14 R in a BW at SD
That would be "Runs in a Braves Win at San Diego". That's what showed up in our linescores on Tuesday as Atlanta pummelled the Padres 14-1. It was their largest victory ever against San Diego, home or road; they've had several 12-run wins, but even the last of those was a quarter-century ago (September 11, 1993, at Jack Murphy). They piled up 18 hits, half of them for extra bases, a first for the Braves in any game since a 14-0 shutout of Arizona on July 29, 2007. And just four days after that game (August 2, 2007 versus Houston) had been the last time five different Atlanta batters had multiple hits and multiple RBIs in one game.
Freddie Freeman and Dansby Swanson were among those five players; Freeman was the first Braves hitter to have a perfect day at the plate (4-for-4), three extra-base hits, and three runs scored since Adam LaRoche did it against the Mets on September 15, 2009. As for Swanson, he had three hits and drove in three runs while batting 8th, the third such game of his Braves career. The team's last player to have three of those games batting either 8th or 9th is none other than HOF pitcher Warren Spahn from 1951-58.
And that lone Padres run to spoil the shutout? That was a solo homer served by Luke Jackson to Franmil Reyes with two outs in the 9th. The "Win Probability Added" desk reports that Reyes is now the record holder for most futile home run in Padres history. He bumped Jedd Gyorko, who on August 12, 2013, homered at Coors Field with two outs in the 9th and the Padres down by "only" 13.
Speaking of 13.
13 I until ETS
That's Innings until Either Team Scores, which you may remember as happening in Wednesday's Yankees/Jays game. Aaron Judge finally broke the tie with a two-run homer (which went viral thanks to a kid holding an "All Rise" sign), the Yankees' latest to break a scoreless tie since Alex Rodriguez hit a walkoff in the 15th on August 7, 2009. The only other home run in Yankee history to break a scoreless tie on the road in the 13th or later was hit by Bill Skowron in Washington on April 22, 1959.
Two batters later, Giancarlo Stanton followed with another homer for the final 3-0 margin, the first time the Yankees hit multiple homers in an inning numbered 13 or higher since June 1, 2003, when Alfonso Soriano and Jorge Posada went deep in the 17th at Detroit. The final score also made it the second home game in Blue Jays history (SkyDome or Exhibition) where they played 13 innings and failed to score. The Tigers were in that one also, a 4-0, 14-inning win on August 8, 1991.
One other 13-inning affair happened this week, although it had plenty of runs in the first 12 frames. Jesse Winker of the Reds made his third hit of Thursday's game a walkoff home run in the bottom of the 13th to beat Colorado 7-5. The catch there is that Winker didn't start. He pinch-hit for Adam Duvall in the 8th on a play that would have tied the game then, except for Eugenio Suarez getting thrown out at the plate. Winker became the first Cincinnati batter in (at least) the live-ball era to have three hits, including a walkoff, in a game he didn't start.
And the Reds had another "13" this week, this one particularly unlucky. It's the number of runners they stranded in Wednesday's loss. That tied a season high, but it also created a three-game streak where Cincinnati collected 11 hits each time and still lost. Their only other such streak in the past 20 years was during the final week of the 2015 campaign (and gosh, if they had won only one of those games, they'd have finished a mere 35 games out of first).
12 BR in B2B G
This is not an April Fool's joke. That's really Brewers Runs in Back-To-Back Games. We've spent weeks watching (and posting about) Milwaukee's sputtering offense, which even earned this nugget as late as Wednesday.
Apparently all our complaining finally worked, as the Brewers exploded for a 12-4 win in Philadelphia on Friday and a 12-3 victory on Saturday, collecting 13 hits in each game. It's only the sixth time in franchise history-- and the first time this century-- that they've scored a dozen runs in back-to-back games. The most recent "streak" had been September 11 and 12, 1998, at Wrigley Field, and one of those was a 15-12 loss. For their part, it was the first time the Phillies had allowed 12 runs in back-to-back home games since Citizens Bank Park opened in 2004. The last time they did it at home against the same team was July 8 and 9, 1993, against the Giants at Veterans Stadium.
