The Sporting Life

You probably notice we spend a lot of time talking about baseball here. But we know there are fans of other sports who might happen along, so let's check in on some of them, Olympics-style, that only get their big stage every four years.


Cycling

Christian Yelich of the Brewers put this bug in our heads on Monday, and it's fun when the rest of the week kinda fits the theme. In the opener of their series with Cincinnati, Yelich broke up the no-hitter with an innocent-looking ground-ball single. In the 3rd he doubled down the right-field line on a ball that was deflected by a diving Joey Votto (and would probably have stayed a single otherwise). Yelich then homers to make it 4-0 in the 5th, and completes both the scoring and the cycle by legging out a two-run triple ahead of the arm of Billy Hamilton (who knows something about triples himself). His spot comes up again with two outs in the 8th, but it's 8-0 and it's September, what more does Yelich have to prove, so we'll pinch hit for him with Hernan Perez (who promptly gets popped up for the Brewers' final out of the game).

If it feels like you just saw this same cyclist on this same track not too long ago, it's because, yes, he's doing laps. And the Reds aren't seeing things either; Yelich also had a cycle against them as part of his six-hit game on August 29. That actually was sort of a footnote to that 13-12 extra-inning carnival, so Monday belonged solely to Yelich. He's just the fifth player to record multiple cycles in a season, and the first for whom they were both against the same team. Aaron Hill of the Diamondbacks (2012) is the one most fans remember; a few were probably around when Babe Herman of the Dodgers did it in 1931, though cycles weren't really held up as a huge achievement back then. They certainly weren't in 1887 when "Tip" O'Neill (who would not later become Speaker Of The House), nor in 1883 when Cincinnati's John Reilly did it twice.

Yelich was the fourth player in Brewers history to have a cycle and drive in four runs, joining Jody Gerut (2010), Chad Moeller (2004), and Mike Hegan (1976). And just four hits and four RBI hadn't been done by a Milwaukee player in over three years, the longest drought of any team. Adam Lind, in Cleveland on July 22, 2015, had been the list Brewer with that line. That 8-0 score was the Reds' second-largest shutout ever in Milwaukee, including all the visits they paid to the Braves. Dave Bush threw a four-hitter against them and won 11-0 on April 22, 2006.

Overshadowed, of course, by the cycle was that Domingo Santana had a pinch-hit homer on Monday-- just like he did on Sunday against the Pirates. Only two other players in team history have launched a pinch-hit homer in consecutive team games (not their own consecutive times pinch-hitting, which could be weeks apart); they are Gabe Gross in April 2006 and Jeromy Burnitz in August 1997.


Tennis

You can apply the term "grand slam" to golf's four (or five) majors as well, but you most often hear it in tennis. Of course it's the process of winning all four major tournaments-- the Australian, French, and US Opens, plus Wimbledon. We're pretty sure that if you made it this far, you know what it means in baseball. And there was some winning to be had this week.

The Indians were stymied by Dylan Covey of the White Sox on Wednesday, managing just two hits in six innings, and with those two hits being the only balls that got out of the infield. Aside from getting four outs via K's, Covey induced 13 ground balls and a foulout to the catcher. Jace Fry did almost the same thing, although Michael Brantley did finally line to center to wake up the outfield. So it was only appropriate that in a 1-0 game, Josh Donaldson leads off the 9th with an infield single. After another actual single and a hit-by-pitch, here comes Jason Kipnis with the bases loaded and needing only a solid hit to tie the game and at least force a play at the plate to win it.

He did get his solid hit, at least. 'Twas a walkoff grand slam to right field, and if it sounds like you've heard this before, well, you must have been paying attention last week also. Kipnis's shot was the ninth walkoff slam across the majors this season, setting a new record, and the third in under a week. Salvador Perez of the Royals (14th) and Francisco Mejia of the Padres (last Sunday) also hit them. Surprisingly, it's not the first time there have been three within six days; that even happened during the last week of July last season, and again in 2012 when Joey Votto and Giancarlo Stanton hit them on the same day.

