Our annual post in which we peruse all these spring-training games that don't really count and say, yeah, but what if that had happened in the regular season? See Part 1 (Feb 21 to Mar 9) here.
We pick up with that third, middle week of spring training where kinks have been worked out, and it's about seeing how many people we can get into each game to achieve maximum "talent evaluation". Basically, the week where March games look like September games (at least for one more year).
March 10: The Indians hung 16 runs on the Mariners, which by itself isn't too unusual; they were one of just eight teams to do it twice last season. But they've only ever done it twice against Seattle-- July 16, 2004, at Safeco, and August 30, 1981, at Municipal Stadium. More notably, though, it wasn't one player blowing up the boxscore. It was all of them. Fourteen different players accounted for those 16 runs, and the 16 RBIs were split 10 different ways. Since RBI became official in 1920, the Indians have played just five games where 10 different players recorded one, though one of those was only a few seasons ago (August 8, 2015, def. Twins 17-4). Their team record for number of different players to score a run is 12, and that was last accomplished in 1966. Only three teams in the live-ball era have ever had 14 different players score a run in the same game, and the only one that wasn't a meaningless final-weekend-of-season 40-man-roster fest was when the White Sox beat Kansas City 20-6 on April 22, 1959.
Honorable mention to Francisco Liriano, who signed a one-year minor-league deal with the Pirates this season. And hopefully Indianapolis will be kind to him. Because on Sunday he faced four batters against the Yankees... and walked all of them. In succession. To start an inning. The last Pirates pitcher to pull that off was Don Robinson against the Cardinals on May 2, 1984... and one of his runners (Lonnie Smith, even) got caught stealing.
March 11: Continuing our Pirates escapades, Monday would be the day they turned the only triple play of this year's spring training portfolio. Charlie Culberson of the Braves started the inning with a double, after which Dansby Swanson drew a walk. Ender Inciarte grounded into your classic 6u-3 double play, but Culberson rounded third too far and also got nailed while trying to get back. According to the great SABR triple plays database, there have only been three ((6)-3)-5 TPs in baseball history, with the most recent one being turned by the Astros on July 16, 1971. That was the first TP in Houston history, and Ken Boswell was the Mets runner who overran third and became, well, history.
March 12: It doesn't rain a lot in Arizona, but there's always one or two days every March where it does. And now that all the teams are based in greater Phoenix, it only takes one large cloud to wipe out an entire league. Only 1½ games got played in Arizona today, so our choices were limited. Madison Bumgarner wound up with a complete-game victory out of the cloud, throwing all five innings of the Giants' rain-shortened win over Milwaukee. In the past 30 years, only one Giants pitcher has gotten a 5-inning CG in the regular season: Matt Cain against the Nationals on June 4, 2009.
And over in Bradenton, Pirates pitching blips the radar again, not because Jameson Taillon allowed five hits in his 4-IP outing against the Twins... but because all five of those hits were doubles. The last Pittsburgh hurler to pull that off (5+ hits allowed with all being doubles) was Brad Lincoln against the Reds on September 24, 2011 (5 IP, 6 doubles, and won 4-3).
March 13: The Royals, who got rained out on the 12th and rain-shortened on the 11th, finally got to unleash a bunch of runs on the Indians on the 13th. If "Kansas City 17, Cleveland 7" looks like an old AFL football score, well, it isn't. The Chiefs have only ever won one game by that exact count, and it was against Houston-- in 1974. And it's not a Royals score either; they've never won a 17-7 game, although they did lose one against Cleveland on the final day of the 1995 season.
Oakland, meanwhile, recorded a 12-11 walkoff win over the Cubs on Sean Murphy's game-winning double. The Cubs haven't scored 11 runs and lost a game that counted since Atlanta's Marcus Giles drove in an 11th-inning run at Wrigley on May 28, 2006. And Oakland's last walkoff double when trailing (so, multi-run variety) was by Miguel Tejada off Mariano Rivera on August 3, 2003.
And the Padres, who don't often play with a designated hitter, did so in their game with the Angels. That DH was Austin Hedges and they slotted him all the way at the bottom of the order. He responded by hitting a pair of home runs and driving in five as San Diego won 9-3. No Padres DH has ever had a multi-homer game, from any spot in the order, in the regular season.
