Taylor-Turner Overdrive
The Dodgers started their week in extra-buttery fashion when Chris Taylor took the second pitch of the game and turned it into an inside-the-park home run thanks to a weird carom off the outfield wall. It was the first leadoff IHR by a Dodger since Dave Roberts hit one against the Cubs on August 9, 2003, but it was actually the second one in the majors this year. Denard Span legged one out on a similar carom at AT&T Park on August 19, making the Phillies the first known team to give up multiple leadoff IHRs in a season since the 1936 Pirates.
Three pitches later, while you're still watching replays, Justin Turner does this. Since moving to Los Angeles in 1958, the Dodgers had opened just one other game with back-to-back homers, regardless of which side of the fence they landed on. Tom Goodwin and Mark Grudzielanek did it in the first series of 2001, April 5 against Arizona.
But the last instance of a team opening a game with an inside-the-park homer followed by an outside-the-park homer was all the way back on July 13, 1911, and even that wasn't without controversy. Giants leadoff man Josh Devore hit a gap triple (because Polo Grounds, of course), and according to multiple newspaper reports at the time, either the cutoff throw was bobbled, the catcher dropped the ball at home plate, or both. Both the New York Sun and Pittsburgh Post reported a triple in their boxscores the next day, while the Pittsburgh Press says "the first two balls... were clouted for home runs" but doesn't list either a homer or a triple for Devore. And this is well before official scorers were required to announce their rulings. On the official ledger that was turned into the National League that year, Devore was credited with a home run, as opposed to a triple and an error. Number-two hitter Larry Doyle then followed with a non-controversial homer.
You Always End Up With Extra Sox
The Red Sox started the week with a 3-game lead on the Yankees in the AL East and facing the sputtering Baltimore Orioles who were coming off a series loss to those same New Yorkers. And the Yankees did in fact sweep Minnesota to theoretically gain back those 3 games. Or they would have if the Sox had not also swept Baltimore. We saw Yankee people on Twitter speculating that Buck Showalter would "throw" the series just to stick it to his old team; we have no idea if that's true or even possible, but if it was, he didn't do a very good job of it. Two of those Sox wins required extra innings, and that's where our notes begin.
Doug Fister started Monday's opener and it didn't go well. Fister allowed four hits and walked five before finally getting pulled with no outs in the 3rd. He became the first Red Sox starter to walk five and strike out zero since Andrew Miller did it against the Rays on July 15, 2011.
But after Boston erupted for 6 runs in the 4th off Dylan Bundy, Fister became sort of an afterthought. The Orioles led 8-7 when Xander Bogaerts lofted a game-tying solo homer in the top of the 7th. Bogaerts would finish the game with that home run, plus three walks, plus three runs scored, becoming the first Boston leadoff hitter with that line since Tommy Harper did it against the Yankees on September 7, 1972.
Monday, however, is now 8-8. And off to extras we go. In the 11th Orioles pitcher Miguel Castro walked the bases loaded, and with two outs Andrew Benintendi roped a two-run single for what would be a 10-8 victory. That was Benintendi's fourth go-ahead hit in extra innings this season, the most by any Red Sock since Clyde Vollmer also had four in 1951. And the 10-8 final marked Boston's 14th extra-inning victory this season, the most by the Red Sox since 1943. Oddly, both Boston teams won 14 extra-inning games that year.
But wait for it. If Showalter was in fact trying to throw the games, he didn't do so on Tuesday. Not only did his offense not score any runs, but his pitchers didn't allow any either. Drew Pomeranz scattered five hits and two walks, three relievers had perfect outings, and we are off to extras again-- but this time, instead of 8-8, it's still 0-0. It was only the second time in the past 15 years that the Red Sox played three extra-inning games in five days (including the 15-inning escapade we covered last week; the other was June 18 through 22, 2014.
And again in the 11th, back to your Showalter conspiracy theories, Brad Brach loads the bases and then with two outs uncorks a wild pitch that scores the only run of the game. The last 1-0 game where the run scored on a wild pitch was against the Red Sox, by the Orioles on June 9, 2015. Of course, it also happened at the end of the famous Henderson Alvarez no-hitter on the last day of the season four years ago.