Did we mention Kipnis began that at-bat sitting on 999 career hits in his eight seasons? So he also became only the second player to hit a walkoff slam for career hit number 1,000. The other-- and he will come up again by the time this post is done-- is Davey Lopes of the Dodgers on September 2, 1979. And it was 1-0 at the time, so not only did Kipnis win the game, he also broke up a shutout. Recall (this may be painful if you're a Nats fan) David Bote's walkoff slam on Sunday Night Baseball a few weeks back. That was with the Cubs down 3-0. So 2018 is also the first season in history where there have been two walkoff slams that each broke up a shutout at the same time.

It wasn't always the walkoff variety that provided the note, however; on Monday, Daniel Vogelbach of the Mariners had been asleep on the bench for seven innings, which is a common reaction to a 1-0 AL West game. (We have no proof of this, don't @ us.) In the 8th, however, he was finally called upon to take a bat up there and try to do something. That "something", of course, would be to hit a pinch-hit grand slam and turn that 0-1 deficit into a 4-1 lead and a Mariners victory over Houston. It was just the third pinch-hit slam in Mariners history, joining one that Franklin Gutierrez hit in 2015 in Detroit, and Ben Broussard's shot in Anaheim in 2007. It was also the first pinch-hit homer of any value for Seattle this season; the Tigers are the last remaining team without one (and a week to go!). Vogelbach became the seventh player in Mariners history whose grand slam (pinch-hit or otherwise) accounted for all four runs the team scored in a game; Henry Blanco (at Oakland, June 15, 2013) was the last to do that.

Kaleb Cowart of the Angels provided the game-changer on Tuesday with a 6th-inning slam. Granted, they're in the same division, but it was the 19th one the Angels have ever hit against Oakland, their most against any opponent (18 vs Indians). Cowart later added an insurance-run triple in the 8th, which they ended up needing when Oakland got three runs in the bottom half. Only five players in Angels history have hit a grand slam and a triple in the same game; the previous one was Chone Figgins at Baltimore on May 14, 2004. The others to do it were David Eckstein (2002), Adam Kennedy (2000), and Gary Pettis (1984).

And on Thursday the Yankees tried their best to keep the Red Sox from celebrating an AL East title in their stadium (they failed), with Giancarlo Stanton's 4th-inning grand slam temporarily giving them a 6-4 lead (which Chad Green and Aroldis Chapman then gave back). It was Stanton's second slam of the season (August 8 at Chicago), and the eighth of the season for the Bronx Bombers. But check out the list. Stanton has two. Greg Bird has two. Miguel Andujar has two. And Didi Gregorius, you guessed it, has the last two. Although the eight total slams are not a record, it is the first season in Yankees history where four different players had two of them.

Since we're here, we can't not mention Mookie Betts in that AL East-clinching win on Thursday; he compiled four hits, including two doubles off Masahiro Tanaka, and then hit the three-run homer off Chapman which would provide the final 11-6 margin. He's the first Red Sox batter to have three extra-base hits at the new Yankee Stadium, and the first ever to have four hits and five RBIs at any of them. Only two other Bostonians posted 4-and-5 against those hated Yankees: Mike Greenwell (September 1, 1990) and Carl Yastrzemski (June 18, 1977), and they were both at Fenway. It's the fifth time Mookie's had a 5-RBI game out of the leadoff spot (which is, in theory, tough to do since the guys at the bottom of the order usually aren't on base as much); that's now the most in Red Sox history, surpassing Wade Boggs's four.


Archery

Whether you believe Babe Ruth's famous "called shot" or not, it's hard for hitters to really aim the ball. Most of them just kind of hit it and hope it goes somewhere good. Pitchers, on the other hand, always have a target to aim at; we've even seen minor-league pitchers practice and warm up using padded targets divided into the nine sectors of the strike zone.

