Around The World

Sometimes we make a cheesy pun on Twitter early in the week and the whole week just falls right in line from there.

So with the help of some dudes you probably forgot learning about years ago, let's take a journey through the week in baseball weirdness.


Fountain Of Youth

As seen above, Daniel Poncedeleon of the Cardinals is the one who started this whole thing with his maiden voyage on Monday night. We usually have an eye on MLB debuts anyway, since they're always good for a note or two, and of course we also have an eye on those pesky no-hitters. But most of the time those two eyes aren't stuck to the same game.

Poncedeleon retired eight of the first nine Reds batters, the exception being a walk to Tucker Barnhart, and okay, we get it, you haven't seen this guy before, give it one time around the order. Joey Votto drew a walk in the 4th because that's what Joey Votto does. But despite a lot more foul balls, Poncedeleon really did sail through yet another time around the Reds order, taking a no-hitter into the 6th and then the 7th and causing Bumpus Jones to stir in his grave after 125 years. Bumpus, as you may know, is the only pitcher to throw a no-hitter in his major-league debut, and he was a 22-year-old semipro player just signed by Charlie Comiskey for the final game of the season.

Monday's game was the third time this season that a pitcher's MLB debut had gotten through five innings as a no-hitter and made us wake up poor Bumpus. Freddy Peralta took one into the 6th for the Brewers on May 13, and Nick Kingham got through 6⅔ for the Pirates on April 29.

But ultimately, the fact that Poncedeleon had already thrown 116 pitches, and it was still just a 1-0 game, won out when Harrison Bader pinch-hit for him to lead off the 8th. So at least Bumpus can roll back over. And sure enough, another pinch-hitter, Philip Ervin, singles off Jordan Hicks with one out in the 8th to finally allow us to stand down. But remember, Poncedeleon didn't give up the first hit. His line, in his major-league debut, is 7 IP, 0 runs, and 0 hits. And of course Bumpus is the only other player in history to pull that off. Ross Stripling of the Dodgers threw 7⅓ hitless in his debut two years ago, but he gave up a run when the last batter he faced, Angel Pagán, walked and then Trevor Brown promptly broke up the combined no-hitter with a home run. Poncedeleon was the first Cardinals starter to get lifted with a no-hitter intact in even the 4th inning since John Tudor coming off a DL stint on May 1, 1988.

And in case Monday's game didn't have enough drama, it was still 1-0 when Eugenio Suarez got the Reds' second hit with two outs in the bottom of the 9th. It was a homer, the first one Cincinnati had hit when trailing by 1 and down to its final out since Devin Mesoraco walked off against Atlanta on May 7, 2013. Jesse Winker promptly got their third hit. Tucker Barnhart their fourth. And Dilson Herrera their fifth-- which scored Winker for an improbable 2-1 walkoff victory. After getting no-hit through seven innings. We could not do this for every team, but the amazing Baseball Reference Play Index has every Reds home game back to the 1931 season, and in that population, there is no other game where Cincinnati got no-hit even through six innings and then walked off with a victory. Never leave early.


Vasco da Gomber

Vasco da Gama is celebrated in Portugal for being the first to navigate a trade route to India around the Cape of Good Hope. Austin Gomber got some good hope from his teammate Daniel Poncedeleon before his first major-league start on Tuesday. If only he had been pitching against the Indians. (We know they're different Indians. Don't @ us.)

Instead Gomber was on the other side of Ohio for the middle game of the Cardinals' series in Cincinnati, and stop us if you've heard this about two paragraphs ago, but he didn't give up a hit the first time through the order either. After Curt Casali walked and then got caught stealing to end the third, here's nine more straight outs. Wait, didn't we just do this yesterday? Someone sound the alarm again.

Well, someone did. As Gomber was warming up for the 7th, no-hitter still going, the fire alarms at GABP activated and the game was stopped for nearly 8 minutes while stadium personnel tried to figure out what was going on and shut them off. Two batters later, Joey Votto deposits a single to right to deny Gomber a no-hitter in his first major-league start. Gomber had made 15 relief appearances earlier in the season, which would have put him in the company of Bobo Holloman of the 1953 Browns, who made four relief appearances before no-hitting the Athletics on May 6. Bobo lasted until July before being sold to the triple-A team in Toronto for $7500 and never saw the majors again. Along with Bumpus Jones, they're still the only two to throw a no-hitter in their first start. (Also, we've always thought "Bumpus and Bobo" would be a good name for a 1950s "Hee-Haw"-type variety show.)

Gomber, alas, couldn't even get the shutout because the next batter was our buddy Eugenio Suarez. Wham, two-run homer to score Votto and tie the game. In our same population of Reds games back to 1931, Suarez is the first player to hit a game-tying (not go-ahead) homer in the 7th inning in consecutive games. Johnny Bench (September 1 and 3, 1968) is the only one to do it two games apart.

And while the Cards would go on to win Tuesday's game on an 11th-inning homer by Dexter Fowler, Suarez wasn't done homering either. He went deep in Wednesday's finale, as well as the first two games of the Reds' series with the Phillies over the weekend. (More on that later.) That gave him the eighth streak in Reds history of homering in five straight games, and the first in exactly two years. Jay Bruce also did it from July 23 to 27 of 2016. Suarez drew an 0-for-4 on Saturday, meaning no Cincinnati player has still ever gone deep in six straight.


A Pirate's Life For Me

As previously reported, Daniel Poncedeleon's 7 innings bumped Nick Kingham's debut from the ranks of longest no-hit debut this season. Kingham's start on Thursday against the Mets was, well, not as good. He gave up seven hits and walked four, finally surrendering after Asdrubal Cabrera's final home run as a Met (for now) in the 4th inning. The last Pirates starter to allow 11 baserunners and six runs while getting nine outs or fewer... was Nick Kingham, in one of those high-scoring Dodgers festivals back on July 2. Paul Maholm in 2010 was the last Pirate to do it twice in a season, and Kingham is the first one in the live-ball era to allow multiple homers in both games. Cabrera, for his part, ended his final Mets game with two more doubles, just the second Mets batter with 3 XBH and 4 RBI in a game in Pittsburgh. Mike Piazza did that on April 14, 2000. And just the combination of a homer and two doubles was also only the second time a Mets batter has done that in Pittsburgh; Kevin McReynolds had the other such game on April 22, 1987.

Tyler Glasnow came on in relief and threw three hitless innings-- but still gave up a run thanks to two errors by the infield. The last Pirates reliever with that line of 3+ IP, 0 hits, but 1+ run, was Matt Ruebel on June 4, 1997. Ruebel walked the bases full of Cardinals before being removed, and then the reliever after him gave up a double to score two inherited runs.

Friday's game looked very similar at first when Michael Conforto hit a three-run homer in the 1st inning. But this time Pittsburgh chipped back. Or at least David Freese did. His two-run homer in the 2nd cut the lead to 1. After two walks and an infield single in the 5th, Freese comes up again with the bases loaded and gives the Pirates a 4-3 lead. The Mets tie it in the next inning on two more Pittsburgh errors (did we mention it looks similar?), but in the 9th Josh Harrison and Gregory Polanco lead off with singles. The Mets for some reason intentionally walk Elias Diaz... to get to Freese. Haven't you learned anything? Walkoff single that theoretically could have scored two more, but only one counts. That gives Freese 5 RBI accounting for all of Pittsburgh's runs in the game, the first to do that since Pedro Alvarez in a 5-3 win in Cincinnati on June 20, 2013. And Freese is the first Pirate whose fifth (or more) RBI of the game was a walkoff anything since Kevin Young drew a bases-loaded walk against Montréal on July 21, 1995.


Hernando de Juan Soto

Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto may have landed much closer to Tropicana Field than to Marlins Park, but the Nationals' Juan Soto did his own exploration of Florida on Friday night. After hitting his 13th homer of the season in his first at-bat, Soto tacked on a two-run triple-- the first of his major-league career-- as part of a 5-run Nationals 8th.

If that looks familiar, it's because Trea Turner had a homer and a triple at Marlins Park barely 24 hours earlier in Thursday's 10-3 win. It's the first time in Nats/Expos history that they've had a player homer and triple in back-to-back games, although there have been two occasions where teammates did it in the same game. Those were Wilson Ramos and Danny Espinosa against the Orioles on May 20, 2011; and Rusty Staub and John Bateman against the Mets on September 7, 1971. Turner was just one of eight Nationals who had at least one extra-base hit in that game, only the second time ever that eight "Washington" batters have done that on the road. The other was when the Senators went to Comiskey Park on June 14, 1935; two of them that day were pitchers.

And back to Soto on Friday, he threw in a 7th-inning single for good measure, meaning he missed the cycle by the double. We're kinda convinced we need a whiteboard where we update Soto's age each morning. Because yet again the 19-year-old is setting records. By 12 days, he became the youngest player in the live-ball era to homer, triple, and single in the same game; Soto barely topped the performance of another Washingtonian-- Buddy Lewis at Boston on May 24, 1936.

In that same game Friday, Max Scherzer-- on his 34th birthday since we're having fun with ages here-- was all over the boxscore. Not only did he strike out 11 Marlins, which doesn't shock anyone, but on offense he collected a base hit, a sacrifice bunt, got hit by a pitch (that hurts once you turn 34, trust us!), and grounded into a double play. Since GIDP were first recorded by the National League in 1933, no pitcher has ever done all of that in the same game. Schezer is the first pitcher with an 11-K game on his birthday (any age) since Chris Carpenter celebrated the big 3-0 by not going to a 3-0 count on any batter (and striking out 12 of them) on April 27, 2005.

But while pitching, Max also plunked Miami batter Brian Anderson, making him the first Nationals pitcher to hit a batter and also get hit as a batter since Collin Balester did it in Cincinnati on July 6, 2008.

Now the present-day Soto just needs some games in St Louis and Minneapolis to match his namesake's voyage up the Mississippi River. He's already got the "fountain of youth" part.


Lindor-a the Explorer

We literally thought of this one on the way home from a local minor-league game on Friday, and wouldn't you know it, the first boxscore we opened up was Francisco Lindor's multi-homer game against the Tigers. It was his fifth time this season going yard twice, tying the Indians' team record for a leadoff hitter. Grady Sizemore also had five in 2008. If you throw in his 3 RBIs, Lindor set a new team mark for that on Friday; Sizemore as leadoff batter only did that three times a decade ago. The only other Clevelander in team history with a pair of 2-HR, 3-RBI games from the leadoff spot was Tony Bernazard in 1986.

Brandon Guyer put the finishing touches on Friday's game with a 3-run, pinch-hit homer in the 8th. That was the first pinch-hit homer for Cleveland this season; since AL teams, predictably, use less of them, all six remaining teams that don't have one are from the "junior circuit". The last Indians hitter with a 3- or 4-run pinch-hit homer in Detroit was Fred Whitfield back on June 29, 1967.

Unfortunately, the 8-3 win and all those homers meant Cleveland didn't have a need to try and steal any bases. So at least in this episode there was, well, no swiping.


Intermission
We couldn't decide between the "Dora" theme or "Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego?". Do not click on either. The earworm is permanent.


Long Day's Journey Into Night

Five centuries ago, it took months to sail across the Atlantic Ocean if you didn't die from scurvy or those pesky pirates we mentioned above. Nowadays you can fly from one side to the other in almost the amount of time it took the Dodgers and Phillies to play Tuesday night's game. With the score 4-2 in the bottom of the 7th, Jorge Alfaro said, not going anywhere for a while? and cranked a two-run game-tying homer. And then we wait. The Phillies waste a leadoff double in the 9th. The Dodgers get a free double in the 11th when a fan (there were some still there!) reaches over and interferes with a ball in play. The Phillies have runners in the 13th, 14th, and 15th and can't score any of them. Finally it takes the magic of "position player pitching" to end this mess. Dodgers right fielder Enrique Hernandez gets Nick Williams to hit his first pitch for an out, but then throws eight straight balls (not including the required 3-0 "mercy strike") and is faced with former New Britain Rock Cat Trevor Plouffe with two on.