Ji-Man Choi got the rally started on Saturday with a 6th-inning grand slam that turned a 3-2 deficit into a 6-3 lead, after which Milwaukee scored six more unanswered. Given their previous offensive futility, it's not surprising that it was the Brewers' first grand slam this season. It was also just the seventh one in team history of the pinch-hit variety; the previous one on that list had been Jonathan Villar at Pittsburgh on September 4, 2016.
Ryan Braun generated notes in both of those 12-run games, hitting two homers and driving in five on Friday, and then having the strange combination of a triple and a catcher's interference award on Saturday. Braun also had a 2-HR, 5-RBI game at Citizens Bank Park on April 8, 2014, and is the first visiting player to do it twice. Saturday's 3B/CI combination was also a first in Brewers/Pilots history.
11 R with no T or H
Runs with no Triples or Homers. Two teams pulled that off on Wednesday, the Nationals in an 11-2 interleague win over Tampa Bay, and the Pirates in a back-and-forth 11-9 affair with the Dodgers.
Anthony Rendon had two of the Nationals' four doubles; he added two more singles, scored on all four trips, and also drove in three other runs. Rendon, of course, had a 10-RBI game early last season that blows up almost any note related to the Nationals and RBIs, but it turns out he also had four hits and four runs scored in that one. And he's the first player in Washington baseball history (any team) to have multiple 4-4-3 games. (Tim Wallach did have three for the Expos before the move.) And the Nats' 11 runs were their most ever scored in an interleague game since their current ballpark opened in 2007. The only time they did it at the stadium named for Robert Kennedy (and Wednesday's game was on the 50th anniversary of his death) was June 17, 2006, against the Yankees.
Back in Pittsburgh, meanwhile, Corey Dickerson had three singles and was hit by a pitch, also scoring on all four trips around the bases. Three of his trips, however, led off innings, so he never had any teammates to drive in. He was the first Pirate with three hits and four runs scored, but zero RBIs, since Starling Marte did it against the Giants on June 12, 2013.
On the losing side, Matt Kemp had three extra-base hits (a homer and two doubles) and five RBIs, the first Dodger with that line in a loss since Eric Karros did it in Atlanta on August 23, 1998. And there was one other fun quirk about Wednesday's game. The Dodgers finished with 9 runs on 8 hits, what we affectionately call an inverted linescore since it occurs in less than 2% of all games. They hadn't lost such a game since October 1, 2010 (7-5 to Arizona). But look at the Pirates' side. 11 runs on 10 hits. Theirs is inverted too. And if there's a 1-in-50 chance of it happening to one team, there's a 1-in-2500 chance of it happening to both teams. Sure enough, the last game where both teams had more runs than hits was nearly three years ago-- July 28, 2015, when the Yankees (21 on 19) beat the Rangers (5 on 3).
And although Pittsburgh and Washington each had a game last season where they scored 11+ with no hits above a double-- which is why that part isn't noteworthy-- it's been 15 seasons since any two teams pulled it off on the same day. The Rays were on the correct end of one of those games (13-3 over Baltimore), while the Twins did it in a 12-0 shutout of Kansas City, on July 7, 2004.
10 BB in an AW
Bases on Balls in an Astros Win. That actually buries the lead a little bit; we also could have put this under "4" because that's how many Rangers batters Charlie Morton hit in Saturday's game. Only one other pitcher in Houston history has plunked four opponents, Darryl Kile against his future team, the Cardinals, on June 2, 1996. And while only six of those 10 walks belonged to Morton before he was mercifully lifted from the game, he still joined a short list of pitchers in the live-ball era to walk six and hit four. Only two other players are on it: Steve Sparks of the Angels (May 22, 1999, at Tampa Bay) and the Yankees' Tommy Byrne (July 5, 1950 against the Athletics).
But wait. Did we mention the Astros actually won the game on Saturday? The Rangers managed just five hits and stranded a whopping seventeen baserunners on their way to losing 4-3. Only one other team in the live-ball era has been gifted 10 walks and four hit batters and lost, and that took 15 innings. It was the Orioles, also by a 4-3 score, to the Angels, on August 21, 1968. The 17 left on base tied for the most in a nine-inning game in Rangers history, and the other game where they did it was a win (9-8 over Seattle, June 1, 2007).