Max Scherzer certainly doesn't need any extra practice at finding the strike zone; he gets it every five days. On Thursday he spaced out for just a couple minutes, giving up back-to-back homers to Michael Conforto and Jay Bruce of the Mets around striking out the side in the 3rd. And the 5th. And two in the 2nd and 4th and 7th and 13 total for the game. We can only do so many Max Scherzer leaderboards, partly because he already owns most of the franchise records for eye-popping-strikeout games, and partly because he just leapfrogs with Stephen Strasburg every few days. But only three pitchers in Nationals history (and no Expos) have struck out 13 opponents but also allowed two homers. Scherzer is two of them and Strasburg (September 9, 2015) is the other. Max's other outing of that type was his famous 20-strikeout game against Detroit on May 11, 2016.

After leaving Thursday's game Scherzer actually got bailed out by his offense when Juan Soto connected for a game-tying double in the bottom of the 8th. That at least got Max off the hook, but Jose Lobaton put away his former team with a sacrifice fly in the 12th. Counting their whiffs against the bullpen, it was the third time in Mets history that they struck out 19 times and won; one was a 16-inning game in San Francisco in 2013, and the other was against an up-and-coming Steve Carlton in St Louis on September 15, 1969.

And as for Max? Well, he didn't get stuck with the loss, but he also didn't get the win despite fanning 13 Mets. It's the third time this season he's struck out 13 and not won, and only three other pitchers in the live-ball era have had a season where that happened. Randy Johnson had six such seasons, Nolan Ryan four, and Dennis Eckersley did it for Cleveland in 1976.

In other "big strikeout" news this week, Gerrit Cole of the Astros fanned 12 Angels in winning Friday's game 11-3 (more on the offensive side in a few minutes). It was Cole's fifth game this year with at least a dozen K's, tied for the second-most in a season in Astros history (J.R. Richard did it eight times in 1979). One of the others with five such games is Don Wilson in 1969; until Cole did it on Friday, Wilson (who did it twice) had been the only pitcher in Astros history to strike out 12 but also give up one of each base hit (a "pitcher cycle" if we may coin a phrase).

It's hard to top the one-two punch(out) of Cole and Justin Verlander, who then faced the Angels on Saturday and beat them 10-5. Verlander faced 20 batters and allowed just two of them to reach, a leadoff single by Justin Upton in the 2nd, and a 1st-inning pitch that hit Jose Fernandez in the hand and knocked him out of the game (he is listed as "day-to-day", to which our standard reply is, "aren't we all?"). That HBP actually came on the fourteenth pitch from Verlander, and in the 30 years of complete pitch-count data available, it's the longest plate appearance ending with an HBP. And one of several 13th-pitch HBPs happened just 11 days earlier (Cesar Hernandez of the Phillies).

Back to JV though, Saturday's performance of 11 strikeouts and one hit allowed matched his line in an eight-inning start against the Rangers on April 15; he joins Nolan Ryan in 1986 as the only Astros pitchers to repeat that feat within the same season. Cole also had such a game this season (May 4), as did Lance McCullers (April 17); it's the first time the Houston staff has ever combined on four of them in a season. And it's Verlander's fourth career start with 11 K's and no more than 1 hit allowed (including his no-hitters).

Mike Trout did manage to homer off Cole on Friday, and off reliever Joe Smith on Saturday, after also doing so in Oakland on Thursday (yeah, we'll get there). No Angels batter had homered in three straight team games, and had the team lose all of them, since Mo Vaughn in May 1999.

And we must throw Chris Archer into the "archery" section because wordplay! He went seven innings on Wednesday, fanned eight, and allowed only a solo homer to Adalberto Mondesi in sending the Royals to their 100th defeat of the year. He became the first Pirates pitcher to allow at least six hits, but limit the damage to one run, strike out eight, and also get a win, since our friend Gerrit Cole did it against the Nationals on July 26, 2015. It was also the fourth time this year that Mondesi's solo homer represented the only run Kansas City scored in a game; George Brett in 1982 is the only other player in Royals history to do that four times in a season. Pat Sheridan (1983), Kevin Seitzer (1987), and Dean Palmer (1998) had three such games.