Plouffe promptly cements Hernandez's place in history as the first position player ever to give up a walkoff homer to lose a game. By inning, Plouffe hit the latest walkoff anything for the Phils since a 19th-inning sac fly by Raul Ibañez on May 25, 2011. And only two other Phillies in team history have hit a walkoff homer that late in a game; they were Wes Covington against the Pirates on September 23, 1961 (also 1 out in the 16th), and Del Ennis in the 17th against the Braves on September 6, 1952.

When he wasn't homering, Alfaro managed to strike out four times; he and Cesar Hernandez became the first set of Phillies teammates with a 4-K game since Pat Burrell and Jim Thome did it against Baltimore on July 2, 2004. And in these marathon games, we always say there's one player left out. Well, this time there were two; in addition to giving up the walkoff homer, Enrique Hernandez went a whopping 0-for-7 at the plate. As did Max Muncy, making them the first Dodgers to pull that off in the same game since Mike Piazza and Eric Karros in a 7-6 loss to Florida, August 1, 1996.

Every time a game goes really long, you start hearing about the turnaround time to the teams' next game. And sure enough, after Plouffe's walkoff at 1:14 am, the Dodgers and Phillies had to play a "getaway" game just 11½ hours later. You sort of expect all the players to be in "walking dead" mode at that point and the game to be like 2-1 with eight hits. But it turns out that the last three times the Phillies have played a 16-inning night game, dating to 2011, they've had a day game immediately following. And not only have they won all three of those day games, they've scored at least 7 runs in each-- including Wednesday's 7-3 victory over the Dodgers. Although we'll allow Max Muncy to hit the snooze button; after noting that he went 0-for-7 on Wednesday, he promptly came back and homered in the loss on Thursday afternoon. No Dodgers hitter had done that since Shawn Green in Pittsburgh on July 14-15, 2001.


Gellin' Like Magellan

"Enrique" brings us a perfect segue, because in researching this post (no, really, we do), we happened upon this article from The History Channel suggesting that Ferdinand Magellan is technically not the first person to circle the earth, since he died halfway across the Pacific. They speculate that a Malaysian guide (okay, slave) named Enrique who survived the voyage might actually deserve the credit. You can write your own dissertation on that. We'll write one on the barrage of hitters who circumnavigated the bases this week.

The Phillies decided to send three ships a-sailing on Thursday, although in Cincinnati they're more likely riverboat casinos. Either way, Rhys Hoskins hit the bonus with a 1st-inning homer, and then Nick Williams led off the 3rd with one. In the 5th it was Maikel Franco's turn. Hoskins went back to his lucky table in the 6th, albeit with a different dealer since Michael Lorenzen had been knocked out of the game by then. Didn't matter. 6-4. Franco spins again in the 7th. 7-4. And to top it all off, who's up with two outs in the 9th but Nick Williams again. Jackpot. A 9-4 Phillies win, but with three different players hitting multiple home runs. That hadn't happened anywhere in the majors since David Ortiz, Bill Mueller, and Jason Varitek did it at Yankee Stadium on (of course) July 4, 2003. But it had only happened once before in all of Phillies history. Those first three pioneers were Kevin Sefcik, Bobby Estalella, and Rico Brogna against the latter's former team, the Mets, on September 8, 1998.

We didn't even mention Tucker Barnhart or Carlos Santana homering in the same game, plus the oddity that was Eugenio Suarez going deep against Ranger Suarez, the first Suarez-off-Suarez dinger in MLB history. That was part of Eugenio's five-game homer streak discussed earlier, and after his late-inning heroics against the Cardinals, he promptly hit multi-run homers in the 1st inning on both Wednesday and Thursday. No Reds batter had done that in consecutive games since Adam Dunn against the Brewers on May 6 and 7, 2002.

Ranger, meanwhile, was making his major-league debut (a good name for an outdoorsy, explorer-type, we think), and despite those two early homers, he settled in and threw the required five innings in 75 pitches. That made him the first pitcher in Phillies history to give up multiple homers in his MLB debut and still get the victory. The only other pitcher to do it this year was Pablo Lopez of the Marlins.


Rocks My Sox

Most explorers, at least those with boats, want to avoid crashing on a bunch of rocks. If you're a baseball team visiting Anaheim, however, you do want to crash the rocks-- specifically the pile of them beyond the center field fence. The White Sox did plenty of that on Thursday as well, dropping six homers on the Angels, including five off starter Nick Tropeano. Jose Abreu and Daniel Palka each went deep twice, already the third set of Sox teammates to do it this season; Palka teamed with Avisail Garcia on July 3 down at those pesky riverboats in Cincinnati, and Matt Davidson and Tim Anderson of course each went deep twice on Opening Day. The three games with multiple players doing it is the most in a season in White Sox history.

Tropeano ended up being just the second pitcher in Angels history to give up five homers in a game, joining Willie Fraser against the Yankees on August 16, 1988. And the kicker? Both of them won! Starting with Kole Calhoun's leadoff homer, the Angels unleashed 16 hits of their own (though only three homers) and won the slugfest 12-8. Tropeano actually made it into the 7th inning. The Angels and Dodgers are the only teams in MLB history to have multiple pitchers allow five homers and win; the last for any team had been Mat Latos, then of Cincinnati, on May 27, 2012. It was just the second time the White Sox had ever hit six homers in a loss, the other being June 25, 2016, against Toronto (lost 10-8). And Abreu and Palka are only the third teammates in Sox history to hit multiple homers in a loss. Robin Ventura and the Detroit Tigers are in both of the other pairs, once with Frank Thomas on August 21, 1991, and again with Julio Franco on Arpil 24, 1994.

And here's a good spot to mention Francisco Arcia, who may or may not (we're guessing not) be named after Francisco Coronado, the Mexican explorer of the American southwest. Although Coronado didn't quite make it to Anaheim (or Salt Lake City for that matter), Arcia did. And he contributed a homer and four RBIs to that 12-8 barrage on Thursday... in his major-league debut. He's the first player in Angels history with a 4-RBI debut, and the first for any team since the Yankees' Miguel Andujar last June. The last to also homer was Pittsburgh's Josh Bell in July 2016.

Arcia didn't play in Friday's opener with Seattle, which was decided on Calhoun's 10th-inning walkoff homer. Having started Thursday's game in similar fashion, Calhoun became the first player in Angels history to hit a leadoff homer and a walkoff homer in consecutive games, in either order (though shoutout to Darin Erstad who hit both in the same game in 2000). But Arcia returned to the lineup on Saturday and proceeded to mash another three-run homer, plus two doubles, singlehandedly providing the 6-run margin in the Angels' 11-5 victory. Since RBI became an official stat in 1920, only one other player has recorded four of them in each of his first two career games. That's the Cardinals' Joe Cunningham, who also homered in both contests-- June 30, 1954, against the Reds, and July 1 against the Braves. Arcia didn't play in the series finale on Sunday, so at this writing his streak is alive. No one's ever done it in each of his first three games.


Spanning the Globe Life

Admittedly we don't have the constant variety of sport, but we do have constant variety within one.

Last week we brought the heat, specifically tales of triple-digit temperatures at Globe Life Park in Arlington. The Oakland Athletics got the joy of heading there at the start of the week, and in frigid 99-degree conditions on Monday, proceeded to explode for 15 runs on 18 hits, including six doubles and four homers. It was their first game this season with 10 XBH, their first time ever doing it in Texas (and yes, we include Houston here), and only the second time since their departure from Philadelphia in 1954 that seven different players in the same game had multiple hits with at least one of them for extra bases. On May 3, 2000, in Kansas City, Miguel Tejada and (!) Terrence Long led a 20-hit attack as Oakland won that contest 14-5.

Jonathan Lucroy, Stephen Piscotty, and Khris Davis each collected a homer, a double, and two runs scored; no three teammates in Athletics history (1901) had ever done that in the same game. And while Matt Chapman didn't have the double, he did drive in four runs thanks to a three-run homer in Oakland's 6-run 7th. Only one other quartet in team history has posted a line of 2+ runs, 2+ hits, 2+ RBI, and a homer in the same game: Billy McMillon, Jose Guillen, Miguel Tejada, and Ramon Hernandez in Toronto on August 24, 2003.

Tuesday continued the slugfest as Oakland trailed 10-2 after a 6-run 6th by Texas, but somehow mounted an improbable comeback to score eight unanswered runs and send the game to extras as a 10-10 tie. Piscotty's leadoff homer in the 9th was the last of those eight runs; it was his fourth tying or go-ahead homer this season in the 9th or later. The last Oaklander to do that was Matt Stairs, who hit five of them in the 1999 campaign.

Khris Davis then completed the awesomeness with a three-run homer in the top of the 10th for a final of 13-10. The Athletics hadn't trailed by 8 or more so late in a game and come back to win since August 30, 1939, at St Louis. They hadn't scored 13 runs or more in back-to-back games since June of 2000, doing so on the 18th at Kansas City and the 19th against Baltimore. And Oakland's last win by the exact score of 13-10... well, they weren't Oakland then. They weren't even Kansas City. It was June 12, 1949, when the Philadelphia A's beat those same St Louis Browns.

Khris Davis would continue Oakland's amazing trip to the Metroplex with two more homers in Wednesday's game. After hitting the go-ahead three-run shot in the 10th on Tuesday, Davis gave the A's hope in the 7th with another three-run homer that cut a 5-1 deficit to 5-4. After the bullpen held Texas scoreless in the 7th and 8th, Davis came up again with two outs in the top of the 9th and Nick Martini on first after a walk. Of course, two-run homer to turn 4-5 into 6-5, which would ultimately be the final when Blake Treinen struck out the side in the bottom half. Davis thus managed to hit a go-ahead home run in the 9th or later in back-to-back games, something only one other player in Oakland history (1968) has done. Mark McGwire homered in the 16th inning of consecutive games on July 3 (at Toronto) and 4 (at Cleveland) in 1988. Davis hit Wednesday's tater on a 2-2 count, the Athletics' first go-ahead homer when they were down to their final strike since... Khris Davis hit a walkoff grand slam against the Rangers on May 17, 2016. He's the first player in Oakland A's history to do it twice (and we don't have enough pitch counts to go back any further).

And in Thursday's finale of the four-game set, Oakland completed the sweep-- its first in Texas since July 2005-- by collecting four (count 'em!) triples. In 50 years in Oakland, the A's had never done that in a game; their last contest with four three-baggers was their 12th-to-last game in Kansas City, on August 29, 1967, against the Indians. Matt Chapman had two of those three-baggers to become the first Oaklander to do that since Rajai Davis in Detroit on September 9, 2008. The A's had gone the longest of any team without someone having a multi-triple game, an "honor" which now passes to the Braves (Jeff Francoeur in 2009).

Chapman also homered to give the A's a short-lived lead in the 2nd, making him the first Oakland with two triples and a homer since Adam Piatt did it at the Metrodome on April 30, 2000. And thanks to Jurickson Profar of the Rangers also legging out a three-bagger in the losing cause, it was the first game in the history of That Stadium In Arlington (whatever it's called now) where five triples were hit.


Second Voyage

The explorers of old used to set sail without any idea when (or if) they would ever come home. So too do batters set out for first base, then maybe for second, and suddenly they're halfway around the world with no idea if they'll ever come home. That must be even rougher for a pitcher, who's used to being 60 feet away from home, not 127. So this week's salute to doubles is all about #PitchersWhoRake.

Wei-Yin Chen connected for his first career extra-base hit in a highly-unusual Tuesday afternoon game in Miami. That wasn't too unusual, Dan Straily had one for the Marlins a month ago. Zack Wheeler hit one for the Mets later in the evening, but he's got four of them, he's done that before. (And he'll do it again, hold that thought.) But then Junior Guerra comes along and hits two of them in the Brewers' walkoff win over Washington. (He did not, alas, hit the walkoff, although we'll always have The Yovani Gallardo As Pinch Hitter Game.) Only two other Brewers pitchers have ever had multiple doubles in a game: Manny Parra against the Mets on September 2, 2008, and Steve Woodard against the Pirates on May 27, 1998. The four combined set a season high, and although we didn't get there by day's end, it forced us to look up that the last day with five pitcher doubles was way back on September 20, 2003.