9 I in a CG
We suspect you got that one. Innings in a Complete Game, of course. Jose Berrios of the Twins threw his second one of the season on Thursday, and struck out 10 White Sox hitters while doing so. Berrios's other CG was in his first start of the season, April 1 at Baltimore, and he's the only Minnesota pitcher to have one this year. In fact, other than the four thrown by the Indians staff, he's the only pitcher in the AL Central to have one this year. It was the first CG with 10 strikeouts for the Twins since Johan Santana did it in Detroit on May 17, 2006. Only the Pirates (Kip Wells in 2005) had gone longer without a 10-K CG. And that 2006 game was an eight-inning loss. The last Twins pitcher to win a 10-K CG goes back to Brad Radke on April 14, 1998. That was at Tropicana Field in just the 12th game played by the expansion Devil Rays.
Berrios came up in another note on Thursday, as one of only three pitchers this season to twice throw 7+ innings with no earned runs and no unintentional walks allowed. Although Berrios didn't do that on Thursday, Miles Mikolas of the Cardinals did; the third one in the group is the Giants' Johnny Cueto.
8 K in a DH
Strikeouts in a Double Header. (We sorta cheated there, using the scoresheet "K" for strikeouts, but you'll get over it.) Before Wednesday's 13th-inning heroics, Aaron Judge set a new major league record with this outstanding performance in a makeup twinbill with the Tigers on Monday. After three whiffs, a walk, and a groundout in the day game, Judge recorded his first career "platinum sombrero" with five big strikeouts in the night game. Seven strikeouts in a doubleheader had been done several times before, most recently by then-Blue Jay Shea Hillenbrand in a return visit to his former team, the Red Sox, on September 27, 2005.
But as Friend Of Kernels Jayson Stark reported in a piece for The Athletic this week (note: paywall), only three other players have struck out eight times in any pair of consecutive nine-inning games, doubleheader or not. And one of them was fellow Yankee Giancarlo Stanton, April 3 and 4 against the Rays. The others to do it were Ruppert Jones of the Padres in July 1982, and Phillies pitcher Wayne Twitchell in May 1973.
That April 3 game was also a 5-K outing for Stanton, who then promptly had another one five days later against the Orioles and spent the next few games hearing about it from his new fanbase in the Bronx. But when Judge added his five whiffs on Monday, the Yankees joined the 1998 Cardinals as the only teams with three such games in a season.
As he tends to do, however, Aaron "Three True Outcomes" Judge redeemed himself with a couple big homers later in the week, including that 13th-inning tiebreaker in Toronto on Wednesday. He also tacked on a solo shot in the 8th inning on Saturday to give the Yankees a 4-3 win over the Mets at Citi Field. That came just one day after Brett Gardner had also hit a go-ahead homer in the 8th inning at Citi Field. And the last time the Yankees did that in back-to-back road games? It was the week of Brett Gardner's 1st birthday. Bob Meacham and Dave Winfield each hit them at Oakland Coliseum on August 27 and 28, 1984.
7 SDG with MHR
Would you believe seven Straight Dodgers Games with Multiple Home Runs? After a 4-9 start to the season, the Dodgers have clawed their way back above the .500 mark, thanks largely to last weekend's sweep of Colorado and series wins over Pittsburgh (losing only that 11-9 game mentioned earlier) and Atlanta. The series at Coors Field marked the first time in over two decades that the Dodgers scored 10+ runs in three straight games; the previous occurrence was June 29 to July 1, 1996, and two of those games were also at Coors. (Before that it was September 1985.)
But anything involving Coors Field gets an asterisk. So it started to get streak-y on Tuesday when Cody Bellinger, Joc Pederson, and Yasiel Puig all went deep in the series opener at PNC Park. The 5-0 win marked the first time the Dodgers had gone to Pittsburgh, thrown a team shutout, and hit three homers on offense since a 9-0 win on August 1, 1949, at Forbes Field.
After that 11-9 loss on Wednesday-- in which Bellinger homered again along with Matt Kemp's previously-listed escapades-- the bullpen hung on for an 8-7 win on Thursday. This time it was Pederson who homered twice, including one on the fifth pitch of the game. When you throw on a 5th-inning double, he becomes the first Dodger to have three hits, three runs scored, three runs batted in, and a leadoff homer to start the game, since Steve Sax did it in Philadelphia on May 26, 1988.