Volleyball

Ask 100 people to name a volleyball, and you'll get 98 "Wilson"s because of the movie. But the first company to make and patent the "rubber bladder" now used in sports balls the world over was a place called Voit Manufacturing of Worthington, Indiana. You may remember them from your or your kids' grammar school, too; they also made those classic red balls that were either for kicking or dodging. (Voit is still around, too, though now based in Mexico.)

Rather than hit balls filled with air, Luke Voit of the Yankees opted to hit them through the air this week, most notably in Wednesday's 10-1 clobbering of those evil Red Sox to stave off their celebration for one more night. Voit connected for two homers off suddenly-homer-prone David Price; he also chipped in two singles and scored on both of those trips as well. That's four hits and four runs scored, a line which no Yankee had done against Boston since Luis Polonia on May 12, 1995, and hadn't done at home since Hank Bauer on May 10, 1952! The last to do it while also homering twice was Graig Nettles at Fenway on September 29, 1976. And Voit-- who batted eighth-- was only the fourth player in Yankees history with four hits, four runs, two homers, and three RBIs while batting anywhere sixth or lower. The others on that list are Shane Spencer (August 7, 1998), Babe Dahlgren (August 12, 1939), and Tony Lazzeri on May 24, 1936-- the game where he had 11 RBIs and became the first player to hit two grand slams in a game.

As for Price, he was the first Red Sox pitcher to give up three homers (Miguel Andujar also hit one) at Yankee Stadium since... oh yeah. David Price did that back on July 1 when he got smoked by an 11-1 score. In Boston baseball history (we're including the Braves here) only one other pitcher has had two such games in New York City in the same season-- Curt Schilling in 2006.


A certain '60s classic (actually written by Paul Simon) came to mind while writing that previous paragraph about red rubber balls. Plus we tend to see the morning sun entirely too much (thanks, 4-hour NL West games). Intermission!


Fencing
(Alternate title here was "Golfing", but we went for the "swinging for the fences" reference. You may choose.)

Joc Pederson of the Dodgers opened Monday's game against Colorado with his sixth leadoff homer of the season, which, given the cavernous nature of playing half their games at Chavez Ravine, is tied for the Dodgers' second-most ever in a season (including Brooklyn years). Davey Lopes had seven in 1979, six more in 1980, and the other folks with six since then are Todd Hollandsworth in 2000 and Rafael Furcal in 2006. But he went on to hit a leadoff double in the 3rd and homer again in the 4th as Los Angeles cruised to an 8-2 win. That's three extra-base hits, and at least one homer, out of the leadoff spot, and no Dodgers hitter had done that since... oh. Joc Pederson did it on June 7 in Pittsburgh. Amazingly, in the live-ball era, only one other Dodgers batter has done that twice, and his weren't in the same season. It was Brooklyn outfielder Johnny Frederick in 1929 and again in 1931. Pederson is also only the sixth player in Dodgers history to have multiple 3-XBH, 3-run, 3-RBI games in the same season, joining Hee-Seop Choi (2005), Shawn Green (2002, including his four-homer game), Mike Piazza (1995), Gil Hodges (1951), and Duke Snider (1950).

So of course what does Pederson do on Saturday but crush another one off Padres starter Jason Nix, surpassing all the 6's and, at least for the moment, leave him and Lopes atop the team's leadoff leaderboard. And remember Monday's game when Pederson hit that double to start the 3rd, which also happened to be off Jon Gray? On Saturday, he came up against Nix for the second time and cranked an automatic double that bounded over the fence in left-center. So that's two games this week where Pederson led off the first time through the order with a homer, and then led off the second time through the order with another extra-base hit against the same pitcher. In the live-ball era we couldn't find another Dodgers player to do that twice in a season (much less a week).