Zack Greinke dropped his fourth double of the year in Friday's 6-2 win in San Diego. That's the most by any Diamondbacks pitcher since... Zack Greinke had four last year. He's got nine total with Arizona, tied with Micah Owings (who of course famously had a two-homer game as well) and trailing only Randy Johnson (13) and Dan Haren (18) in team history. But Greinke also hit 16 of the things for other teams, including 11 with the Dodgers. His career total of 25 is the second-most among active pitchers, behind Adam Wainwright's 34. (Yovani Gallardo is third with 21, including that famous walkoff.)

And back to the Mets, Jacob deGrom has apparently decided that since he can't catch a break while pitching, he might as well try hitting instead. On Saturday he connected for a single and a double, which unfortunately was one-third of the Mets' entire hit total. No other "hitter" had more than one and they lost to Pittsburgh 5-0, which is actually their largest shutout loss in the Steel City since August 18, 1985. DeGrom was the first instance of a Mets pitcher having the team's only XBH of a game since Johan Santana hit his only career home run against the Reds on July 6, 2010.

So of course Zack Wheeler duplicates the feat on Sunday. This time it was with Luis Guillorme, recently called up due to the departure of Asdrubal Cabrera, on first base. That meant Wheeler not only had a double, he had an RBI too. He's the first Mets pitcher with any extra-base hit in consecutive starts since Jon Niese did it at the end of 2013. With deGrom, they're the first Mets pitchers with an XBH in consecutive games since Bartolo Colón and Noah Syndegaard each doubled in August 2016.

But that RBI scoring Guillorme? It was the only run of the game. The Mets won 1-0, their first 1-0 win since beating Atlanta on June 25, 2016. The only team to go longer without one is the Blue Jays. And it's the sixth time in Mets history that they've won a 1-0 game with the RBI coming from a pitcher. But the previous such game was way back on September 14, 1977. Nino Espinosa singled home another Luis-- Rosado, also in the 5th inning, at Philadelphia. Of those six games, Wheeler's is the first where the RBI came from an extra-base hit.

Gregory Polanco, while not a pitcher, also hung out at second base a lot on those games with the Mets this weekend. On Saturday he had two doubles, plus two runs scored, and stole a base, the first Pirate with that line since Nate McLouth in Chicago on June 19, 2008. On Sunday he added three singles and stole second base twice, though obviously didn't score a run. Three hits and two steals but zero runs hadn't been done by a Pirate since Rob Mackowiak in Houston on May 4, 2005. But back-to-back games with three hits and at least one steal? Pittsburgh's last to swing that was Tony Womack on July 21 and 22, 1998.

And one more throw-in "doubles" note: The Tigers staged a three-run comeback in Kansas City on Monday when Victor Martinez, Jim Adduci, and James McCann hit three straight two-baggers to hand closer Brandon Maurer a 5-4 loss. It's the first time the Tigers have hit back-to-back-to-back doubles in the 9th inning or later since Jimmy Bloodworth, Dixie Parsons, and Dizzy Trout did it at Comiskey Park on May 9, 1943. (Asterisk: There are about 20% of games from 1943 to 1952 where play-by-play is missing and unsearchable.)



Lewis & Clark & Addison
Sidebar: Why does Lewis always get first billing? Somewhere William Clark is still bitter about that. Although we really did have to look up his first name.

The Cubs entered the 9th inning of Thursday's game with a 6-4 deficit and facing Brad Boxberger of 24 saves this season. Never leave early. Ben Zobrist drew a leadoff walk, and after Javier Baez lined out to center, it was left to rookie David Bote, whose current claim to fame is drawing a game-ending walk against the Reds back on July 8. Well, now he's got a better one. Game-tying two-run homer off Boxberger, and before the Wrigley faithful are done celebrating that, Anthony Rizzo takes the second pitch onto Sheffield Avenue for a 7-6 walkoff.

Rizzo's blast was the Cubs' first-ever walkoff homer against the Diamondbacks, the only remaining NL opponent (including Houston and Milwaukee) against whom they'd never hit one. And the last time the Cubs hit back-to-back homers to tie a game and then walk off was April 16, 2004, when Sammy Sosa and Moises Alou did it against the Reds.


Bottom Of The Bag

⚾ Joey Rickard, Saturday: First Oriole with 3 hits, 3 runs scored, and 5 RBI since... Joey Rickard on May 13 against the Rays. Only other Orioles to do it twice in a season are Albert Belle and Brady Anderson.

⚾ Braves, Monday: First time since at least 1905 (when we run out of easily-accessible linescores) that they scored 12+ runs in a game without scoring 3 in any inning.

⚾ Rougned Odor, Saturday: First player with five hits including an inside-the-park homer since the Padres' Gene Richards at Shea Stadium, July 10, 1982.

⚾ Orioles, Fri-Sun: Fourth streak in franchise history of scoring 11+ runs in three consecutive games. Last was in June 2016. But first time they've done it with all three games against the same opponent.

⚾ Luis Severino, Monday: First Yankee pitcher to give up 11 hits and 7 runs, but still strike out at least 8, since Ron Guidry against the White Sox, July 29, 1983.

⚾ Masahiro Tanaka, Tuesday: Threw 3-hit shutout at Tropicana Field, first since "El Duque" (Orlando Hernandez) on June 22, 1999. With Luis Severino at Houston May 2, first time two different Yankees have done it on the road in same season since Stan Williams and Whitey Ford in 1963.

⚾ Marcell Ozuna, Saturday: First Cardinal to hit a 1st-inning grand slam since... Marcell Ozuna on June 3 against the Pirates. First player in Cardinals history (1882) to hit two in same season.

⚾ Victor Caratini, Tuesday: Became first Cubs batter to play first base, third base, catch, and pitch at any point in same season since Michael "King" Kelly in 1884.

⚾ Tyson Ross and Patrick Corbin, Saturday: Second game in live-ball era where both starting pitchers had two hits and an RBI. The other pair was Tom Glavine and Denny Neagle on July 20, 1994. #PitchersWhoRake

⚾ Mike Zunino, Sunday: First Mariners number-9 hitter to have a multi-run hit in the 1st inning (they scored 7) since Ben Davis against Texas on April 12, 2003.

⚾ Astros, Wednesday: Second time in team history where they had 1 hit but still scored 2 runs. Other was September 3, 2006, against the Mets... and they won (because nine walks kinda helps).

⚾ Chris Devenski, Friday: First pitcher in Astros history to have back-to-back outings where he faced four or more batters and got none of them out. Last in majors was Arizona's Joe Patterson in April 2012.

⚾ Lourdes Gurriel, through Sunday: Currently riding 11-game streak of having multiple hits in every game. Longest streak in the majors since the Reds' Tony Perez from August 8 through 20, 1973.


Did You Know?
Most of us grew up with the story that Ponce de Leon went to Florida searching for the "fountain of youth". We imagine that's why so many older people go there now. (Or the weather. Probably the weather.) But if you were off fighting the "Is Pluto still a planet?" battle, turns out the fountain theory has been debunked as well. Like so many other folks in the past 500 years, he really just wanted money.

Seven-Day Weekend

Every year we briefly consider skipping this week because there's four days off, and only about 45 games to choose from instead of the usual selection of about 100, and maybe there won't really be enough to look up and/or post about. And every year we're wrong. Teams manage to cram seven days' worth of fun and oddities into a three-day weekend's worth of games. So here we are.


Carpenter Hammers

Through the power of Big TV Network™ demanding a Thursday night game to replace the now-abolished Sunday night game heading into the break, combined with the power of Wrigleyville business associations to prohibit Friday night games, we had a scheduling quirk where the first two MLB contests out of the All-Star break were both at Wrigley Field. So before any other team had even seen a pitch this week, the Cubs and Cardinals had compiled 38 runs, 56 hits, and just another 18-5 game the likes of which have been so popular the last couple weeks.

Friday's outburst began early with Matt Carpenter taking Jon Lester for a leadoff homer. Tack on two more Cardinals runs in the 2nd and here's Carpenter again. Bang, 5-0. Lester would allow the first three batters of the 4th to reach before finally getting pulled. After which Anthony Bass promptly gave up back-to-back bases-loaded walks. By the time that's done it's 12-1 and bring on the position players. Victor Caratini became the first Cub in (at least) the live-ball era to play first base and pitch in the same game; Tommy La Stella joined Gary Gaetti in 1999 as the only ones to play third base and pitch, and even right fielder Ian Happ tossed a scoreless 9th. All told it ended up as the first 18-5 game in the majors in nearly eight years, and the previous one was also at Wrigley. The Mets won by that score on September 5, 2010.

It was the first time in (again, at least) the live-ball era that multiple Cubs position players had pitched in the same game, and the only other team to use three was a game that's come up a lot lately. Sal Bando, Jim Gantner, and Buck Martinez all pitched for the Brewers in an 18-8 festival in Kansas City on May 28, 1979. Lester became the first Cubs starter in 12 years to allow a dozen baserunners, eight earned runs, and not get out of the 4th inning. Angel Guzman did that in Pittsburgh on August 28, 2006.

But perhaps we have buried the lead. Or the leadoff, as the case may be. Carpenter continued hammering even after the two homers against Lester. With a double, he was one of those batters who knocked Lester out at the start of the 4th. Two pitchers later, after St Louis batted around in the inning, he finished the scoring with yet another double off James Norwood. And then he tagged Former New Britain Rock Cat Brian Duensing with a three-run homer in the 6th. Count 'em, five extra-base hits before the Cardinals pulled all their starters with a 15-1 lead. No Cards batter in the live-ball era has had 5 XBH in a game, and the only other one to collect 16 total bases was Mark Whiten in his famous four-homer game in 1993.

The last three-homer game by any Cardinal (forget the rest for now) was also at Wrigley Field, by Albert Pujols on May 30, 2010. The team had never had a leadoff hitter go deep three times, and the only one with a 7-RBI game had been Augie Bergamo at the Polo Grounds on July 4, 1945. Bergamo and Carpenter are two of just five Cardinals ever to have five hits and drive in seven; the others are all in the Hall of Fame. Enos Slaughter did it on August 11, 1946; before Bergamo came Chick Hafey in 1931 and Jim Bottomley in 1924. And the last leadoff batter for any team to have both 3 HR and 7 RBI was Seattle's Mickey Brantley against Cleveland (the team for which his son now plays) on September 14, 1987.

And if it feels like Carpenter has done this before, it's because he has. On June 26 against Cleveland he had another five-hit game that included a pair of homers. Although multiple five-hit games has happened a few times, five hits with multiple home runs hasn't. Carpenter is the first player in franchise history (to 1882) to do it twice in a season.

By the way, in that lone Thursday game, Anthony Rizzo hit a leadoff double as the first Cubs batter after the break. As always, we curiously went looking for the last Cub to do that. And it was Ben Zobrist last year. The prior team to have its first batter out of the All-Star break hit a leadoff double was the Royals of 2009 (David DeJesus) and 2010 (Scott Podsednik).


Wrigley's Doublemint

The two rivals then played a doubleheader on Saturday to make up for an April rainout (originally we thought the Thursday game was the makeup, but our mistake). The day game was an easy 7-2 win for the Cubs; while the Cardinals managed just two hits, one of those was a home run by Matt Carpenter again. Going back to before the break, it was his fifth straight contest with a dinger, tying the Cardinals' record. The most recent among the others to homer in five straight was Ryan Ludwick in August 2008. And the last time the Cardinals had 18+ hits in one game and no more than two in the next was in May 1991; the last time it happened against the same opponent was at Candlestick Park on May 17 and 18, 1975.

The Cardinals got that other run thanks largely to six walks issued by Tyler Chatwood, who also had a game on April 17-- also against the Cardinals-- where he allowed only one hit but gave out a half-dozen free passes. The only other Cubs pitcher in the live-ball era with two such games is Johnny Klippstein in the 1950s, and the last one to get the win (as Chatwood did) was Steve Trachsel in 1998. And that wasn't just any win. It was Game 163 against the Giants after the two teams landed on an exact tie at 89-73 for the NL Wild Card that season.