But the last time the Red Sox won a 1-0 game with the only run coming via WP, was a similar "bounce-off" to end the game. Washington's Joe Boehling uncorked one to score Tris Speaker... on May 5, 1915.
Tuesday also marked the Sox' 15th extra-inning win this season, tying that record from 1943. The last time they won three extra-inning games in five days, as opposed to just playing them, was August 13 through 17, 1949. And the last time all three of those wins were on the road was in May 1940; they took one-run wins from the Yankees on the 10th and 11th, and then won a 10-inning game at the original Comiskey Park on the 14th.
Milwaukee's Worst
The Brewers hosted the Cubs this weekend in a series they desperately needed to win, if not sweep, to have any hope of claiming a playoff spot. They, um, didn't. After finally getting Jake Arrieta out of Thursday's game, Milwaukee got a tying single from Eric Sogard in the 7th, and a go-ahead single from Eric Thames in the 8th. Down to their final strike, but with Ian Happ on second base, Cubs 2B Javy Baez roped a single up the middle to make it 3-3. The Brewers then proceeded to load the bases with one out in B9 and not score.
Enter Oliver Drake for the 10th. Exit baseballs. Jon Jay double. Kris Bryant two-run homer. Anthony Rizzo very-near-homer that was replay-reviewed and made a triple off the top of the wall. The Cubs would not end up getting the single as well, but the damage was done and they won 5-3. Turns out the last team with a double, triple, and homer in the same extra inning also did get the single; that was the Nationals against Atlanta on September 6, 2008. The Cubs had not done it since May 2, 1980, when they hung an 8-run 12th in Cincinnati. And the home run was just the second one hit this year by the Cubs in extra innings; both have been at Miller Park. Jason Heyward cranked the other on July 29.
Friday's game had less late-inning drama, but once again we ended regulation tied and it took a 10th inning for the Cubs to come out on top 5-4. It was the first time the Cubs had played back-to-back extra-inning games and won both of them since April 18 and 20, 2011, against the Padres (the 19th was rained out). Tommy La Stella, pinch-hitting for Albert Almora, who had already pinch hit for Kyle Schwarber, worked a bases-loaded walk for what would prove to be the winning run. No Cubs batter had drawn a go-ahead pinch-hit walk in extra innings since Andre Thornton had a literal walk-off against the Astros on June 16, 1974.
Naturally, the memo that reminded these two teams that games are only supposed to be nine innings got lost, because guess what they did again on Saturday. This time it was 2-2 after nine, and rather than lead off the 10th with a double, Jon Jay waited until Ian Happ was already on second and then singled him in. That marked the first time that the Cubs had acquired an extra-inning lead in three straight games since May 31 through June 3, 1909.
For Milwaukee, however, the third time's a charm. Wade Davis stayed in for a second inning and, well, didn't finish it. He struck out Neil Walker, but then Ryan Braun doubled and Travis Shaw launched a two-run walkoff homer to center. That was the first extra-inning homer (walkoff or not) surrendered by the Cubs this year (the Royals are the last team to not allow one), and the Brewers' first walkoff when trailing since Aramis Ramirez beat the Marlins on July 3, 2012.
And for both teams, the last time they played three consecutive extra-inning games against the same opponent... was against each other. From September 17 through 19, 2001, these same combatants hooked up in a three-game, 34-inning series at Wrigley with the Cubs again winning two of the three.
Incidentally, that series ended Sunday not with extra-inning drama, but with Jose Quintana throwing a three-hit shutout as the Cubs won 5-0. Quintana was the first Cubs pitcher to throw a shutout, but also strike out four times as a batter, since Walter "Monk" Dubiel blanked the Reds 16-0 on July 2, 1950.
They Say It's Your Birthday
Our friends at Baseball Reference, whose resources provide the majority of our material and whom we do not mention enough (subscribe! it's $3 a month!), also have a section called "Frivolities". One of those pages is a "players born today" list where you can see all the major-leaguers with a certain birthday. We have it bookmarked and click it almost every day, just to keep in the back of our mind if one of those players goes off.