March 14: You might remember the Brewers phenom that was Josh Hader at the start of last year. Where he would routinely throw two innings and strike out 5 or 6. At one point 70% of his outs were via K. And over the course of this spring it was 13 out of 19. So Freddy Peralta decided to do a little tribute. Starting against the Angels, Peralta got 10 outs before departing in the 4th. Nine of them were strikeouts. In a real game, no Brewers pitcher has ever had 9+ whiffs in an outing that lasted 4 IP or less.
Of course, part of the reason Peralta departed was that, in between all those strikeouts, he surrendered five runs and the Brewers had to score twice in the 9th to salvage a 7-7 tie. No Milwaukee pitcher has struck out 9+ while also giving up 5+ earned runs since Mike Fiers did it against the Astros on September 30, 2012.
March 15: Beware the Ides of March. You know that line from having to read Shakespeare many years ago, but did you know that in the Roman calendar, every month had an "Ides". It was a mid-month holiday between the 13th and 15th, and now we call it "payday". :) But we digress.
The Yankees unloaded a 14-1 victory on their archrival Red Sox. Maybe a small morsel of revenge for that 16-1 beatdown in last year's Division Series. But the Yankees haven't beaten Boston by 13 or more in the regular season since a famous 22-1 affair on June 19, 2000.
The Dodgers had an 8-run 8th, again not terribly unusual; they were one of seven teams to have multiple "snowmen" last season. But in the 15 seasons of inning-by-inning data we have in our collection, the Dodgers have never had an 8-run 8th, and things are further compounded by the fact that the 8th inning was the only one they scored in. Since 2004, they've only had one regular-season game where they tallied 8+ runs with all of them in one frame-- August 30, 2011, when they rocked Padres starter Tim Stauffer in the 2nd and held on to win 8-5.
March 16: The Yankees weren't done. Back in Tampa, they proceeded to drop another 17-7 score, this time against Toronto. Like Cleveland at the start of the week, 14 different players scored the runs, and 10 different players drove them in. And also like Cleveland, the Yankees have never achieved the first part of that sentence, and their last game where 10 players had an RBI was July 22, 2007, in a 21-4 thrashing of the Rays. (When Shelley Duncan hits two home runs out of the nine-hole, all bets are off.)
Speaking of the Rays, honorable mention to them for having a home game rained out. That, of course, can't really happen in the regular season because (at least for now) they play in a dome. It can, however, happen in Port Charlotte (and we have an unredeemed ticket stub from 2012 to prove it).
March 17: In the closest we got to a spring-training no-hitter (and remember, we enter the regular season sitting on 299 of them all-time), Trevor Richards of the Marlins shut down the Cardinals for six innings. Two errors by infielders allowed the only baserunners to reach. Drew Steckenrider had a 1-2-3 7th. Austin Brice committed the lone pitching transgression by hitting Drew Robinson in the 8th. But welcome Tayron Guerrero. And goodbye no-hitter. Leadoff hitter Dexter Fowler launches a solid single to right, Paul Goldschmidt follows with another one, and St Louis actually scores 2 runs. Since the Marlins were established in 1993, they've had four potential no-hitters broken up in the 9th inning; only the Tigers (7) have more. (Other teams have four.) And the last time the Cardinals scored multiple runs in a game where they had no more than 2 total bases was August 21, 1997, when they took advantage of four walks and three errors in losing a close one to Montréal, 3-2.
March 18: We didn't have room to mention it five days ago, but Trevor Bauer appears to be "in midseason form" as the saying goes. On the 13th he struck out 10 Brewers in just 4⅔ innings. Today he fanned nine more hitters against the Padres before leaving in the 6th; Bauer has never had consecutive regular-season starts where he worked fewer than 6 IP and still struck out 9+.
He lost. Because the Padres, who are the only team never to have one of those 299 no-hitters, took one into the 7th. When Kirby Yates pitched a hitless 8th, it matched a feat that San Diego's only done twice in a real game. Five different pitchers threw at least 1 IP without giving up a hit in the final game of the 2012 season against Milwaukee, and on August 4, 2007, in a 12-inning contest with the Giants.