Back on Saturday, St Louis staged a late comeback in the night game, getting three runs in the 9th on doubles by Paul DeJong and Tommy Pham to win 6-3. But who gets double-switched into the pitcher's spot in the 6th inning except Matt Carpenter. And who proceeds to homer again in his first plate appearance. That sixth straight game gives him sole possession of the Cardinals record for a single season, though Mark McGwire did homer in the last two games of 1997 and the first four of 1998. He's the first Cardinal to homer in both games of a doubleheader since Jedd Gyorko at Citi Field in 2016 (we were there!), and the first at Wrigley since Jim Edmonds on September 2, 2003.

Despite the loss, Anthony Rizzo had four hits in the night game after hitting a leadoff triple and walking three times in the day game. He became the first Cub to lead off both halves of a doubleheader with base hits since Brian McRae doubled and singled against San Diego on August 10, 1995. And the team's last hitter to reach base four times in both games? That's Ryne Sandberg, also against the Cardinals, on September 19, 1992.

Rizzo would promptly get two hits, a walk, and be plunked by a pitch in Sunday's series finale. Although Kris Bryant had a streak of three games last August where he reached base four times in each, the Cubs' last leadoff hitter to do it was none other than Brian McRae again. That happened in each of a three-game set against Houston from August 16 to 18, 1996.


Globe-al Warming

The Indians and Rangers (well, most of them) got to spend four days in the air conditioning this week, only to venture out again into one of the hottest weeks on record, even for north Texas. Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport touched 108° on Thursday and Friday and then 109° on both Saturday and Sunday-- all records for the date-- and the official temperature on Friday night's boxscore from Globe Life Park was listed as 107°. With the asterisk that there are a few games missing in the early 1990s, it was the warmest known first pitch in Arlington since they wrote down 109° against Toronto on August 26, 1988. That, of course, was a 5-1 win, Paul Kilgus took a shutout into the 9th, and they got out of there in 2 hours 40 minutes.

Friday? Nnnnnope. Because of course let's not only rack up 34 total hits and use 15 pitchers, let's have it go extra innings. Starters Trevor Bauer and Martin Perez also got over 100-- pitches, that is, both gave up nine hits, and Perez didn't get out of the 6th. (Bauer didn't even make it to the 6th.) It took exactly 3 hours to hit the 7th-inning stretch, after which Joey Gallo clobbers a two-run homer to take the Cleveland lead down to 7-6. We hit the bottom of the 9th at the 3:52 mark, and all the Rangers need to do is not score exactly two runs. Could be 0, could be 6, just any number but 2 (as we like to say).

Nnnnnope. With two outs no less, Robinson Chirinos and Joey Gallo went yard on back-to-back pitches to make it 8-7 and then 8-8, and then Willie Calhoun struck out to deny us any relief. Only three times in Rangers/Senators history have they hit back-to-back homers to tie the game with two outs in the 9th (obviously the first one can't tie, but could be a multi-run job, then the second one has to be a solo shot down by 1). Rafael Palmeiro and Todd Zeile did it on August 14, 1999, against the White Sox, also on consecutive pitches; and in the expansion Senators' first season, Dale Long and Willie Tasby also hit them against the White Sox (June 9, 1961); while we don't know if they were on back-to-back pitches, the Chicago Tribune does tell us that pitcher Turk Lown "got a public berating along with [c]atcher Sherm Lollar at the mound", some of it likely caught by "the prying eyes of WGN-TV". Gallo, for his part, is the second player in team history with a multi-homer game that included a tying shot with two outs in the 9th. Alfonso Soriano achieved the same feat at Oakland on September 13, 2004, but Texas went on to lose that game in extras as well.

The Rangers loaded the bases again in the 10th but Zach McAllister got a force at home and two strikeouts to send us onward. Finally Jose Ramirez's leadoff double in the 11th would prove to be enough for the Indians' first extra-inning win in Arlington since April 30, 1995 (7-6); Calhoun grounded out again to end the 11th and finally get everyone off the field after an unhealthy 4 hours 48 minutes outside. In the population of known weather data, it was the highest combination of heat and time ever recorded; there have been 4½-hour games as hot as 101°, but nothing approaching 4:48 at 107°. The previous honor probably goes to another Arlington game, against the Angels on August 1, 2012, an 11-10 extra-inning walkoff that took 4:01 and was listed at 105°. (They played another 4-hour game at 102° the following night.) When Friday's game finally ended at 11:56 pm, it was still 92°.


Cool It Now

Saturday's morning low got to a nice chilly 81° at DFW, but unfortunately the baseball game was scheduled for 7 pm again. Which meant another sweltering 107° gametime temperature for Bartolo Colón, 45 years old and listed at 285 pounds, to try and deal with. It, um, wasn't great.

Colón and Carlos Carrasco matched zeroes for the first four innings, but in the 5th, the Indians sent seven batters to the plate against Bartolo and six of them got hits, three of them doubles. The damage might have been worse except that one of those batters, Jose Ramirez, got caught in a rundown between second and third. Bartolo exited the game having allowed eight hits and five runs, but still with a few innings left for the Rangers to try and get back in it. Insert hyphen here.

No, really, insert hyphen here. That's Austin Bibens-Dirkx, the third hyphenated player in major-league history, and let's just say he got punctuated. Yonder Alonso sent his second pitch into the right-field seats to complete the Indians' 6-run inning. Tyler Naquin hit a two-run dinger in the 6th. Adrian Beltre did likewise in the 7th. Now it's 10-2 and no one else wants to go out in the heat, so take one for the team. Bibens-Dirkx would stay out there all the way until the 9th, when five straight hits (and still four more runs) finally coaxed Alex Claudio out of the air conditioning long enough to get the last out of the game. Final damage, 16-3, the first loss by that exact score in Rangers/Senators history, and the first win for Cleveland since beating Kansas City on May 19, 1998.

But wait, if the Indians scored 16 and Bartolo only gave up 5, well that means.... Mm-hmm. Austin's line: 4 IP, 13 hits, eleven runs all earned, zero strikeouts. Only one other reliever in team history had done the 13 hits; that was Steve Comer against the Orioles on August 22, 1982, and it took him seven innings. Only one other pitcher in team history had surrendered 11 runs while striking out zero, and that was in a start! Derek Holland couldn't get out of the 3rd inning against Toronto on May 5, 2016. And the combination of 13 hits and 11 earned runs hadn't been done by any reliever, for any team, since Brooklyn's Tommy Warren entered an 11-7 game at the Polo Grounds on April 30, 1944, and turned it into a 26-8 final after an eight-run 8th. That game still holds the Giants' modern (1900) record for most runs scored, and if you're saying, hey, what about The Vin Mazzaro Game from a few years back?, well, yes, he did give up 14 runs-- but "only" 11 hits (the other three runs reached via walks).

The Indians learned the hard way (they probably knew this already) that you can't bank those runs, although we have pondered that as an interesting idea to "increase offense". In Sunday's finale, played in frigid 102° conditions, they got shut out 5-0 behind a strong outing from Yovani Gallardo. It was the first time Cleveland had scored 16 runs in one game, and 0 in the next, since September 17 and 18, 1979, when they beat the Yankees 16-3 and then lost 2-0.



We totally drew a blank on who had done the song that is also the title of this post. So we'll give you a chance to try and think of it also before clicking. It's not all that old either. Intermission!



Life's Rich Tapia-stry

Meanwhile, in Arizona this weekend, it even got too hot for the local reptiles, as the Diamondbacks-- who are known for leaving the roof open despite temperatures of 100° or more-- decided to close it for their series with Colorado. No worries, it got figuratively torn off again as the teams played Friday's opener to a nice little 11-10 finish with 26 combined hits, another game time over four hours, and the Diamondbacks stranding the tying run at third. Nolan Arenado chipped in a pair of two-run dingers, opening the scoring in the 1st and then tying the game at 5-5 in the 5th. He would end up with three runs scored, three hits, and four runs driven in, the first Rockies hitter to do that away from Coors Field since... Nolan Arenado in Milwaukee on April 6, 2015. Only two other players in team history have had multiple such games on the road, Larry Walker (five) and Vinny Castilla (three).

The big blow, however, would come in the top of the 7th when Archie Bradley was tasked with holding an 8-5 Arizona lead. Bradley faced eight batters (which should right away tell you something). He got two of them out. The other six (three hits, three walks) all scored, four of them on a grand slam by Raimel Tapia that gave Colorado the lead for good at 9-8. That was Tapia's only at-bat of the game; he was summoned as a pinch hitter for reliever Scott Oberg. And thus his tater was just the third go-ahead, pinch-hit grand slam in Rockies history. Not shockingly, the others were both at Coors: Mark Sweeney hit one against the Giants on September 7, 2004; and Jamey Carroll launched one against the Cubs on August 11, 2007. That same week (August 14, 2007) was the last time a D'backs reliever gave up 6+ runs while getting no more than two outs as Bradley did; Joe Kennedy pulled that off against the Marlins.

But let us not overlook the multi-hit games on the losing side of the ledger; leadoff batter David Peralta went 4-for-5 and scored three times, while two spots down, A.J. Pollock recorded five hits and also scored three of Arizona's 10 runs. Only two other Diamondbacks have collected five hits in a loss, and both did it at Petco Park. They were Jean Segura on August 19, 2016, and Justin Upton on September 16, 2009. Together Pollock and Peralta were the first teammates in Diamondbacks history to each have four hits and three runs scored in a loss. The last pair to do it for any team was Boston's Pedro Ciriaco and Dustin Pedroia, in a 14-13 slugfest with the Angels on August 23, 2012.

The Rockies would take a lower-scoring affair from the D'backs on Saturday, winning 6-5 on Tom Murphy's pinch-hit homer in the top of the 8th. Combined with Tapia's slam on Friday, it marked the first time in Rockies history that they had hit pinch-hit, go-ahead homers in any inning of consecutive games. Heck, it's the first time they've even hit two in the same month.


Halo Happenings

Over in Anaheim, where they listed a gametime temperature of 108° for the Freeway Series a couple weeks back, we were treated to the "fun" that is the AL West over the weekend. While the Astros were scooping up runs in the first three innings against Tyler Skaggs on Friday, all Dallas Keuchel was doing was retiring Angels batters. In order. Nine before a walk to David Fletcher. Then 11 more. With two outs in the 7th Justin Upton hits a ball just off the glove of a leaping Marwin Gonzalez at short, it goes as an infield single but both broadcast crews describe it as "questionable". Finally Ian Kinsler shoots one to left to start the 8th inning and official scorer Ed Munson has no worries. The Angels would finish with only those two hits, though Kinsler eventually did score a run on a sacrifice fly. The Angels were also held to two hits by Seattle on the Wednesday before the All-Star break, the first time it's happened twice in a 10-day span since May of 2005. And they hadn't repeated the "feat" at home that quickly since September 19 and 27 of 1986, the earlier game in that pair being Joe Cowley's no-hitter for the White Sox. Only once before in team history had the Angels had just three baserunners (the two hits plus Fletcher's walk), no extra-base hits, but still somehow scored a run; the other game was September 28, 1968, also against the White Sox... and they won.

Although Ian Kinsler's infield single got the no-hitter out of the way in the 2nd inning on Saturday, the Angels offense didn't fare much better against Justin Verlander. Eleven Angels batters struck out against him-- all of them swinging-- and he departed after the 6th inning having not allowed a run. Verlander has posted that 11-K, 0-run line twice this season, but so have Gerrit Cole (three times) and Charlie Morton. The total of six starts with 11+ strikeouts and no runs allowed (any number of innings) is the most in Astros history, topping the five by Nolan Ryan, Mike Scott, and Jim Deshaies in 1987.

The Angels would go on to drop a 7-0 decision, their worst shutout loss ever against Houston, with George Springer's grand slam in the 6th being the final nail in the coffin. Springer became just the second Astros batter ever to hit a slam in Anaheim, joining Chris Carter (off Hector Santiago) on July 5, 2014. His career total of five slams now trails only Carlos Lee (seven), Bob Aspromonte (six), and Jeff Bagwell (six) in the Houston record book. And the Astros scored those seven runs on only five hits, thanks largely to an eight-pack of walks issued by Angels pitchers. Houston's last "7 on 5" game was June 27, 2002, against Arizona; they've won all five games in team history where they've done it.