We promised you more on the offensive side of that 11-3 Astros win on Friday, and that side is completely dominated by Yuli Gurriel, who crushed a two-out grand slam off Andrew Heaney in the 1st inning to start the Houston rout. Returning in the 3rd after Marwin Gonzalez drew a walk in front of him, Gurriel went yard again, effectively knocking Heaney out of the game (he got through the inning but didn't emerge for the 4th). Alex Bregman hit the Astros' previous 1st-inning slam last May, but there have only been 16 in their history, so it also stands to reason that not many of those 16 also followed up with a second homer later in the game. If by "not many" you mean two-- Gurriel on Friday and Brad Ausmus, who did it against the Cardinals on April 4, 2003. Yuli would throw in an RBI single later to drive in seven of the 11 Astros runs, joining Jeff Bagwell (August 13, 2000) and Pete Incaviglia (June 14, 1992) as the only players in Houston history with two homers and seven RBIs in a game.

Meanwhile, in Toronto, the younger brother is always trying to emulate the older brother. Lourdes Gurriel couldn't hit a 1st-inning grand slam because he bats second (okay, he could, but it would take a group effort), so he settled for a solo shot to open the Jays' scoring in what would eventually be a loss to Tampa Bay. After the next eight hitters were quickly retired, Lourdes comes up again to lead off the 4th. Which means he can't hit a grand slam this time either, but he can crank his second solo shot of the night. And together, according to the fine folks at Stats Inc., they are the first pair of brothers (including Uptons, Alous, Molinas, you name it) ever to have a multi-homer game on the same day as each other.

Lourdes also combined with Justin Smoak to cap off a seven-run, 9th-inning rally on Thursday to beat the Rays. It marked the third time in Toronto history that they'd hit back-to-back homers to tie a game and then walk it off; Smoak was the first part of that combo last July 26 against Oakland (Kendrys Morales hit the walkoff). The other pair was Cliff Johnson and Buck Martinez, also against Oakland, on June 14, 1986.


Handball

In any sport involving a ball, the players have to propel it in some way, because otherwise you're just sitting there staring at a ball, and that's really only fun for a couple of hours. In baseball the defense gets to touch the ball (how else would they throw and catch it?), but the offense doesn't, presumably because they are armed with giant sticks of treated lumber.

(Sidebar: Possibly our favorite rules quirk is that there is no requirement that the batter actually take a bat with him. If he does take one, it has certain specs, he can't go up there with a tire iron, but the only rule is that he "take his position in the batter's box". Doesn't say he has to bring anything with him. We really want to see someone try this, especially if a pitcher is struggling to find the zone. Just stand there and see if he can get three out of seven over the plate. Of course, the obvious result is that he'd get plunked in the back with the first pitch, but dare to dream.)

Anyway, the offense isn't supposed to touch the ball, but occasionally it happens, and thus the rules must prescribe some penalty. In baseball's case, when a runner makes contact with a ball hit by his teammate, the ball is dead and that runner is out. The batter, if he's not out for being the one who touches it, gets to take first base and thus also gets credited with a single. It's a bizarre play, and not one that happens too often, but it came up twice this week, once in a crucial situation.

It got stuck in last week's "Bottom Of The Bag" because it happened so late on Sunday afternoon, but Robbie Grossman of the Twins was on the wrong end of this play when Logan Forsythe made him the first Minnesotan called out on such a play since Matt LeCroy got doinked by Justin Morneau on August 6, 2005. The Twins had gone the longest without such a play by over six years!; the Indians (Jim Thome in September 2011) now have the honors.