Bellinger also homered again Thursday, the first Dodger to do so in three consecutive games in Pittsburgh within the same season since Duke Snider from August 9 to 11, 1957. And when they returned to Los Angeles on Friday and beat the Braves 7-3, guess who homered for the fourth straight game. The last Dodger with such a streak, coincidentally, was Joc Pederson in June 2015, although that was (asterisk!) at Coors Field.
All told, the Dodgers collected 26 taters in the first 10 days of June, including just the second time in team history (all of it, to 1884) that they've hit multiple homers in seven straight games. The other streak was July 19 through 25, 2001, and yep, that included Coors Field as well (and also homer-friendly Milwaukee). The 11-9 game and Saturday's 5-3 affair-- the only two losses of the bunch-- were the only games where the Dodgers didn't hit at least three homers; they had never before (again, to 1884) had seven 3-HR games in any 10-day span.
What better way to mark the midpoint of our 14-number countdown than with a song that (really) peaked at number 7 (February 27, 1993). Intermission!
6 RBI by a BJ LOH
Street vendors near Rogers Centre sell T-shirts with the Jays logo and "I ♥ BJs". O, Canada. So yes, those are the "BJs" we speak of (what were you thinking?)-- the ones wearing Toronto baseball uniforms, and specifically Lead Off Hitter Curtis Granderson. In Toronto's 13-3 beatdown of the Orioles on Sunday, Grandy collected a homer, two doubles, a single, and a whopping six of those runs batted in. Only one other leadoff hitter has ever had 6 RBI on behalf of "The 6" (one of Toronto's nicknames based on the six smaller municipalities from which it was formed); that was Damaso Garcia against the Mariners on May 10, 1985. Combined with Yangervis Solarte's 4-hit, 6-RBI game against the Angels on May 3, it's the first time two Jays hitters have ever posted that line in the same season. And the last three Jays to have three extra-base hits and drive in six runs have all done it against Baltimore: Michael Saunders in June 2016, and Kendrys Morales last August 31.
Solarte, batting below Grandy, chipped in three hits on Sunday; in fact, 1 through 5 in the order all had multiple hits and at least one run scored. It's been nearly three years since Toronto got 12 hits and 12 RBI from the top five spots; that last happened on August 22, 2015, in a 15-3 drubbing of the Angels. Alex Cobb continued a season-long streak of bad Orioles starts by giving up 11 hits and 9 runs, which hadn't happened in over six years. Jake Arrieta (remember he was an Oriole when he came up?) did it against his current team, the Phllies, on June 8, 2012.
And since we must sneak in the Reds whenever possible, they broke into the "6" column on Sunday as well, snapping a 13-game losing streak against the Cardinals with a 6-3 win despite only having five hits. Could have something to do with those 11 walks. Joey Votto drew four of them, none officially scored as intentional, and thus had the unusual 0-for-0 line in the boxscore. It was the sixth game of Votto's career with four walks, trailing only Barry Larkin and Joe Morgan (seven each). And that complete-game 0-for-0 is one of our favorites here at Kernels; there have only been three in the majors this season, and Cincinnati has two of them. Number-6 batter Adam Duvall drew three walks against the Cubs on May 19 and was on deck when Billy Hamilton struck out to end the game. Although Barry Larkin had a pair of 0-for-0's by himself in 1996, this is the first season two different Reds hitters have done it since 1916, by Bill Hobbs and Earle "Greasy" Neale.
5 TR in FI
Tigers Runs in the First Inning. Like the Brewers from earlier, Detroit was a team that played a lot of low-scoring games early in the season, at one point leading the majors in games scoring 0 or 1. So their five-run 1st inning on Thursday-- at Fenway Park, no less-- was a bit unusual. But it was also a bit familiar... because they did the same thing last Thursday against the Angels. The Tigers hadn't posted a pair of five-run 1sts within a week of each other since July 2006, when they actually did it three games in a row.
Leonys Martin connected for both a homer and a triple on Thursday, matching his line from an April 19 home game against Baltimore. He's the only Tiger to have such a game this season, and the first to do it in both a home game and a road game in the same year since Curtis Granderson in 2007. The last Detroit batter to homer and triple at Fenway was Carlos Peña on July 22, 2003, and their last to do it in a victory there was Lou Whitaker way back on June 8, 1983.