But have we mentioned you can't save those runs? Works the other way too. After getting two-hit on Friday and shut out on Saturday, the Angels exploded for 14 runs in Sunday's finale including a seven-run 7th, their first (exactly) since August 28, 2009. The 14-5 win was the first by that exact count in Angels history, and Houston's first loss since June 22, 1994, at Coors Field Mile High Stadium. The Angels had not been shut out in one game, and then dropped 14 runs on the same opponent in the next game, since doing it to the eventual world-champion Minnesota Twins on April 12 and 13, 1991 (0-6 and 15-9).

Sunday's game was another one of those group efforts, but David Fletcher had three hits, three runs scored, and two RBIs out of the 9-hole, which is always interesting. Martin Maldonado also did that on May 2 against the Orioles; it's just the second time in Angels history that two players have posted that line in the same season. The other pair was Dave Skaggs and Tom Donohue in 1990.

And while he was not out there for that big 7th inning, Lance McCullers staked the Angels to an early lead by issuing five walks and throwing a wild pitch en route to five earned runs. Those four days off last week apparently didn't help, because McCullers did the same thing in his last start on July 11 (except it was two wild pitches!). That game was the first time any Astros pitcher had done it since... Lance McCullers three months earlier against the Twins. He's the first hurler in Astros history with five runs, five walks, and at least one wild pitch in consecutive outings, and the first ever to do it thrice in a season.


Take It To The Bridge

Up the coast, the Bay Bridge series was brewing again over the weekend, this time on the east end. Friday's 5-1 snoozefest was marked by peak #bullpenning; the Athletics had four consecutive relievers face either one or two batters each in trying to get the last four outs of the game (in a loss!). That's only happened three times in the Athletics' post-Philadelphia history, and the other two games were in September.

Saturday, however, was a slightly different affair, with Madison Bumgarner staking Oakland to an early lead by walking six batters, including three in a row before being pulled in the 5th. He became the first Giants pitcher to allow only two hits, but give out six free passes, since Barry Zito did it against the Marlins on May 2, 2012. Combined with Tyler Chatwood's game mentioned earlier, it was the first day on which two pitchers had done that (≤ 2 H, 6+ BB) since April 30, 2011, and one of them was a Giant as well. Jonathan Sanchez paired with the Royals' Sean O'Sullivan on a day when their offenses bailed out both of them and the team went on to win.

The Giants on Saturday, however, did not go on to win. They did get MadBum off the hook with a replay-upheld Hunter Pence double in the top of the 9th, after Alen Hanson would otherwise have struck out to end the game but reached on a wild pitch. Ultimately, though, it was Jonathan Lucroy's walkoff single in the 11th-- the third consecutive hit off Will Smith, which writes itself-- to give the A's their fourth walkoff win ever against those West Bay types. Marco Scutaro (June 26, 2004) hit the only other single, and the only other one in extras, while Derek Norris (June 24, 2012) and Olmedo Saenz (July 15, 1999) each launched three-run homers.

As it turns out, Lucroy also had a walkoff single in the 11th inning to beat the Angels back on June 17. The last Oaklander with multiple walkoff singles in the 11th or later in the same season was Scott Hatteberg in 2003. And the only other one with any walkoff against two different fellow California teams is the aforementioned Marco Scutaro; after beating the Giants in '04, he also had walkoffs against Anaheim in both '05 and '06.

"Did someone say walkoff single?" Why, yes, Matt Chapman, someone did. You might remember scoring that winning run in the 11th on Saturday. But aside from maybe Sid Bream and Matt Holliday, the runner who scores isn't usually the one who gets the attention. So naturally, after another back-and-forth game on Sunday, with Andrew McCutchen and Khris Davis trading solo homers in the 8th, it was bound to be Chapman who came to the plate in the bottom of the 10th with Marcus Semien on second. Brandon Crawford charges but can't handle a weird hop, the ball skips off his glove behind second base, and Semien scores another walkoff. At this writing it's still scored an infield single with an RBI for Chapman, making him the first Oaklander to score a walkoff run in extras one game, and then drive it in the following game, since Frank Menechino did that against the Yankees on May 15 and 16, 2001. Oakland had not won consecutive extra-inning games in walkoff fashion since beating the Orioles and Angels on April 28 and 29, 2013, and the last time it was against the same opponent was the White Sox on June 1 and 2, 2004 (Bobby Kielty and Mark Kotsay both homered).

Of course, the game probably wouldn't have gone to extras without four home runs from Davis and Matt Olson. They became the first A's teammates to each have a multi-homer game at the cavernous Oakland Coliseum since Randy Velarde and John Jaha did it in an 11-10 win over Cleveland on August 24, 1999.


Bottom Of The Bag

⚾ Red Sox, Friday: First 1-0 win where the run came in the 1st inning since June 7, 2007, at Oakland. Otherwise known as The Julio Lugo Game, where his error stood between Curt Schilling and a perfect game until Shannon Stewart broke it up in the 9th.

⚾ Derek Dietrich, Friday: First leadoff batter in Marlins history not named Hanley Ramirez to have 2 HR and 4 RBI in a game. (Hanley did it twice, more recently on June 8, 2008.)

⚾ Ronald Acuña & Juan Soto, Friday: First opposing players in live-ball era, both under the age of 21, to homer in same game. All other times two players have done it, they were teammates; most recent pair was Mike Anderson and Greg Luzinski for the Phillies on September 28, 1971.

⚾ Chasen Shreve, Saturday: First Yankee to get a 1-inning save while facing only two batters (retired an inherited runner on a double play) since Mariano Rivera at Oakland on August 2, 2003.

⚾ Clayton Kershaw, Saturday: Eighth time in career allowing a home run, a triple, and a double in the same game. But Brewers are first opponent among those eight to hit all of them in the same inning.

⚾ Red Sox, Saturday: First time this season being shut out by 4 or more runs. Mysteriously, the only team that hasn't had it happen yet is the Twins.

⚾ Matt Harvey, Sunday: First Reds pitcher to get tagged for eight runs and four homers since Brandon Claussen at Milwaukee, April 22, 2006. First to do it at home since one Joey Jay at (!) Crosley Field on July 20, 1961.

⚾ Daniel Robertson, Sunday: First walkoff grand slam (pinch-hit or otherwise) in Rays history. Since the Rockies got their first one in 2009, had been only one of the 30 active franchises to never hit one.

⚾ Drew Butera, Sunday: First go-ahead inside-the-park homer for Royals in the 8th inning or later since Brian McRae (there he is again!) at Toronto, July 17, 1993.

⚾ Colin Moran (Fri), Josh Bell (Sat), Corey Dickerson (Sun): First time Pirates have had a player with four hits in three consecutive games since August 11 (Willie Stargell vs SD), 12 (Al Oliver at CIN), and 13 (Richie Hebner and Richie Zisk) of 1974.

Gimme A Break

Whether that phrase reminds you of the Kit-Kat jingle, or the early '80s Nell Carter TV show, or just the state of exasperated disbelief that you might have gotten from looking at the scoreboard this week, we're also going to use it as a lead-in to having three days off. (There will be no nuggets about Celebrity Softball. We apologize for the inconv-- no we don't.)


Nineteen, Nineteen, Nineteen Eighty-Five

It seems like there are way too many times when we post something on Sunday, and a couple teams read it on Monday and think, hey, that's a neat idea, and then they go off and do it a couple days later. (Dare to dream.) So remember last week when the Phillies scored 17 and then the Dodgers scored 17 and then the Red Sox scored 15 and then the Nationals scored 18 and then the Diamondbacks said that's enough out of y'all and dropped a 20?

Reds starter Tyler Mahle and his bullpen friends got together and said, hey, there's a history involving our team and the number 19, what say we give up 19 runs and see if the offense can still win the game somehow? (We're sure they didn't actually do this.) Mahle did his part, giving up three in the 1st and then four in the 3rd on four straight singles and an error. Enter Tanner Rainey who lets in five more, including Jose Ramirez's second homer already. Rainey then gives up four more runs to start the 4th, and before much longer the Indians are up 17-0. The Reds' offense did get them four runs, but by the end of this mess we're left with the first 19-4 score (either direction) in Indians history, and the second in the Reds; they had another such loss, to Brooklyn on May 21, 1890. Since Jacobs Field opened in 1994, the Indians have hit 19 just three times there, once on July 4, 2006, against the Yankees (19-1), and in a record-setting 20-11 jamboree against the Rays on May 7, 1999.

Mahle and Rainey became the third Reds teammates in the live-ball era to each allow seven runs while getting no more than seven outs. Michael Lorenzen and Dylan Axelrod did it at Coors Field on June 26, 2015; and none other than Tom Seaver and Frank Pastore had not-so-good days against the Dodgers on May 25, 1979. Rainey took it one step further, giving up eight runs while getting just two outs. Mike Matthews (June 27, 2004, vs Pirates) was the last Cincinnati pitcher to pull that off, and the last in a road game was David Weathers in San Francisco (where they have some Rainey Weathers, see what we did there) on June 1, 1998.

Jose Ramirez may have had those two early homers and driven in five, but unlike some other outbursts, this was all up and down the order. Seven different Clevelanders finished with multiple hits and multiple RBIs, the first time the Indians have done that since July 29, 1928, in a 24-6 blowout of the Yankees (with no home runs because 1928).

And the last time one Ohio team dropped 19+ on another Ohio team? That would be in the 19th century, a time when the state had as many as four teams at once (Columbus and Toledo). This one was in reverse-- a 19-3 win by the same Cincinnati Reds over the NL's Cleveland Spiders. Yes, those Cleveland Spiders; this was loss #106 on their way to 134. They went 1-28 after this.

We don't have any Ohio newspapers in our go-to list, but by this time, most big dailies at least carried wire stories. This one comes from The Sun of New York, September 6, 1899 (via Library of Congress). Their header (intentionally cut off) has the score as 9-3. Guess they didn't believe it either.

Back Home Again In Colorado

We tried to find a way to tie the Ohio theme into the number 19, but alas the Buckeye State was the 17th admitted to the union. (Trivia time: What actually is 19? It's nearby. And don't you dare say Pennsylvania.) But as "westward expansion" continued and modern transportation finally conquered the Rocky Mountains, Colorado became state number 38. So if you were going to have a pair of 19's on the same day, the Colorado capital is a perfect spot for the other one.

The Rockies made a neat puzzle out of rearranging the big green cards that are typical of hand-operated scoreboards, putting the 5 under column 1, the 1 under 5, the 4 under 2, the 6 under 4, let's leave the 3 where it is, and hmm... this 2, uh, here Diamondbacks, you do whatever you want with that. Maybe put it under the "Total" column. As you no doubt know by now, we thus ended up with the second 19-2 score in either team's history, the first being June 18, 2000, in both cases-- because it was against each other! Mike Lansing hit for the cycle as part of a 23-hit attack that day at Coors.

There were no cycles on Wednesday, but Charlie Blackmon and DJ LeMahieu each went for three hits and scored four times, the third set of teammates in Rockies history to do that. Troy Tulowizki and Kaz Matsui did so against the Brewers in another 19-run outburst on August 8, 2007; and Todd Helton teamed with Ronnie Belliard against the Dodgers on May 29, 2003. Add in Carlos Gonzalez's four runs scored, and they're the first trio of Rockies ever to cross the plate four times in the same game. The Astros' group of George Springer, Carlos Correa, and Colby Rasmus had been the last in the majors, on the final weekend of the 2015 campaign.

Gonzalez and Ian Desmond became the eighth pair of teammates in Rockies history to each have 5 RBI in a game (CarGo and Ramon Hernandez did it against the Mets in April 2012), and even pitcher German Marquez got in on the fun, recording two hits, driving in two runs, and later scoring two runs. Of the six previous Rockies pitchers with that line, Mike Hampton (all in 2001) had been the most recent three. (Brian Bohanon twice, plus Roger Bailey in 1997.)