Honorable mention to the Mets playing the "opener" game and actually starting Jeurys Familia against the Nationals. Familia worked a 1-2-3 inning before giving way to Kyle Dowdy. Familia has exactly one (1) major-league start in his career, and it was during his September callup in 2012. In his last appearance that year, in Miami, the Mets let Familia have the standard four days' rest and then asked him to throw 75 pitches. He did. Thirty-three of them were strikes. He walked six, barely made it through the 4th inning, and lost.
March 19: With any game-winning play by the home team now affectionately referred to as a walkoff, we've taken the liberty of creating some variations-- the sac-fly-off, the error-off, the balk-off, the plunk-off (HBP), and the one that happened Tuesday, the bounce-off.
In a disturbing acceptance of the new minor-league rule, quite a few games this week were played with the "international" rule of placing a runner on second base to start an inning-- in this case not an extra inning, but the 9th. Since we know we're not going to play extras either way, why not try this thing out? So it was that the White Sox took a 5-4 lead against Cincinnati in their half, Joey Votto singled, the Reds pulled a double steal, Reshard Munroe walked, and now Stuart Fairchild is up with the bases loaded. Plunk. No, not the thrilling plunk-off because the Reds are still down 1. In the past 75 years the Reds have only received one other game-tying HBP in the 9th inning, when Pittsburgh's Joel Hanrahan plunked Todd Frazier on September 23, 2011.
THEN, and only then, comes the bounce-off from Dylan Covey, scoring Leandro Santana who had run for Votto. Cincinnati has only one regular-season bounce-off in the past three decades, and that was also against Pittsburgh. On August 31, 2009, Jesse Chavez uncorked one that scored Darnell McDonald from third for a 4-3 win.
March 20: We've mentioned Arizona a lot in these last two posts, but that's the state, not the baseball team. Frankly they didn't do a lot of notable stuff, but on this day it was Alex Avila's turn. Batting against one of his former teams, the White Sox, Avila unleashed a pair of home runs to lead the Diamondbacks to an 11-2 win. Both were 3-run shots, something no Arizona 8- or 9-hitter has ever done in the regular season (not even Micah Owings). Owings and Chad Moeller in 2002 are the only D'backs to have 2 HR and 6 RBI batting 8th or 9th, but they each had other hits that drove in runs, not just the homers.
In former D'back news, A.J. Pollock hit a leadoff homer for the Dodgers against the Cubs in Mesa. Los Angeles has had such a homer against the Cubs in each of the last three regular seasons: Enrique Hernandez off Jon Lester in 2016, Andrew Toles off John Lackey in 2017, and Joc Pederson off Tyler Chatwood last June. All of those were at Wrigley; since moving to Los Angeles in 1958, the Dodgers have not had another streak of three straight seasons where they hit a leadoff homer on the road against the same opponent.
March 21: Who knew, when the Indians started this post with 14 different players scoring, that they had started a trend. The Royals took this one up a notch on Thursday, not by having 14 different players score a run, but by having each of them score exactly one run. Kansas City beat Cincinnati 14-6. We needn't rehash that such a thing has never happened in a real game that counts.
Honorable mention to the Rays, not for hitting a pair of 3-run homers in the 1st inning (which they have never done in a real game), but because one was by Brandon Lowe... and the other was by Nate Lowe. They're not related, although Nate's brother Josh is also a Rays farmhand, last year at high-A Port Charlotte where the Rays also hold spring training (and occasionally get rained out). We weren't able to check every team ever, but at least in Rays history, no two players with the same surname have ever homered in the same regular-season game, much less the same inning. (Jose and Ozzie Guillen did do it one game apart in May 2000).
March 22: It may take a little while to get used to Paul Goldschmidt being a Cardinal, but we're used to him doing stuff like this. On Friday, Goldy doubled in the 1st, led off the 3rd with a solo homer, and then legged out a leadoff triple in the 6th as St Louis cruised to a 15-5 win over the Mets. The next day the Cardinals signed him to a five-year deal for $130 million. Coincidence?