More notably, the Indians and White Sox went to extra innings in a 4-4 tie on Thursday night, with Cleveland avoiding a slight jam in the top of the 10th after Adam Cimber hit two batters and threw a wild pitch, but struck out Yoan Moncada without a run scoring. Now it's the Indians' turn. Two walks have Rajai Davis and Brandon Barnes on base with two outs. A base hit most likely wins the game. And Jason Kipnis sends a ground ball through the right side for what should be his second straight walkoff hit (remember the grand slam from Wednesday). Except it doesn't get through the right side. It hits Barnes between first and second. Dead ball, he's out, inning over, "we go 11" (as a local baseball buddy of ours likes to say).

We believe that some older occurrences of this play are lost to scoresheet history, since it's scored as a single, and the putout is automatically credited to the closest fielder (usually the 2B). So if it's not specially marked (we use "HBB" ourselves), it could just look like a weird tag play of some type, maybe one where the lead guy overruns second base. But with that caveat, Barnes is the first known Indians runner to get hit with a batted ball in extra innings since Woodie Held got doinked by Don McMahon in Kansas City on July 16, 1964.

And as for the "two outs, let's go another inning" part? We hadn't seen an instance of that-- a hit-by-batted-ball with two outs in extras of a home game-- since Mike Cubbage pinballed one into Twins runner Jerry Terrell against the White Sox on June 6, 1977.


American Football

Okay, not an Olympic sport, but its season is now three weeks old and its scoreboard bled over into the baseball land a few times this week.

It began somewhat normally, with a 7-0 win by the Astros against the Mariners on Tuesday where Marwin Gonzalez's homer trumped Robinson Cano's two doubles. As we tend to do in such situations, we went to find the biggest shutouts in series history, and it turns out the Astros have posted a 7-0 or higher against the Mariners three times now. The two larger shutouts, both in the same series in June 2015, were by scores of 10-0 and 13-0. Sure looks like more football scores to us. Houston and Seattle both have NFL teams. Have for a while. And it turns out that while the Mariners have now lost to Houston 0-7, 0-10, and 0-13, in Seahawks history they've never lost to Houston (either the Oilers or Texans) by any of those shutout scores.

Someone say 13-0 and Seattle? Well, if we hadn't already, the Mariners certainly did on Saturday, heading up I-45 to the other Texas-based MLB team (which shares its stadiumplex with the Cowboys) and dropping their own 13-0 score on the Rangers. That matched Seattle's largest win ever against Texas (21-8 on May 30, 2012), and came one shy of their largest shutout against anyone (they're had three 14-0's and now four 13-0's, the most recent of which had been against Oakland on July 2, 2013). Robinson Cano became the first Mariners batter with a 3-hit, 4-RBI game in Arlington since Kendrys Morales did it in that same 2013 contest. Mitch Haniger also had two doubles and scored three runs, but didn't drive in any (so also no homers), the first Seattle leadoff batter to hang that strange line since Ichiro Suzuki did it in Toronto on May 13, 2001. The Rangers were also shut out on no more than three hits (actually two) by the Rays on Monday, the first time in the history of the current stadium (1995) that's happened twice in a week. And continuing our theme, while the Mariners now have four wins in their history by the exact score of 13-0, the Seahawks... have exactly zero.

Los Angeles and San Diego have clashed over a certain NFL team in the past couple years, so it's appropriate that their baseball teams would clash on a football Sunday in September and promptly chuck up a football score, this one being 14-0 in favor of the Dodgers. (San Diego just can't win, huh?) Manny Machado and Matt Kemp hit solo homers off Joey Lucchesi in the 2nd, but otherwise it looks normal. Until the Dodgers go off for six runs in the 4th (Kemp had two hits in the inning), two more on a Max Muncy pinch-hit single in the 5th (we're now at 10-0 and the starters are quickly getting pulled), and a four-spot when September callup Colten Brewer couldn't get an out in the 8th. Muncy hit another two-run single as part of that outburst, thus becoming the first Dodger ever to have four RBIs in a game he didn't start, without also having at least one extra-base hit. Heck, even Hyun-Jin Ryu got into the act, the first Dodgers pitcher with a three-hit game since Zack Greinke did it in Philadelphia on August 6, 2015.