With the score 14-1, we have already reached "position player pitching" mode in the bottom of the 4th inning as Daniel Descalso made the earliest pitching appearance by a non-pitcher (excluding the conversion experiments such as Christian Bethancourt last year) since Sal Bando took the mound for the Brewers in the 4th on August 29, 1979, against the Royals and turned a 13-4 blowout into a 17-4 blowout. (Buck Martinez also made his only career pitching appearance in that game.) It wasn't a huge stretch for Descalso, however; he'd appeared in four other MLB games, including the end of an 8-0 shutout by Houston on May 4, and had been the number-1 starter on his high-school team for three seasons. But one of those two hits that Rockies pitcher German Marquez had? Mm-hmm, dinger. The previous home run hit by a pitcher off a position player (it's supposed to be the other way around) was on June 23, 1986, when Mike LaCoss of the Giants took Padres left fielder Dane Iorg deep in an 18-1 masterpiece.

First baseman Alex Avila ended up pitching the last two innings (and only allowing one hit!), making him and Descalso the first pair of position players to throw 2+ in the same game since the O'Brien brothers (Johnny and Eddie) did so for the Pirates on July 31, 1956. And even that's somewhat questionable; Johnny had appeared in four other games over the past month (though most were blowouts) and would appear in three more in August, almost like an audition to see if he could transform into a pitcher. (He didn't.) And by replacing Avila at first base, Descalso became just the second player in the live-ball era to play second, first, and pitch in the same game (with those all-nine-positions stunts excluded, of course). Nick Franklin of the Rays did it in a 16-4 blowout by the Nationals on June 16, 2015.

The Diamondbacks, of course, were on the opposite end of that 20-run game from last Saturday; they became the first squad to score 19+ and allow 19+ in the same season since the 2000 Mariners. And if you're wondering (and, really, would you be here if you weren't?), the last time two teams scored at least 19 runs on the same day was September 30, 2000, when the AL West apparently decided to double its season output on the last weekend. That's the day those Mariners had their "score 19" game, dropping 21 in Anaheim while the Athletics were busy hanging a 23 on Texas. But the last time two teams scored exactly 19 runs on the same day. That's back in the 19th century again: August 15, 1889. And Cleveland (the Spiders) was one of them.

(Trivia answer: Bonus hint in the section header. Indiana (December 11, 1816).)


Heinz 57 And French-Fried Potatoes

So if Colorado is 38, what do we do when we suddenly need to get to 57? If you were to turn the District of Columbia and all the inhabited U.S. territories into states, that would make 56. We say the Rays need to figure that out (lop off that panhandle or something), because guess who dropped 19 more in Minnesota on Saturday. (Maybe Minnesota could split off that little part that you can't get to except through Canada.)

The game was actually a fairly calm 6-4 affair through the 6th inning, the Twins had just taken the lead against reliever Adam Kolarek, Mallex Smith walks to lead off the 7th (it always starts with a walk, as they say), and pandemonium ensues. Zach Duke allows two inherited runs (blowing the save) plus three of his own and now it's 9-6. Matt Belisle, pitch the 8th. Okay, six hits, five more runs, a homer by C.J. Cron, and only escaped the inning when Joey Wendle was out stretching at second. Cue the position player. That would be 2B Willians Astudillo, two weeks removed from his MLB debut, who did pitch in one game in the minors, but we have no idea what other pitching experience he has (if any). We do know that his major-league experience consists of giving up five more runs, including a homer to Carlos Gomez, to make our final score 19-6. The Rays became the first team with three 5-run innings in a game since the Mets did it in an 18-5 win at Wrigley on September 5, 2010, and the first with three consecutive 5-run frames since the Giants did that in Philadelphia on July 14, 1991. The last team to score 15 or more runs from the 7th inning onward was the Rangers in what will forever be "The 30-3 Game" in Baltimore on July 22, 2007 (whose linescore ended 0-10-6). Astudillo, for his part, is the first Twins/Senators position player to give up five runs since infielder Ralph "Red" Kress did it in Boston on July 3, 1935.

Combined with our 19-2 and 19-4 from Wednesday, plus the Diamondbacks scoring 20 the previous Saturday, it's the first time in the live-ball era that four teams have reached 19 runs in an eight-day span. The previous set of those scores occurred from May 11 to 15, 1911, when the Phillies (twice), the White Sox, and the Giants all did it (two of them breaking 20). And the only other time that exact scores of 19-2, 19-4, and 19-6 all happened in the same season (much less a week!) was in 1890, a year that also featured the breakaway Players League (where two of those finals were recorded).

Saturday's game, of course, was quite the turnaround from Friday when the Twins made short work of Nathan Eovaldi and withstood a Rays comeback attempt for an 11-8 win. Eovaldi gave up 11 baserunners and eight of them scored; only four pitchers in Tampa Bay history have done that without finishing the 3rd inning. The others on that dubious list are Alex Cobb (2012), Seth McClung (2006), and Tanyon Sturtze (2002). Joe Mauer, back to the top of the order after various experiments elsewhere in the lineup, chipped in four RBIs, the first Twins leadoff batter to do so since... Joe Mauer on June 29 against the Cubs. The last Minnesota leadoff batter with two such games so close together was Jacque Jones, who did it seven days apart in 2002.

And by the end of Friday's contest, rookie Jake Cave had explored all the bases, collecting a single, double, triple, and chipping in two RBIs as well. Mauer was also the last Twins batter to do that, in Cleveland on August 3, 2016. But the last with that line batting 8th (as Cave was) or 9th was Carlos Gomez against the White Sox on August 25, 2008.


You'll Never Walk Off Alone

The Marlins trailed the Brewers 2-1 going to the 7th inning on Monday, but wasted no time welcoming reliever Josh Hader to the game. You might remember Hader as that pitcher from early in the season who would pitch two or three innings and strike out seven every time. At the end of May he was still averaging two strikeouts per inning (which has never been done over a full season; only Aroldis Chapman and Craig Kimbrel have even approached it). And Hader had allowed just two home runs in 29 appearances.

You can double one of those numbers, and it's not the strikeouts. Starlin Castro fouled off six pitches before finally connecting for the tying homer to start the inning. Brian Anderson promptly deposited the very next pitch to an empty seat in center for the lead. Only twice before in Marlins history had they hit a tying homer and a go-ahead homer on back-to-back pitches in the 7th or later; Dan Uggla and Cody Ross did it against the Cubs in 2009, while Mike Lowell and Kevin Millar were the "power couple" against the Jays in 2000.

Naturally that 3-2 lead evaporated in the next inning when Lorenzo Cain hit a leadoff single, stole second, and beat a play at the plate with two outs. So after two more innings of nothing happening, Miguel Rojas was ruled by replay to have been hit with a pitch in the bottom of the 10th. The door is open slightly. Cameron Maybin drew a four-pitch walk, after which the Marlins pulled off the first extra-inning double steal in team history. Bryan Holaday then singled in the winning run. Stop us if you've heard this one, because the Marlins also walked off last Monday when Yadiel Rivera singled in the 10th against the Rays. Since we bothered to check, this could be a promotional idea, because it's the first time in team history they've walked off on consecutive Mondays.

But at the same time, over at Tropicana Field, the Rays and Tigers were playing some back-and-forth ball as well. With a 7-3 lead, Jaime Schultz faced three Tigers. One got a hit. One got hit. One walked. All three scored. Jeff Ridgway in September 2007 had been the only pitcher in Rays history to pull off that particular set of outcomes to three batters. Diego Castillo then blew the save on a Jose Iglesias double.

But C.J. Cron and Joey Wendle both doubled in the bottom of the 7th to retake a 9-7 lead. That also didn't last; Jake Bauers made an ill-advised throw trying to end the inning on a Mikie Mahtook grounder, and we're back to 9-9. And finally in the bottom of the 10th the Rays break through as well. Kevin Kiermaier hit the eighth extra-inning triple in team history (previous by Logan Forsythe, June 15, 2016). And when Daniel Robertson singled him home two batters later, we had-- within the span of 21 minutes-- just the second time that both Florida teams had walked off on the same day. The other was August 13, 2003, when Mike Mordecai homered against the Dodgers and Travis Lee doubled home Rays great Rocco Baldelli to beat the Orioles.

For the Tigers, it was the first time they'd ever scored nine runs at Tropicana Field and lost. And to their credit, they scored those nine runs with no hits above a double. Detroit hadn't mustered that kind of "small ball" offense since Opening Day against the Pirates. Except they lost that game too, 13-10. The last season where the Tigers pulled this off twice (scored 9+ with no triples or homers, but still lost) was 1926.

And as for the Marlins, they walked off again on Wednesday when Starlin Castro singled in the bottom of the 12th. That was the first time they'd had two extra-inning walkoffs in the same series since Gaby Sanchez and Hanley Ramirez hit them against Houston in April 2012.


Wanna Split A Cheesesteak?

As noted in the lead to last week's post, the Phillies were involved in one of the longest doubleheaders in major-league history, and one which, 25 years later, is still the latest (4:40 am local time) that a game has ever ended. And having just posted about that game on Sunday night, it was fresh in our minds on Monday when the Phillies played another doubleheader, this time with the Mets, and the first game was tied after nine innings. Hmm, how long might this take? It was still only 7:30 pm, and it wasn't raining, but you still never know. (At least for now. We'll save thoughts on the minor-league tiebreaker rule for another day. Or even a "hitting contest".)

Fortunately it really didn't take long. After Tim Peterson escaped from two leadoff hits to start the 10th, the Phillies summoned Victor Arano to, well, not give up a walkoff homer. And the Mets summoned pinch hitter Wilmer Flores to, well, at least get on base. Wilmer actually thought he had, claiming to have been hit by the fourth pitch of the at-bat, causing a delay for a review, but ultimately having it called Ball 3 that missed him. Hmmph. The Mets universe is nothing if not ironic, though, so on the very next pitch-- yeah, walkoff homer. It was the 10th walkoff anything of Flores's career, the most in Mets history (breaking a tie with David Wright), and also his fifth walkoff hit in extra innings, also setting a Mets record (Ron Hodges and Kevin McReynolds had four). And Arano became the first Phillies pitcher to give up a walkoff dinger to the first batter he faced since Jose Contreras served it to then-National Adam Dunn on September 28, 2010.

The nightcap would be 3-0 Phillies after Aaron Nola broke up the no-hitter with a bases-loaded double because there has to be something Mets-ian in here. The last Phillies pitcher with a three-run double (or triple, though there haven't been any) was Roy Halladay against the Reds on August 30, 2011. That remained the visitors' only hit until an inconsequential infield single by Carlos Santana in the 9th. Tommy Hunter, having already worked the 8th and gotten five outs, gives up an RBI double to our buddy Wilmer Flores to break up the shutout. Michael Conforto walks. First and third with the Mets down by two. Pinch hitting this time, Devin Mesoraco. And we might not know what's in Gabe Kapler's head at this point, but in a move that is going to result in either redemption or history (but a #Kernel either way!), let's go retrieve Victor Arano again. I mean, he only threw five pitches in the first game, why not.

Arano threw five pitches again. Mesoraco swung at the last two. Problem is, he missed both of them. 3-1 final in favor of the Phillies, and thanks to those two runners on base, Arano just got a save to make up for his loss in Game 1. The last pitcher to give up a walkoff homer in the first game of a doubleheader, and then record a save in the second, also did it in a Mets affair. It was Jesse Orosco against the Giants on August 19, 1984 (Brad Wellman hit the homer). We did find an honorable mention for Lance McCullers (that's Senior) who got the win in the nightcap after a walkoff homer in 1986. It was the first time the Phillies had won a game where they had two hits or fewer since September 30, 1988, when Chris James homered and Ron Jones doubled and scored for a 2-1 win in Montréal. Only the Royals and Rockies had failed to do it so far this century.

And that three-run double by Aaron Nola? Since RBI became official in 1920, he's just the third Phillies pitcher to have three of them and account for all the team's runs in a game. Robert Person also had a bases-loaded double against the Cubs on April 8, 2001 (another 3-1 win), and Schoolboy Rowe's three-run homer came up short against the Reds on September 28, 1943 (lost 4-3).

On Wednesday the Mets ended the series the same way they began it, and for once in the Mets Universe, that's a good thing. After Vince Velasquez traded zeroes with Jacob deGrom (who still didn't get a win out of this), Brandon Nimmo was summoned to the plate in the bottom of the 10th after Amed Rosario doubled and Jose Reyes walked. First pitch, three-run walkoff homer, the first walkoff pinch-hit tater in a scoreless tie in Mets history. They'd only had three of the non-PH variety, and the most recent had been by Dave Kingman on June 17, 1976. (Jerry Grote in 1971 and Tommie Agee in 1969 had the others.) The Phillies hadn't given up a walkoff homer in a 0-0 game since the Marlins' Alex Gonzalez took Ricky Bottalico deep on September 26, 1998.