Since it's a convenient spot to sneak this in, we'll also mention some Tigers runs in the last inning, those coming Saturday when Jeimer Candelario hit a two-run walkoff homer with two outs in the bottom of the 12th to beat Cleveland. If you consider two outs in the 12th to be deeper into the game than zero outs in the 12th (which we do), then Candelario now holds the record for both the latest walkoff homer since Comerica Park opened (2000) and the Tigers' latest walkoff homer against Cleveland. Detroit hadn't hit a walkoff dinger that late into a game since Cecil Fielder beat the Twins in the 13th on June 3, 1994 (at Tiger Stadium, obviously). And the only other Tigers to hit walkoff homers against Cleveland in the 12th both did it with nobody out: Lance Parrish on September 12, 1981; and Charlie Gehringer on July 4, 1930.
4 RS on a GS
Runs Score on a Grand Slam. The Cubs only needed three of them on Wednesday, but when Jason Heyward smashes a walkoff homer to beat Philadelphia, you might as well let his run count too. (There's actually a rule (9.06(g)) that says it does.) The Cubs hadn't hit any walkoff homer since Addison Russell beat the Brewers on April 19, 2017, which doesn't seem like a huge amount of time, but 26 other teams had one since. Wrigleyville hadn't seen a walkoff grand slam since Alfonso Soriano hit one in the bottom of the 13th against Houston on July 27, 2009. And that was with the score tied.
As for turning a deficit into a lead, the last Cub to hit a walkoff slam when trailing was Ron Santo against the Dodgers nearly a half-century ago (September 25, 1968). But the best Heyward note of all (if we do say so ourselves) is that it came with the Cubs down to their final strike (i.e., trailing with 2 outs and 2 strikes in the 9th or extras). If Heyward swings and misses the Cubs lose. And with a cap-tip to the online archives of the Chicago Tribune, no Cubs batter had hit any walkoff homer-- slam or otherwise-- in that situation since catcher Sammy Taylor did it against Milwaukee-- that's the Braves, not the Brewers- on April 14, 1961.
Shout-out to Cubs starter Jose Quintana as well; while he didn't win that game due to its walkoff nature, he did become the first Cubs hurler this season to record a double-digit-strikeout game. Only the Pirates and Tigers remain without one.
3 H but ZRS
Hits but Zero Runs Scored. This line came up a lot this week, and frequently it was combined with zero runs driven in as well. In keeping with the theme, three of our favorites.
Marwin Gonzalez did his part in Tuesday's game, recording an RBI double in the 2nd, a triple in the 4th, and a single in the 7th. The triple came with two outs, and after the single he was erased on a double play. Marwin found all three bases but never found home plate, and the Astros lost to Seattle 7-1. He's the first Houstonian to go single-double-triple, but not score, since Julio Lugo did it against the Brewers on September 30, 2000.
Matt Chapman went 3-for-3 in Oakland's game against Kansas City on Saturday. He also didn't score. In fact no Athletics scored. Matt Olson, batting above Chapman, had the team's only other hit. They lost 2-0 as Danny Duffy struck out 10. (Sidebar: Duffy set a Royals record with his fourth game of 10 strikeouts, no runs, and three or fewer hits allowed. The other pitcher with three was Kevin Appier.) But in collecting 75% of his team's hits, Chapman earned a fun distinction. The last Oakland batter to have a three-hit game when the team as a whole had no more than four, was Carney Lansford against the Twins on August 9, 1986. Lansford had all three hits in a game the A's lost 9-2 to Frank Viola (Dave Kingman, who batted above Lansford, walked twice).
And Eduardo Escobar, who was on an extra-base-hit tear last weekend, finished it off with three hits including two doubles in the second game of Tuesday's doubleheader against Chicago. Didn't score. The last Twins batter with three hits, two for extra bases, but no runs scored? Ryan LaMarre, two days earlier. The last Twins teammates to do it in such proximity were Mike Lamb (May 31) and Delmon Young (June 2) in 2008. Escobar also had a homer and a double in the first game, giving him the distinction of the only player in Twins history (1961) with multiple extra-base hits and multiple RBIs in both games of a doubleheader. The last to do it for the Senators was Jim Lemon against the White Sox on June 29, 1958.
