strange salary/anti-trust settlements that were reached around that time. He took it, returned to Pittsburgh, and on August 26, 1991, he hit a go-ahead, pinch-hit home run in the 8th inning of a game against San Diego (though the Pirates gave back that run in the 9th and lost in extras). That remained the Pirates' last go-ahead pinch-hit homer versus the Padres until Gregory Polanco hit one on Friday.

⋅ On August 17, 1993, having now signed with the Texas Rangers (for whom he would play his final two seasons), Redus had three doubles in an 11-4 loss to the Yankees. He would remain the last Ranger to have three two-baggers in a team loss until Elvis Andrus did it on Friday.

⋅ In between his longer stints with the Reds (1983-85) and Pirates (1988-92), Redus was traded to the Phillies for a season and then the White Sox. On September 9, 1987, he took Frank Viola of the Twins deep for a leadoff homer that would be the only Sox run in a 2-1 loss. (The Twins had only two hits, but both were homers.) Exactly 12 years later, Chris Singleton would duplicate that feat in Anaheim, and then Adam Eaton did it again in Minneapolis last July 29 (though at Target Field, not the 'Dome.) So he was not quite the last to do it before Tim Anderson did the same thing on Saturday, but he's close enough that we're throwing it in.



Did You Know?

A total of six teams got shut out on Wednesday, the most in a single day this season. Among those were the Yankees, Phillies, Nationals, and Cubs. Aside from a gap of about 30 years in Washington, those four major cities have always had at least one major-league team, usually two, and of course, New York had three for most of the last century. So imagine our surprise to discover that Wednesday was the first time in history where New York, Chicago, Washington, and Philadelphia each had a team-- any team-- suffer a shutout loss on the same day.

Partial credit, however, to September 9, 1904, when the Phillies and Giants played each other in a doubleheader, but the second game was declared a scoreless tie after five innings due to "the absence of stoves". (It's September, it's cold, okay?)

No, really. "Absence of stoves". (The (New York) Sun, next day, via Library of Congress website.)


Bottom Of The Bag

⋅ Matt Davidson, Sun-Mon: First White Sock with a walkoff hit in back-to-back games since Dave Martinez singled against Oakland on both May 9 and 10, 1997.

⋅ Nicky Delmonico, Thursday: 2nd player in White Sox history to have a game with a homer, two runs scored, and three driven in, within his first three major-league games. First baseman Zeke Bonura did it in the second game of the season (and his career), April 18, 1934.

⋅ Mark Leiter, Saturday: First Phillies reliever to record nine strikeouts since Lowell Palmer did it against the Giants on May 3, 1970. And it took Palmer eight innings (to Leiter's 4⅓).

⋅ Brian Dozier, Friday: First player in Twins/Senators history (1901) to lead off both the 1st and 2nd innings of a game with a home run.

⋅ Starling Marte, Saturday: Seventh leadoff hit-by-pitch of career. Most by a Pirate in live-ball era. Jason Kendall had six (there could be others with six, but due to limited availability of play-by-play, we went only as far as eliminating anyone else having seven).

⋅ Yadier Molina, Wednesday: Second catcher in Cardinals history (all of it, to 1882) with three extra-base hits including two homers. Ted Simmons did it against the Mets on June 22, 1979.

⋅ Matt Wieters, Sunday: Became first player to hit a grand slam for both Washington and Baltimore since Gene Woodling hit one for the New Senators (oddly, IN Baltimore) on May 11, 1962. Woodling and Billy Klaus were among those who came over from the Orioles in the expansion draft; Klaus hit a slam on the same day a year earlier.

⋅ Ervin Santana, Wednesday: First Twins pitcher with 2 RBI in a game since... Ervin Santana, June 9 (at SF). First to do it twice in a season since Jim Kaat in 1970.

⋅ Dodgers, Sunday: Combined to shut out the Mets on just one hit (a 3rd-inning single by Travis d'Arnaud). Last time the Dodgers threw a 1-hit shutout IN New York, they were the home team! That was Sal Maglie's no-hitter against the Phillies at Ebbets Field on September 25, 1956.

⋅ Paul Goldschmidt/Willson Contreras, Thursday: First time since RBI became an official stat in 1920 where both cleanup batters had 6 of them in the same game.