For September 21 the list turned up four active players, all pitchers, and you can debate how "active" Antonio Bastardo is given that the Pirates released him over the All-Star break. The others were Carlos Martinez of the Cardinals, Aaron Bummer of the White Sox (which we still think is an unfortunate name for a pitcher), and Milwaukee's Jeremy Jeffress. The Brewers even tweeted out Jeffress's request for sour Skittles earlier in the afternoon.
As it happens, Martinez started Thursday, the first time he's done so on his birthday. He went 6⅓ mediocre innings, scattering 9 hits and 4 runs, but escaped with a win. Bummer found his way into the 7th inning of the White Sox' 3-1 win at Houston and got one of those "holds" that people love to hate.
And Jeffress, well, he got something sour all right. Remember that Javier Baez single with the Cubs down to their final strike? Guess who. With one pitch he morphed from the third Brewers pitcher ever to get a save on his birthday, to the fourth ever to blow one. The rest of that dubious list is Will Smith (2014), John Axford (opening day 2013), and Chuck Crim in 1988. It also marked the first time since saves (and thus holds and blown saves) became official in 1969 that birthday pitchers got a win, a hold, and a blown save on the same day.
We must also give some love to the Astros' Carlos Correa, who turned in a 3-hit, 3-RBI performance on Saturday. The problem there is that he turned 23 on Friday. But he is still just the third Houstonian to put up those numbers on the day after his birthday (and maybe isn't that more impressive if you were out partying?). The others in that group are Bob Watson in 1974 and Bob Lillis in the team's inaugural season of 1962.
Intermission
Thought you were getting the Beatles song when you clicked that header, didn't you? Okay, here.
Houston, We Have A Pitcher
Raise your hand if you hear the name Justin Verlander and still think "Tigers". Yeah, well, he's not anymore. But he's already proven himself to a lot of Astros fans after only four starts. Only one other pitcher in Astros history has won each of his first four starts with the team, and that was Roger Clemens in 2004 when he won the Cy Young Award.
On September 12, Verlander took the hill in Anaheim, allowed a leadoff double to Brandon Phillips, and then retired 24 of the next 26 batters, going eight innings with only the one hit, a walk, and a hit batter as blemishes. The Astros won that game 1-0, reduced their magic number to 5, and finally clinched the division five days later when Verlander defeated the Mariners.
Then on Friday, facing those same Angels again, "JV" basically duplicated the earlier performance, allowing a leadoff single to Kole Calhoun, but then setting down 20 of the next 22 in order, with the others being walks. That's seven innings of one-hit ball. And no pitcher in Astros history-- not Clemens, not even Nolan Ryan-- had put up two such games (7+ IP, ≤ 1 hit) in a three-start span. Ryan is one of just four Astros to do it twice in a season; Verlander gets added to that club with Roy Oswalt (2008) and Pete Harnisch (1993).
We actually expected it to take quite a while to find the last pitcher to duplicate Verlander's coincidence of the lone hit in both games being by the leadoff man. It didn't. The last pitcher to have two outings of 7+ IP and exactly one hit, where the hit led off the game, was Shelby Miller for the Cardinals in 2013.
The Angels have been held to two hits as a team four times this season. Three of those are against Houston. Two of them are against Verlander (Mike Fiers, June 10).
And one additional quirk about Friday's game... Angels starter Garrett Richards also threw one-hit ball for six innings before Yusmeiro Petit lost the dueling shutouts in the 7th. That made it just the second game in the past 20 years where both starters went at least six innings while allowing one hit and no runs. The other was the Padres' combined near-no-hitter against the Dodgers on July 9, 2011.
Snakes On A Plain
There were a lot of very big numbers posted in Arizona this summer, but as summer turned to fall this week, we found ourselves watching a different type of big number. In the final game of their series in San Diego on Wednesday, the Diamondbacks unleashed 13 runs on the Padres, their most ever scored in San Diego (either stadium). That was despite Hunter Renfroe hitting three home runs, including a leadoff one in the bottom of the 9th to turn a 13-6 score into a 13-7 score. Renfroe became the first player in Padres history-- and first in the majors this season-- to hit three homers in a loss, and it was his third time this season hitting two homers in a loss. That tied the Padres record for such a thing; Nate Colbert also did it three times in 1970.