Another, unrelated, "3" of note: The Diamondbacks went to Coors Field this weekend and Paul Goldschmidt just couldn't stop himself. On Friday he homered twice (again, Coors Field asterisk) and chipped in a 1st-inning double after which he would score the first run of the game. Saturday, two more homers plus a stray 7th-inning single. The homers put him on a list with Jean Segura (2016), Tony Clark (2005), and Reggie Sanders (2001) as the only Diamondbacks with back-to-back multi-homer games. Oddly, all eight of their games were against the Rockies (though only Goldy's were at Coors). And the extra hit in each game also made Goldy the first player in Arizona history with three hits, three RBIs, and three runs scored in consecutive games.
Nick Ahmed and David Peralta also posted 3-hit, 3-RBI games on Saturday; with Goldy they're the first trio of Diamondbacks to do it since Justin Upton, Kelly Johnson, and Miguel Montero against the Marlins on May 30, 2011.
And while his streak of 3-hit games ended on Sunday, Goldy still legged out a triple and a double as Arizona swept the series. That (plus two runs batted in) made him only the fifth player ever to have multiple extra-base hits and multiple RBIs in four straight games. And it's been a half-century since the last one; that was Senators slugger Frank Howard from May 12 through 16, 1968. The other streaks before that were by Frank Robinson (1966 Orioles), Vic Wertz (1950 Tigers), and Chet Laabs (1942 Browns).
2 CIA in OG (hint: E2)
There might be two Central Intelligence Agency operatives who are also Original Gangsters. But for this purpose, we're talking Catcher's Interference Awards in One Game. In a bizarre series finale between the Cubs and Phillies on Thursday, Tommy La Stella got a free ride to first base in the 1st inning and then again in the 8th when catcher Andrew Knapp clipped the swing with his glove. (In the latter case, La Stella was then caught in a rundown between first and second with the pitcher actually making the tag.)
It's worth pointing out that an interference award was not actually scored as an E2 until 1931, and the play wasn't reported in official league registers until 1953. Even then, it took another 10 years for the names of the batters (as opposed to the catchers who were charged with it) to be added, so the records are almost certainly incomplete. But among the data we do have, La Stella is the first batter in Cubs history to receive two CIs in the same game. And Knapp is only the second Phillies catcher to commit the offense twice in a game, the other being the great John Wockenfuss against the Giants on August 30, 1984.
Adding to the bizarreness of that game, Tyler Chatwood issued seven walks, threw 107 pitches, and didn't finish the 5th inning even though the Cubs went on to win. Reliever (and Former New Britain Rock Cat) Brian Duensing "earned" it instead, almost by default. (By rule it's supposed to be "scorer's judgement" as to which reliever had the best outing, but in practice it's usually whomever finishes the 5th if the starter can't. We'll save our soapbox about abolishing this rule for another time.) Anyway, Chatwood became the first pitcher to throw 107+ pitches in less than 5 innings, but manage to only give up 1 run, since Nick Pivetta of the Phillies did it on May 18 of last year. Guess who was Chatwood's mound opponent on Thursday. (Both of them also threw exactly 107 pitches-- 58 strikes and 49 balls-- in 4⅔. Pivetta only walked five though.)
1 H in a CG SHO
You probably remember this as one of the big stories of the week. Hits in a Complete-Game Shutout. (The phrase is actually somewhat redundant, since Shutouts are already a subset of Complete Games, but everybody says it, so.) The pitcher who did it was Andrew Heaney, who showed up to the ballpark on his 27th birthday Tuesday complete with a new electric bicycle and a cheesecake his wife made for him. We were actually listening to this game when Hunter Dozier broke up the no-hit bid with a 5th-inning single to left. But it turns out that's all the Royals would get, losing to the Angels 1-0 on a delayed double steal and having only three baserunners along the way (Jorge Soler walked, and Jon Jay was hit by a pitch).
The last SHO-1 (or better) thrown by an Angels pitcher was by Ervin Santana against the Diamondbacks on June 16, 2012. That's not his no-hitter; he memorably gave up a run in that one (and is still the last to have done so). The lone Arizona hit that day was a 7th-inning single by Justin Upton. The only other SHO-1 they'd ever thrown against the Royals was when Nolan Ryan no-hit them (his first one) on May 15, 1973. And Kansas City hadn't been one-hit on the road, either by a single pitcher or multiple, since Jon Lester's NH against them at Fenway on May 19, 2008.