And remember Wilmer Flores on Monday? Combined, he and Nimmo are the first set of teammates in Mets history to connect for walkoff pinch-hit homers in the same season. The only other years where the Mets hit two were both by the same batter: Chris Jones in 1995 and Marv Throneberry in 1962.


So Nice They Named It Twice

The Mets weren't the only New York team playing a doubleheader on Monday. Thanks to a bunch of rainouts in April, which for a while created the weird situation of the AL East team with fewer wins actually being ahead in the standings, the Yankees also got 18 innings of fun at Camden Yards. The last time the New York teams combined to play four games on a day was October 3, 2015, and all that happened then was Max Scherzer's no-hitter at Citi Field. So the bar's pretty high.

The opener was fairly bland, a 5-4 Orioles win that turned when Danny Valencia hit a three-run homer off CC Sabathia (who always seems to get left in one inning too long) in the bottom of the 6th. The Orioles have hit just five homers this season to turn a deficit into a lead in the 6th inning or later, but three have been against the Yankees (Adam Jones and Anthony Santander did it in those few non-rained-out games in April). And Sabathia became the first Yankee pitcher to give up five extra-base hits including two homers at Camden Yards since... CC Sabathia did it in another 5-4 loss on September 8, 2012.

In the second game, however, the Yankees took "double"header to heart, firing off seven two-baggers and rolling to a 10-2 win, their first time hitting double digits at Camden Yards since September 9, 2012 (won 13-3). Only once before had the team collected seven doubles at OPACY-- July 29, 2007 in a 10-6 victory, but Robinson Cano and Melky Cabrera each had two in that game. Monday's were dropped by seven different Yankees, just the ninth game in the live-ball era where that's happened, and second this decade. They also did it two years and four days earlier in Chicago.

Brett Gardner had a homer and two singles in addition to his required double, the first four-hit game by a Yankee in Baltimore since Derek Jeter in April 2012. Adding in Gardy's 3 RBI gets us back to Johnny Damon in a 10-9 walkoff loss on May 27, 2008. Substitute three runs scored for the three driven in, and no Yankee had done that in Baltimore since Alfonso Soriano on September 15, 2003. Soriano, of course, batted leadoff and also had 3 RBI in that game; it was the last time any Yankee leadoff hitter had done all three in any game, at Camden Yards or otherwise.


Big Kosher Pickle
You know you've had it in your head for about three sections now. We'll go grab some French-fried potatoes while you sing along. Intermission!


Lower The Jolly Roger
(Seriously, would they have to do that between games? Or do they just use two flagpoles? Someone investigate this.)

If New York and Philadelphia and Baltimore have a bunch of doubleheaders to squeeze in, it's a good bet that Pittsburgh does too. So they made Saturday's return trip by the Brewers a 2-for-1 special and then made the first game a 2-to-1 special. Except you had to be there on time. The 12:37 first pitch was followed at 12:47 by a Starling Marte solo homer as the Pirates' second batter of the game (Corey Dickerson lined out to short). Now that was followed by one of those pesky reviews, so at least if you missed it, you had a few extra minutes to get to your seat. And thus no excuses when 12:52 brings a solo shot by the next batter, Gregory Polanco. And then not much happens. Ivan Nova scatters seven hits but isn't exactly mowing people down, taking 83 pitches to trudge through 4⅔ innings. At 2:13 you get to see the Brewers score a run on a Christian Yelich single. And then nothing. By 3:40 it's still 2-1, so raise the jolly roger and make note of this little piece of Pirates history. It's certainly not the first time that two of Pittsburgh's first three batters had homered. Andrew McCutchen and David Freese did that in Colorado as recently as April 2016. But it is the first time since the team's founding in 1882 that two of the first three batters of a game homered, and then the Pirates didn't score any other runs for the rest of the game.

Happily, because it's a doubleheader, you get the chance to see them score more runs in the second game. Not 19, mind you, we're done with that whole mess, but six feels good. Good enough to take the sweep. And especially when five of those six come on solo home runs, two by Jordan Luplow, playing in just his sixth game this year after a call-up from Indianapolis. The game marked the first time the Pirates had gone yard five times in a home game at PNC Park since July 22, 2009, also a win over Milwaukee (8-7). Every other team in the majors except the Giants has hit 5 HR in a home game since then, although the two that have moved (Marlins and Braves) haven't done it at their new place yet.

And if you did show up sometime after 12:52 and missed the Marte-and-Polanco back-to-back show, well, the reprise is at the end of the album too. In the bottom of the 8th, Marte took the fourth pitch he saw to left field, making him the first Pirate to homer in both games of a doubleheader since Sean Rodriguez did it in Cincinnati in September 2016. And then Polanco took the fourth pitch he saw to right-center, making him the first Pirate to homer in both games of a doubleheader since... well, yeah, Starling Marte about 2 minutes ago.

In general, the same two teammates homering in both games of a doubleheader isn't terribly rare; Josh Donaldson & Yangervis Solarte did it for Toronto in May. The Pirates, however, hadn't had teammates do it since Don Hoak and Smoky Burgess each collected three homers in a twinbill at Crosley Field in Cincinnati on May 31, 1959. That sweep (6-2 and 14-11) was also the last time Pittsburgh hit at least seven homers in a doubleheader (four in each game).

But back-to-back by the same two hitters in both games? That's been done three times. Ever. And the Pirates are two of them. Frank Thomas and Dick Groat pulled it off at the Polo Grounds on July 7, 1957, and exactly 11 years later, our buddy Sal Bando, then with the Athletics, teamed with Reggie Jackson to do it at Tiger Stadium, although Oakland ended up losing both games.


You'll Never Walk Off Alone (Reprise)

Toronto had the Red Sox on the ropes for most of the game Saturday, holding onto a 2-1 lead but giving the Yankees hope of gaining at least half a game in that messy AL East race. But as we head to the 9th, Joe Biagini gets removed after 17 pitches and only an infield single allowed in the 8th. Tyler Clippard for the (blown) save. Leadoff batter Xander Bogaerts doubles, and after a failed (or faked) sac bunt attempt by Jackie Bradley, he swings at the second pitch and hits another double to tie the game. Clippard gets out of that jam, but off we go to extras. Now it's Chris Rowley in the 10th, and after Mookie Betts reaches on an error and Brock Holt singles, there's an intentional walk to J.D. Martinez to set up an inning-ending force double play at every base. But here's Xander again. And the only thing he wants to do with every base is to touch them. Saying he didn't even remember running the bases, Bogaerts mashed a grand slam into the flagpole in center field.

It was the first walkoff homer of any type for the Red Sox this year, leaving five teams still without one. (Trevor Story took that down to four with a winner for the Rockies on Sunday.) It was the first extra-inning walkoff slam in the majors this season (Howie Kendrick had one last August), and the first for the Red Sox since Jim Rice gave Boston some Independence Day fireworks by beating the A's on July 4, 1984 (his 10th-inning shot scored Dwight Evans, Glen Hoffman, and Marty Barrett). The Sawx hadn't hit any walkoff slam, including the 9th inning, since Rico Brogna downed the (then-Devil) Rays on August 14, 2000.

Xander then came up as the second batter of Sunday's series finale and gave Boston a 1-0 lead with a deposit over the Green Monster. The last Red Sox batter to hit a walkoff home run (at all, not necessarily a slam) in one game, and then a 1st-inning homer in the following game? Don't have to look far for that answer. It's Jim Rice again; after those Independence Day festivities in 1984, the Angels came to town and Rice's three-run shot begat a 12-7 victory the next day.

Meanwhile, up in Minnesota, that bizarre Rays/Twins series (11-8 and then 19-2, remember?) would not go gently into that good All-Star break. In the lowest-scoring game of the series, it was 7-7 after nine innings on Sunday before our friend Jake Cave hits a leadoff double in the bottom of the 10th. Much like the new extra-inning rule in the minors, we all know what's coming next with a runner on second and nobody out. And then we all know what's coming with a runner on third and one out. However, the second intentional walk by Matt Andriese to load the bases was a little more curious. (That was actually Andriese's third IBB of the game counting one in the 9th; he's the fourth pitcher since the rule change last year with three in a game. Saving us a total of 48 pitches in two years. Hmmph.)

Anyway, so it was that Brian Dozier strode to the plate and, yep, uncorked the second walkoff grand slam in as many days for an 11-7 final. It was the first walkoff slam for the Twins in any inning since Joe Crede hit one against the Tigers on May 13, 2009, also in extras. Turns out May 13 is kind of a special day for walkoff slams; that date in 2012 was the last time there were two so close together. Giancarlo Stanton beat the Mets that afternoon, and then a few hours later, Joey Votto hit a winner against the Nationals that came up just this past Tuesday when he hit a go-ahead single to propel the Reds to win over Cleveland. Oddly those two May 13 slams were two of the three in the majors that entire season. As for back-to-back days, the last time that happened was July 27 and 28, 2002, by Alex Rodriguez to beat Oakland and Jim Thome to beat Detroit.

Thome's slam in 2002, however, was in the bottom of the 9th. Both Bogaerts and Dozier hit theirs in the 10th. In all the available play-by-play, we can't find an occurrence of walkoff grand slams in extra innings on back-to-back days. There is one instance of it happening on twice on the same day-- that's June 11, 1980, when the Mets' Mike Jorgensen hit one off Rick Sutcliffe to beat the Dodgers in the bottom of the 10th, and Tony Armas went deep for the Orioles in the 14th after a leadoff triple and two intentional walks by the A's. Alas we wanted to say "24 hours" and twist this note around, but Saturday was a day game in Toronto so it missed getting in under the wire.


Mid-Year Participation Awards

It being All-Star week, we continue our tradition of including at least one note from each of the 30 teams, some more deserving than others, while also snubbing Blake Snell. Here are the ones who didn't earn a "starting spot" in all those paragraphs above.

⚾ Braves: Ozzie Albies connected for two homers and four RBIs in Wednesday's win over Toronto, the first multi-homer game for the 21-year-old. He became the youngest Atlanta hitter with a 2-HR game since Jason Heyward in 2010, and like most things Atlanta- and age-related, the youngest to do so at home since Andrew Jones against the Reds on August 6, 1998. Albies added a sacrifice fly, the first Braves player-- of any age-- to also do that in a 2-RH game since Jones pulled that off at Dodger Stadium on May 14, 2005.

⚾ Orioles: Aside from the obvious excitement of winning two games in a row (and with the break, it's very possible they might actually go a full week without losing), they started Sunday's game against Texas by issuing three straight walks to load the bases. Daniel Cabrera was the last Orioles pitcher to begin a game that way, doing so against Oakland on September 6, 2008. The Rangers, who hadn't gotten such early freebies since July 10, 1993 (at Toronto), then got a grand slam from Ronald Guzman to take a 4-0 lead. Overcoming that for an eventual 6-5 win rendered Guzman the third player in Rangers/Senators history (Mike Hargrove 1975 and Dick Nen 1965) to hit a 1st-inning slam in a loss. But it was the second time this year the Orioles had pulled a win out of that situation. On May 10, Salvador Perez hit a slam as the Royals' fourth batter of the game, but Baltimore ralled for eight unanswered runs and won 11-6. It's the first time in franchise history (to 1901) that they've allowed two 1st-inning slams in a season and won both games.

⚾ Cubs: Kyle Hendricks matched wits with Andrew Suarez on Monday, both pitchers allowing just one run (in Hendricks's case, unearned) and sending the game to extras as a 1-1 tie. The Cubs eventually lost on a Pablo Sandoval walkoff in the 11th, but that gave Hendricks a fairly unique line in Cubs history. Since the National League first recognized earned runs in 1912, Hendricks is only the fifth Cubs pitcher to throw *more than* eight innings, allow 0 ER, strike out at least eight opponents, and not get a decision. The one before him had been Greg Maddux, who traded zeroes with the Phillies' Pat Combs on May 17, 1991, before the Dickie Thon finally won a 1-0 game in the 16th.