The 14-0 score was not the largest shutout win in Dodger history, nor the largest shutout loss in Padres history; that's 19 in both cases. But in their Los Angeles history, the Dodgers have seven shutout wins by a margin of 14 or more-- and five! of them are against San Diego. If you take every 14-0 or larger shutout in the majors since the Padres were elevated in 1969, no other combination of teams occurs more than twice. And Sunday's game also tied for the largest shutout in Dodger Stadium history. It's happened three times, two of them are this year, and one was by a visiting team-- the Astros blanked the home club by that score on August 4. The other 14-0 was, surprise surprise, against the Padres on April 15, 1969-- San Diego's seventh game as a major-league franchise.

We can at least say that there's never been a 14-0 football game played at Dodger Stadium-- or any football game at all, actually. That's all played over at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Which of course is where the Dodgers also played for four seasons before their little ravine was finished. And while the Chargers don't play there now, a previous NFL team did-- the Raiders during that weird sabbatical they took to L.A. in the 1980s. They are now back in Oakland (for the moment), where they play in the last remaining shared NFL/MLB stadium. Which brings us to that Oakland elephant, the game you knew we had to get to. It was a 12:30 pm start on a Thursday, and not lot of interesting things usually come out of day games because the players are tired and they have to travel after the game and everyone just wants to move on. In fact, we saw Josh Phegley lead off the 3rd with a single to break up the no-hit threat and then we put it away for a while. Never leave early? Turns out Phegley's was the first of four straight hits which were later followed by a three-run homer from Stephen Piscotty to make it 5-1 already. Jim Johnson comes out for the 4th and a two-out error opens the floodgates. Five straight hits and four runs (all unearned) knock Johnson out of the game. Junichi Tazawa gives up two more hits and it's 12-1 and what have you done with the AL West? By the 6th we've hit peak September baseball, all the Angels' callups are in the game, Miguel Almonte gets pounded for five more runs, and oh boy, which position player's going to pitch in this one? Well, that would be Francisco Arcia who gives up back-to-back homers to Nick Martini and Chad Pinder before we limp to the finish line with a score of 21-3.

Where to begin? For starters, it was the worst loss in Angels team history, beating a pair of 16-run defeats in 1993 and 1996 (the latter was to Oakland). They had only given up 21 runs in a game once before, to the Mariners in the next-to-last game of 2000 (they scored 9 of their own though). And ten different Oaklanders recorded at least one hit, at least one run scored, and at least one RBI. That's happened just 20 times in the 99 seasons since RBI became an official stat; the last was when the Yankees hung 21 on the Rays on July 22, 2007. The A's had done it once before, in yet another 21-3 win, this one June 18, 2000, over Kansas City.

Turns out that 2000 game was also the last 21-3 score (exactly) in the majors; there have been only 11 all-time and the A's have won three of them (the other was in 1929). And while they weren't in order and weren't consecutive, the A's did have a 5-run, a 6-run, and a 7-run inning in Thursday's beatdown, the first team to do that in one game since the Reds blew out the Phillies 20-6 on August 22, 1943.

And good old Francisco Arcia, it certainly wasn't his fault that it was already 18-2 when he took the mound, although you can argue that he had been catching and thus calling the signs before that. In fact he's the first player in Angels history to pitch and catch in the same game, and also their first position player ever to give up a home run while pitching. (This has an asterisk depending on how you count Shohei Ohtani, but he hasn't pitched and hit in the same game yet.) But there's no clock (for now). So at least, down by 19 in the 9th, Arcia didn't give up trying. He hit a 3-2 pitch into the seats for the third and final Angels run and several more footnotes in history. In that 30 years of pitch-count data we keep mentioning, no one had bothered to hit a home run with his team trailing by 19 and down to its final strike. The previous high had been 15 by the Rays' Rene Rivera three seasons ago. And the Angels had never hit any homer while trailing by more than 17 (George Arias at KC, August 10, 1996).