And even ignoring the one-hit part, Heaney became the first pitcher to throw an individual (complete-game) shutout on his birthday since Doug Drabek of the Astros blanked the Dodgers on July 25, 1995.
Speaking of one-hitters, a special mention to the Pirates, who on Saturday had one handed to them by Jon Lester and two Cubs relievers. Pittsburgh got one-hit twice last season (although in both cases the hits were homers and they won one of the games), so that part isn't all that rare. But Saturday's one hit? That was a scorcher into Wrigley Field's right-field corner by Austin Meadows, and by the time Jason Heyward dug it out, Meadows was standing on third base. The last time the Pirates had one hit in a game, and it was a triple, was on April 18, 1971, at Shea Stadium, and the player who hit it was none other than Roberto Clemente. And in the Cubs' century-plus at Wrigley Field, Saturday was just the second time a visiting team had its lone hit be a three-bagger. The other was September 25, 1995, when the Cardinals' Bernard Gilkey broke up Frank Castillo's no-hitter with two outs in the 9th.
BOTB (Bottom Of The Bag)
⚾ Yankees, Sunday night: First time being shut out on ≤ 3 hits in Queens since they were the home team at Shea during the Yankee Stadium renovation. Brewers blanked them 7-0 on April 27, 1975.
⚾ Orioles, Wednesday: First 1-0 win ever in regular-season interleague play. Had been only remaining team never to have one. Team's last 1-0 win over an NL foe was the clinching game of the 1966 World Series (Dave McNally over Don Drysdale).
⚾ Chris Sale, Friday: Struck out 10, allowed 1 earned run, and lost. Also did it last June 15 vs Phillies. Since earned runs became official in 1913, is only Red Sox pitcher to do it twice.
⚾ Brandon Crawford, Sunday: First Giants batter to have four hits and drive in every team run in a victory since Jimmy Wells against the Cubs on July 28, 1928 (won 3-2).
⚾ Blue Jays, Thursday: Fourth game in team history where their first batter hit a leadoff homer, and their last batter hit a walkoff anything in extra innings. Previous such game was April 13, 2007, against Detroit (Alex Rios had both hits).
⚾ Mike Trout/Justin Upton/Albert Pujols, Monday: Second time in Angels history that their 2-, 3-, and 4-hitters each had multiple hits, multiple RBI, and drew a walk in the same game. Billy Moran, Leon Wagner, and Lee Thomas also did it against Kansas City (except that's the A's, not the Royals) on September 10, 1962.
⚾ Masahiro Tanaka, Friday: Batted 8th in Yankees' interleague series against the Mets. Also did so against Nats on May 15. Last Yankee pitcher with 2 PA batting 8th in same season was Pedro Ramos in 1965.
⚾ J.T. Realmuto, Wednesday: First player in live-ball era (any team) to have three extra-base hits and two hit-by-pitches in one game.
⚾ Luke Maile, Saturday: First game-winning walk for Blue Jays ("shrimp"!) since Aaron Hill against Tampa Bay on June 5, 2007. Mariners (2004!) are only team to have gone longer without one.
⚾ Ian Kinsler, Friday: First Angels homer this year that turned a deficit into a lead in 7th or later. First one they've hit in Minneapolis since Wally Joyner scored Reggie Jackson on April 26, 1986.
⚾ Erik Gonzalez, Sunday: Second game this year with multiple extra-base hits and 3 RBI batting 9th (also May 3 vs TOR). First Clevelander with two such games in a season since pitcher Wes Ferrell in 1931.
Did You Know?
We couldn't leave Earle "Greasy" Neale just sitting up there in number 6. Because we wondered too. Neale had a childhood friend who apparently resembled the Pigpen character from "Peanuts" (we know it didn't exist yet, don't @ us) and teased the friend by calling him "dirty face". The friend, in return, referred to Neale as "greasy" because of his time as a runner in a mill. The other kids picked it up and it stuck. During the offseason, Neale kept busy as an assistant college football coach near his home of Parkersburg, W.Va., and took that up full-time after retiring from baseball in the early 1920s. He was finally inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1969-- just not the baseball one.
No comments:
Post a Comment