But that also means Goldy missed the cycle by the single, which you can probably guess is the rarest of the "near-cycle" feats we like to track here. There were only four in the majors last season, and the Cardinals haven't had one since May 11, 2012, when Carlos Beltran did it against Atlanta. And not surprisingly, Goldschmidt has done it once before as well-- June 23, 2012, against the Cubs. The only player this decade to do it for two different teams is Yoenis Cespedes (A's and Mets).
March 23: Kevin Plawecki, apparently trying to convince the Indians to give him $130 million (spoiler alert: they won't), repeated Goldy's feat on Saturday by hitting a leadoff double in the 4th, a two-run triple in the 5th, and then capping Cleveland's scoring with a two-run dinger in the 7th. They beat the Reds 8-5. Since we still have the list up, Cleveland hasn't had a player miss the cycle by the single since Ben Broussard did it in Detroit on May 27, 2003. Only the Orioles (Chris Richard in September 2000) have gone longer without a player joining the list.
And Cameron Rupp, now with the Tigers, recorded the team's final dramatic moment in Lakeland with a walkoff double. Not just any walkoff double, but it happened with two outs and Detroit trailing the Rays 7-6 (i.e., down to their final out). The Tigers haven't hit one of those in a real game since Lou Whitaker's bases-loaded shot in the 10th off Gregg Olson gave them a 5-4 win against the Orioles on September 28, 1991.
March 24: We appreciate the efforts of several teams to promote our new Every Score Ever page which was added to the menu bar back in January. The Tigers made sure there was no drama on Sunday, dropping an 18-6 on Toronto. That score hasn't happened in the regular season since September 13, 2011, by the Red Sox, and the Jays were also the "6" on that particular occasion. The Tigers haven't won an 18-6 affair since June 20, 2000, and guess who that was against too. Since 1977 that score has hit only 10 times, and the Jays have been on the wrong end of three of them (also vs Yankees in 2004).
And they didn't even win the day. Back in Arizona, the Cubs collected 10 doubles, while Cristhian Adames and Phillip Evans each had 5 RBI en route to a final score of 24-6 against the Padres. That's been rolled only eight times in MLB history, twice by the Cubs. Then known as the Colts, they actually did it in back-to-back years, 1894 against the Pirates and 1895 against the Phillies. The most recent 24-6 in MLB involved that other Philadelphia team, the Athletics, who rode Al Simmons's 5 hits and 6 RBI to a win at Fenway Park on May 1, 1929.
March 25: The snow has melted (mostly), real baseball starts for every team in just a couple days, and that means all those dead leaves from the fall just got uncovered again. Time to bring in #PitchersWhoRake. That would be Cubs starter Cole Hamels, with what we believe is the only pitcher home run of spring training, hit on Monday against the Red Sox in an interesting cross-league contest. (Boston is on its way to Oakland for their opening series, so why not stop in Mesa.)
Hamels still owns the most recent pitcher home run for the Cubs; it happened on the next-to-last weekend of last season against Pittsburgh. He also hit one with the Phillies in 2012. Then, thanks to a double-switch, David Bote got swapped into the nine-hole after Hamels' departure. Guess what he did. Now, Joe Maddon was among the early adopters of batting the pitcher 8th, so it makes sense that the last time the Cubs got two homers from the nine-hole was during The Addison Russell Experiment at the end of 2015. He hit two by himself in a September 4 game against Arizona. But two different number-nine hitters? And/or, a pitcher and a non-pitcher? That takes us back to August 25, 2009, against the Nationals, by starter Carlos Zambrano (of course) and, after a double-switch, Jeff Baker in the 9th.
Honorable mention to the Royals for going 0-for-10 with runners in scoring position, stranding 13 baserunners, and losing on a walkoff... to their own triple-A team, the Omaha Storm Chasers. The last time Kansas City stranded 13+ and lost on a walkoff was a 1-0 extra-inning affair with the Twins on April 26, 2007... and they've never done it while also having an 0-for in the RISP department.
March 26: One last ridiculous score on our way out to the places we will be from. And here's our third consecutive Cubs note; after hanging a 24-6 on Toronto two days ago, they ended spring training with a 16-7 defeat of the Red Sox. This is a more-common score, happening about once every other year (25 since 1968 and 51 since 1912). But still, the Cubs' last 16-7 win (exact score) was in the 2006 season opener at Cincinnati, and Boston's last loss was way back on April 18, 1959, to the Yankees at Fenway Park.