But remember that Arcia pitched in the bottom of the 8th. So when he homers in the 9th, he's technically still in the game as the pitcher (the Angels have given up the DH at this point). And that makes him the first Twins "pitcher" to homer since Clyde Wright (who was actually a pitcher) did it at Comiskey Park on September 8, 1972, the final month of play before the DH was added to the American League rulebook. Thanks to interleague play, the only team remaining without a pitcher home run in the DH era... is Thursday's opponent, the Athletics.

Sandwiched between Wednesday's 10-0 loss and Friday's 11-3 loss in Houston (remember Gerrit Cole and Yuli Gurriel?), it's the first time in Angels history that they've lost three straight games by at least an 8-run margin. Tack on Saturday's 10-5 loss to Justin Verlander also mentioned above, and it's the first time they'd ever allowed 10+ runs in four straight games.

And numerology fans, you have your Scorigami-- just not on the football side. Wednesday's game was the first-ever 21-3 final to a game played at Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum under any of its names-- baseball or football.


Bottom Of The Bag

⚾ Astros & Rangers, Monday: First time since 1972 (when the state of Texas acquired a second MLB team) that both of them have been held to three hits or fewer in home games on the same day.

⚾ Aaron Hicks, Saturday: First walkoff double for the Yankees since Bobby Abreu on July 9, 2008 (so also first one in new stadium). Tigers are last remaining team without one this decade.

⚾ Jorge Lopez & Matt Boyd, Thursday: First opposing starters in live-ball era to each give up six hits, five runs, and two homers while getting no more than four outs.

⚾ Steven Matz, Tuesday: Third pitcher in Mets history to homer (at the plate) in consecutive starts. Others are Ron Darling in 1989 and Tom Seaver in 1972.

⚾ Khris Davis, Friday: Third player in Oakland history (1968) to hit multiple go-ahead homers in the same game, where the second one was a walkoff. Others were Miguel Tejada (September 1, 2002, vs Twins) and Gene Tenace (June 15, 1976, vs Boston).

⚾ Ender Inciarte, Wednesday: Braves' second steal of home this season (Ozzie Albies, April 27), first time they've done it twice in a season since Gerald Perry, Ken Griffey, and Jeff Blauser all stole home in 1987.

⚾ A.J. Cole, Sunday: First Yankees pitcher to face three or more batters, have all of them score, and blow a save in the process, since Scott Proctor at Boston, April 22, 2007.

⚾ Blake Snell, Tuesday: Fifth start this year where he gave up no more than one hit and got the win. First in live-ball era with five such games in a season (Matt Cain 2016 and Nolan Ryan 1990 only ones with four).

⚾ Athletics, Saturday: First "bounce-off" win (game-ending wild pitch) since April 26, 1997 against Kansas City (thrown, naturally, by "wild thing" Mitch Williams). Only three teams (PHI, SD, BOS) had gone longer without such an ending.

⚾ Chris Stratton, Wednesday: First Giants pitcher to hit a three-run double since Brett Tomko at Shea Stadium on June 5, 2005.

⚾ Mets, Sat-Sun: First time they had no more than one hit in a game, and then collected 14+ hits in next game, since September 1993. Houston's Darryl Kile no-hit them and they took it out two days later on Cubs starter Mike Morgan.


Did You Know?

19th-century player James O'Neill was reported to have gotten the nickname "Tip" from his teammates because he was so huge in stature that he only had to tip the ball to get a base hit ("the ball would shoot like lightning"). The 20th-century politican, born in 1912, was nicknamed "Tip" after the baseball player (having the initials T.P. doesn't hurt either). Since 1984 the Canadian Baseball Hall Of Fame has annually presented the Tip O'Neill Award to a Canadian player (O'Neill was from Woodstock, Ontario) who "excels in individual achievement". Proving that there aren't many to choose from, Joey Votto's won it seven times.