The Diamondbacks then made the long, hot trek across the desert (this is completely false; at the very least they took some cushy air-conditioned buses if not a private plane) back to Phoenix where they awaited a weekend visit by the Marlins. Miami starter Adam Conley probably could have waited another day; in Friday's opener he gave up seven runs while recording just five outs. That matched his "performance" from an April 28 game against Pittsburgh; Chris Hammond in 1996 is the only other Marlins pitcher to have two such games in a season.
Amazingly, however, he wasn't alone. The Marlins had tied the game by the middle of the 3rd inning and took the lead in the 4th when Marcell Ozuna launched his second homer of the game (already). That knocked Zack Greinke off the hill and earned him his third Arizona start allowing eight earned runs including three homers. No other Diamondbacks pitcher has even done it twice.
However, Greinke would become the first Arizona pitcher to give up 8 ER and 3 HR and not lose the game when the Diamondbacks rallied for five runs in the 6th. Four of those runs came on a grand slam by Chris Iannetta, which would be interesting enough, except that Iannetta also had a three-run homer off of Conley back in the 1st. No player in the D'backs' 20-year history had ever hit a grand slam and a three-run bomb in the same game, and Iannetta would finish with eight RBIs, second in team history only to Erubiel Durazo's 9-RBI game against the Phillies on May 17, 2002.
By the time this slugfest ended it was a 13-11 Arizona victory, just the sixth time in Marlins history they had scored 11 and lost (last July 3, 2012, at Milwaukee), and the third time the Diamondbacks had scored 13+ in back-to-back games. They did it in August 2015 against the Phillies and September 2001 against the Brewers, but never against different opponents.
Scroll ahead to the middle game of the series on Saturday. This time Miami takes advantage of four Arizona errors, hangs five unearned runs, and wins another mini-slugfest 12-6. That made it the Marlins' first time scoring in double digits in back-to-back games since the first week of the 2008 season (!), the longest drought in the majors by over two years. Their only other time scoring consecutive 11's was against two different opponents, the Astros and Braves on May 12-13, 1997.
Although a little bit of everyone got involved, Giancarlo Stanton-- who hit his 57th homer to extend his own team record and keep us talking about asterisks for another day or two-- and Justin Bour each recorded three hits, a home run, and four RBIs, becoming the first set of Marlins teammates ever to do so in the same game.
And speaking of everyone getting involved, Sunday's series finale featured Marlins starter Dan Straily hitting his first career double, followed the next inning by D'backs starter Patrick Corbin breaking up Straily's no-hitter (okay, it's the 3rd inning, but) with his third career triple. He joins Brian Anderson as the only pitchers in Arizona history to have three three-baggers. And that is not the Brian Anderson who played third base for the Marlins in this same series. Sunday's game was the first where one starting pitcher doubled, and the other tripled, since Orel Hershiser and Jamey Wright traded those hits on September 11, 1998.
Because Baseball
We always say that the beauty of baseball is that you start with 81 blank scoresheet squares and never quite know what's going to go in them. So depending on whether you went to Rogers Centre on Wednesday or Thursday,....
That first game very nearly became our first 15-4 score of the season until Kelvin Herrera gave up a solo homer in the 9th. (Had there been a runner on, it would also have been our first 15-6, but oh well.) Every Royals starter had at least one hit and one run scored, the second time they've pulled that off this month (September 6 at Detroit). Only five times in their history have they had two such games in a season, the previous of those being 2004 (also 1982, 1980, 1976). And the 15 runs were the Royals' most ever scored at SkyDome/Rogers, breaking the 14-2 they laid on the Jays to take a 3-1 lead in the 2015 ALCS. Their only Canadian game with more runs scored was a 16-12 win at Exhibition Stadium on August 6, 1979.