⚾ White Sox: If Yoan Moncada ever ages, we're gonna be in trouble. The 23-year-old Cuban infielder drew three walks in Friday's 9-6 win over Kansas City, then joined 26-year-old Daniel Palka in collecting three hits including a homer in Sunday's finale. The first game made him the youngest White Sox hitter with three walks since Mike Caruso did that against Seattle on August 9, 1999, and the youngest to do it from the leadoff spot since John Cangelosi against the Red Sox on April 13, 1986. And on Sunday, the pair became the first set of White Sox teammates, each Palka's age or younger, to have three hits, a homer, and three runs scored in the same game. Aaron Rowand was eight days older than Palka when he and Juan Uribe teamed up to do it against the Twins on May 23, 2004.

⚾ Astros: Gerrit Cole and Oakland's Frankie Montas traded six innings' worth of zeroes in Monday's series opener, with Brad Peacock eventually surrendering the go-ahead run in the 7th. (This is not the game with the weird walkoff, but wait for it.) Cole, as he is prone to doing, struck out 11 batters, the third time this year he's fanned 11 and not given up a run. That already ties the Astros team record for such a thing. But in two of those games, Cole hasn't gotten the win either. He also left a 0-0 tie against the Padres on April 7. And he's the first pitcher in Houston history to do that twice in the season. Nolan Ryan is the only other Astros hurler to do it at all, and his two games were in different years.

⚾ Royals: We'll go out on a limb and say it's not their year. But they do still have a few flashes of brilliance, such as Tuesday's 9-4 victory in Minnesota in which Whit Merrifield recorded two doubles and two walks. He became the first Royals leadoff hitter to reach base four times, with that including a pair of extra-base hits, since... Whit Merrifield against Boston on Sunday. No one in team history had done it twice in three days, though Johnny Damon did set the bar at four days back in September 2000. In that same win, number-9 hitter Adalberto Mondesi drove in four runs (three of them on a 2nd-inning homer) and also stole a base, joining Brent Mayne in July 2002 and Jerry Grote in June 1981 as the only players in Royals history with that line out of the 9-hole. (Grote, like Mondesi, included a homer; Mayne did not.)

⚾ Angels: It's Kole Calhoun's weekend, the rest of us are just living in it. On Friday the Anaheim right fielder hit two solo homers to provide the team's only significant offense; their only other extra-base hit was a pinch-hit double by Shohei Ohtani in the 9th, but David Fletcher grounded into a game-ending double play to strand him. Calhoun is the first Angels batter with a multi-homer game at Dodger Stadium since Garret Anderson did it on June 26, 2004-- but the first to do it in a loss since Lee Thomas on August 21, 1962. That game came during the Angels' four seasons at Chavez Ravine during construction of The Big A, and was an 11-4 extra-inning (!) loss to the Yankees, who hung a 7-spot in the top of the 10th. And speaking of the top of the 10th, Calhoun went deep again Saturday to win the middle game of the series after Blake Parker had blown the save in the bottom of the 9th. Though Anderson did hit one with one out in the 10th back in 2001, we always consider two outs to be further along in the inning. Especially when it results in Calhoun hitting the latest Angels home run at Dodger Stadium since... yep, they were the home team again. Leon Wagner's two-run walkoff in the 11th beat Cleveland on September 22, 1962.

⚾ Dodgers: Opened series in San Diego on Monday by collecting five extra-base hits in an 8-2 win. It was their fourth 5-XBH game at Petco this season, the most in a single year since it opened in 2004. The Dodgers only had one other season with four 5-XBH games in San Diego; that was 1996 at Jack Murphy/Qualcomm. They would round out the season series with 36 XBH at Petco, three shy of their season high set two years ago. While Max Muncy didn't homer on Monday, he did enjoy an unconventional trip around the bases. They started him at second (no, this isn't the minor-league extra-inning rule, it'll make sense), and when Chase Utley was double-switched in the 7th inning, Muncy moved over to first. One inning later, Enrique Hernandez got double-switched into right field, sending Cody Bellinger (who had been temporarily stashed out there) back to first and moving Muncy over to third. He thus became the first Dodger in (at least) the live-ball era to officially play all three bases on defense in the same game. One other player in the majors has done it this year, David Bote of the Cubs on June 27-- against the Dodgers.

⚾ Brewers: Starter Junior Guerra struggled in Friday's loss to Pittsburgh and was pulled in favor of Brandon Woodruff. Woodruff not only threw three innings of one-hit ball, that meant he got the chance to bat. And of course he homered. You may remember Milwaukee's game from May 8 where Wade Miley pulled an oblique muscle and left his start in the 1st inning. That turned things over to Brent Suter who promptly homered in the spot's first plate appearance in the 3rd. So Woodruff made the Brewers the first team to have two relief pitchers go yard in the same season since Craig Lefferts and Tim Stoddard both did it for San Diego in 1986. Much was also made of Michael Lorenzen's home-run outburst for the Reds about two weeks ago; he, like Woodruff, also had a game in which he pitched three one-hit innings in relief and hit a dinger at the plate. That hasn't happened twice in a season since we let the AL guys stop hitting. Pittsburgh's Nelson Briles and Jim York of the Royals both posted that line in 1971.

⚾ Athletics: After mounting a valiant four-run comeback in the 9th on Tuesday, Stephen Piscotty's home run in the top of the 11th gave Oakland a lead. Which they would promptly blow on a bizarre walkoff play in the bottom of the 11th, but still, stop us if you've heard this one. Because Piscotty also homered in the 11th inning last Saturday against Cleveland. Only one other player in all of A's history (1901) has hit a pair of homers in the 11th or later within a span of four days. That's Mark McGwire, who did it in back-to-back 16-inning games played in Toronto on July 3 and 4, 1988.

⚾ Padres: Eric Lauer got through eight scoreless innings Tuesday on 101 pitches. He had a 4-0 lead. So yeah, let's let him go for the shutout, of which the Padres have had just one in the past three-plus seasons. Lauer got two fly-ball outs and then, well, a fly-ball non-out. Max Muncy deposited one into the seats to make it 4-1 and break up the shutout. Still, two outs and a three-run lead with nobody on. Nope, sorry. No CG for you. Go get Kirby Yates and wait five minutes for him to get the last out instead.

⚾ Mariners: Wednesday's game in Anaheim, a typically ho-hum 3-0 affair (although the Angels managed just two singles), did feature one interesting bit of trivia. Seattle's 2- through 4-hitters-- Jean Segura, Mitch Haniger, and Nelson Cruz-- all got one hit in the top half of the boxscore... and then were listed again in the bottom half of the boxscore for being hit, with a pitch. Only one other trio in Mariners history has each gotten a base hit and been HBP'd in the same game, and that was also against the Angels. Chris Snelling, Richie Sexson, and Kenji Johjima did it at Safeco on August 30, 2006.

⚾ Giants: A day after beating the Cubs in that 1-0 Sandoval walkoff game, their offense mustered another nine-inning 0, this time losing to Chicago 2-0 on only three hits. Derek Holland was charged with the game-winning run, even though it scored on a wild pitch plus an error after he left the game. That earned him a distinction, though, as just the second Giants pitcher in the live-ball era to allow one run, strike out at least eight, walk nobody, and lose. The other hurler to do it was John "Count of" Montefusco (so christened by Al Michaels) against the Braves on April 18, 1978.

⚾ Cardinals: Since Cards managers have been in the news this weekend, it's worth remembering that Tony La Russa was among (if not) the first to jump on the "bat the pitcher eighth" bandwagon. It doesn't matter in an AL park such as the one the White Sox call home, but Kolten Wong managed to collect four hits, including a homer and double, out of that 9-hole in Tuesday's 14-2 thumping of Chicago. The last Cardinal with a four-hit game batting ninth was a result of that TLR bandwagon: Brendan Ryan at Florida on June 10, 2009. But the last Cardinal to also homer in such a game-- that was a pitcher. Jesse Haines did it against the Phillies... on August 11, 1920.

⚾ Rangers: Saturday marked just their second 1-0 loss ever at Camden Yards (1992); the other was September 14, 1998, when Aaron Sele and Juan Guzman matched zeroes before the bullpen gave up the run in the 8th. They had never been shut out (by any margin) on four or fewer hits there; Texas's last time doing that in Baltimore was a 4-0 loss to Pete Harnisch at Memorial Stadium on May 20, 1990.

⚾ Blue Jays: Devon Travis earned himself two notes this week, first (on Wednesday in that game where Ozzie Albies homered twice) becoming just the second Toronto player ever to hit a grand slam in Atlanta. The other was by Carlos Delgado off Kevin Millwood on June 7, 2000. The Jays then went to the more-familiar Fenway Park over the weekend, and on Thursday Travis had the strange line of four hits but zero RBIs as Boston won 6-4. Only seven players in team history have collected four hits at Fenway without driving in a run; the last had been former Bostonian Shea Hillenbrand on April 18, 2005. But Travis is the first of those seven to also not score any runs himself despite four safe base knocks.

⚾ Nationals: We haven't used the #PitchersWhoRake hashtag much (if at all?) this year, so let's round it out with the batting adventures of Tanner Roark. Leading off the 3rd inning on Friday, Roark blooped the second pitch from opponent Noah Syndergaard about two feet fair down the right-field line for a single. Then things got weird, with the ball rolling along the top of the padding, out of Brandon Nimmo's reach, and Roark standing at third with a triple. Wilmer Difo then doubled him home, although in a game that was fairly symbolic of the Nats' week, they still lost 4-2. Since the move from Montréal, however, Roark is only the third Nationals pitcher to record a triple... and all of them have done it against the Mets. Livan Hernandez hit one at RFK Stadium on September 24, 2005, and Joel Hanrahan hit his only career three-bagger at Shea on July 28, 2007.


Bottom Of The Bag

⚾ Matt Carpenter, Sat-Sun: First Cardinal with leadoff homers in back-to-back games since Rafael Furcal at Milwaukee, August 31 & September 1, 2011. BUT first Cardinal to do it at home (any home) since one Jack Crooks on May 10 and 11... 1892!

⚾ Amed Rosario, Tuesday: First Met not named Jose Reyes with two triples in a loss since Lee Mazzilli against the Reds, August 30, 1981.

⚾ Jose Peraza, Saturday: First Reds batter to collect five singles in a game since Jeff Keppinger did it against the Mets on May 10, 2008. Before him was Davey Concepcion in 1976.

⚾ Justin Verlander, Sunday: Fifth pitcher in live-ball era to strike out 12+ but also allow four homers. Previous was Colby Lewis for Rangers on May 10, 2012.

⚾ Kevin Pillar, Friday: Fourth Jays batter with a 4-hit, 4-RBI game at Fenway Park, joining Ryan Goins (2014), Lyle Overbay (2010), and Alex Gonzalez (1996).

⚾ Juan Soto, Monday: Youngest player (19-257) ever to homer at PNC Park, breaking Jason Heyward's mark by over a year. Only players younger than Soto to homer at Three Rivers were Andruw Jones (of course) and Houston's Cesar Cedeño when the park opened in 1970.

⚾ Austin Romine, Saturday: Hit go-ahead double with the bases empty. (Let it sink in.) Romine scored on his own batted ball when Brandon Guyer bobbled it allowing him to go to third, and then the relay throw by Erik Gonzalez ended up out of play for the award of home. First Yankee to hit a go-ahead non-homer with the bases empty since Kenny Lofton tripled and scored on an error to lead off the game on May 23, 2004. The last time it happened in the 7th inning or later (that we know of, some play-by-play before 1955 is missing) was on August 3, 1930, when Tony Lazzeri also came home on a triple-plus-error against the A's.


Did You Know?
Back to our theme of multiple 19's equalling 38, Colorado was officially admitted as a state on August 1, 1876, about three months after the first officially-recognized "major league" game.

On August 1, 1876, the NL's St Louis Brown Stockings (no relation to either the AL Browns or the current Cardinals)... scored exactly 19 runs. Against Cincinnati. You can't make this stuff up.

The Cincinnati Daily Star, August 2, 1876. The same newspaper makes no mention of Colorado statehood. Guess they figured everyone heard it on Twitter already.