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.
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?)
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.
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