Whit Merrifield became the first Royal with three hits, three runs scored, and two stolen bases since Angel Berroa did it in Cleveland on September 16, 2003, but it was Mike Moustakas who grabbed the headlines by cranking his 37th home run of the season. Compared to Stanton and Judge and the MLB single-season record of 5,693 homers having been broken the night before (by Alex Gordon, no less), that's not a huge headline-grabber. But it broke Steve Balboni's team record of 36 homers; the Royals are famously the only team never to have a player hit 40 in a season. He's still stuck on 37 with a week to go.
Thursday's one run came in the 3rd inning when Gordon walked, Lorenzo Cain singled, and then Melky Cabrera's two out base knock scored Gordon. Melky, of course, was caught stealing three pitches later to end the inning, but he would go on to become the fourth player in Royals history to have three hits and the RBI in a 1-0 victory. Alcides Escobar did it earlier this year (April 16 vs Angels), and the others are "only" George Brett (July 11, 1985, at Cleveland) and Hal McRae (July 9, 1976, at Detroit).
Kansas City had never dropped 15 runs in one game, and then won a 1-0 contest in their next game, before this week; in fact the Jays were the last team to pull that off (August 7-8, 2010). And the Royals had posted only other 1-0 win over Toronto in the 41 seasons that both teams have existed. That was at Kauffman Stadium before it was called Kauffman Stadium. Jorge Orta's pinch-hit double in the 8th was the deciding factor on April 12, 1986.
Minor-League Minute
Because balks make everything funner. Not only did this force extra innings, and the extra innings force a Game 5, but that Game 5 got postponed another day by rain, and not only did Wichita lose that game (and the title), they lost it badly. But at least both teams got to celebrate.
Note: The Kernels Rules Desk thinks there might have been potential for a protest here. The balk wasn't signaled until after the out was recorded. One of our most favorite rules is that a balk can be declined (usually in the case where the offense gets a hit anyway), and thus it's still supposed to be called immediately. One thing to note, however, is that the catcher does not join the dogpile, so it's possible that the umpire did verbalize it during the pitch, which you can't tell from the video. We also didn't see an actual balk, but that part's not protestable.
Bottom Of The Bag
⋅ Jed Lowrie, Tuesday: First Athletics batter to hit go-ahead grand slam with team down 3 in 8th inning or later since Eddie Joost's walkoff against the Browns' Satchel Paige on July 15, 1952.
⋅ Scooter Gennett, Friday: First Reds player to hit grand slam as fourth batter of a home game since Ted Kluszewski vs Braves, September 18, 1949.
⋅ Dodgers, Wednesday: First game with a pinch-hit triple (Chase Utley) and a pinch-hit double (Enrique Hernandez) since May 7, 1991 at Mets (Stan Javier & Gary Carter respectively).
⋅ Twins, Sunday: Scored 10 runs in Detroit for fifth time this season (third this series). Ties team record for most double-digit road games at same opponent in one season (1936 at Browns).
⋅ Adam Frazier, Wednesday: Second player in Pirates history with a triple, a walkoff homer, and 4 RBI. Infielder Gus Suhr did it against the Cardinals on April 23, 1932.
⋅ David Price, Friday: First Red Sox relief pitcher to get a base hit on offense (excluding position players) since Spaceman Bill Lee on September 27, 1972.
⋅ Francisco Lindor, Wed-Thu: First Clevelander to hit a go-ahead homer in the 5th inning or later of back-to-back games since Richie Sexson, August 29-30, 1998.
⋅ Dioner Navarro, Saturday: First Tiger to homer twice in a game he didn't start since Kirk Gibson against the Twins on May 28, 1994.
⋅ Rays, Tuesday: First time in team history that they were one-hit, and the one hit was a homer. Leaves the Padres as the only current team never to have that happen.
⋅ Phillies/Braves, Sunday: First game where both leadoff batters had three hits, but teams combined to score only two runs, since Pirates defeated Reds 1-0 on July 4, 1949. We told you they just want to go home.
Did You Know?
"Monk" Dubiel didn't get his nickname because he was really quiet and studious and/or randomly chanted Bible verses in Latin during infield drills. It's apparently because when he first got to the big leagues, the team accidentally issued him a uniform that was too small and reminded his teammates of an organ-grinder's monkey.
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