With most of the regulars removed during or after an 8-run 5th inning, Wynton Bernard collected 3 hits and 3 RBI, including a home run, in a game he didn't start. Since 1920, the only Cub to pull that off in a real game was Corey Patterson, who on May 15, 2003, pinch-hit in the 8th inning in Milwaukee and remained in the game while it eventually went 17 innings. (Patterson's two-run homer in T17 would finally be the game-winner.)
Travis d'Arnaud stole three bases, and three other Rangers stole one each, as part of their 5-4 walkoff win over Cleveland. Texas hasn't had a player with a 3-SB game since Delino DeShields Jr on May 7, 2015, and the team hasn't swiped six since doing it in back-to-back games in Anaheim on August 6 and 7, 2013.
But it was Pedro Florimon who really put the final exclamation point on 2019 spring training. In the Braves' final exhibition game, this time truly home at SunTrust Park against the Reds, Florimon stepped to the plate in the 9th with the Braves trailing 5-3 and the bases loaded. Wham, walkoff grand slam. The Braves have only hit two grand slams at all in the two seasons of their new suburban home in Cobb County, by Ozzie Albies last June and by Tyler Flowers in August 2017. And their last walkoff slam in a regular-season game was hit by Brooks Conrad on May 20, 2010... also against the Reds.
Now on to the remaining 2,428 games that actually count. Stay tuned (new posts usually happen every Sunday night to wrap up the week). And follow on Twitter for oddities about every game every night. Happy new year.
Wednesday, March 27, 2019
Sunday, March 24, 2019
The Cactus Diaries, Part 1
(Last season we flipped a coin for the title of this post and Florida won. It's your year, Arizona.)
Spring training doesn't count. We know that, the players know that, MLB knows that. For many players it's an audition not for the major-league club, but to see where in the minor-league system they'll be placed. So statistically it's not significant at all. But because all the games truly are exhibitions-- and most of them are played like it-- they're also overflowing with wackiness that you wouldn't otherwise see in the regular season.
Unfortunately, because it doesn't count, that wackiness is not readily researched on our favorite sites like Baseball Reference or Retrosheet or FanGraphs or even MLB's own site. So we play a little game of "what if". This strange thing, that we know is made possible mostly because the games don't count... what if that were to happen in a real regular-season game that does count? Because that we can search. And do. So we've picked one (sometimes two) of the weirdest boxscore lines and quicky happenings from each day and figured out just how much weirder they would be. Let's play.
February 21: The Mariners and Athletics were all set to get everything started (sound familiar?) in the lone game of the day at Hohokam Stadium. Seattle's Shed Long hit a leadoff double against Nick Blackburn and later scored. With one out in the 2nd, Long made another, um, long trip to second base with an RBI double that scored Dylan Moore. And then it rained. And kept raining. And after just 1½ innings we said forget it. So neither of those doubles counts (and of course it's spring training anyway). But the last batter to open a team's season with a leadoff double, and then hit another double his second time up, was Houston's Dexter Fowler in 2014. Aaron Miles of the Rockies did it in 2005. No Mariner has ever done it. Still.
February 22: Okay, let's try this again. This time the Mariners were the home team at Peoria Stadium, and this time we played nine whole innings. Dee Gordon walked, stole a base, and scored a run his first time up, so, yeah, he's in midseason form. Let's put in Tim Lopes to hit a double and 2 singles instead. In the regular season, only two Mariners have ever had 3 hits, including an extra-base knock, and 2 runs scored in a game they didn't start. They were Leon Roberts against the Yankees on May 7, 1979; and Ben Gamel at Coors Field on May 30, 2017.
Honorable mention to the Tigers for collecting 8 doubles in a 13-2 beatdown of Southeastern University, who was happy just to be nominated. (Not to be confused with Nova Southeastern U in Davie, as we almost did.) The Tigers haven't had an 8-double regular-season game since July 10, 2014, in Kansas City. And they haven't had seven different players with one (Ronny Rodriguez had two) since beating the Twins 18-2 at the Metrodome on July 15, 1982.
February 23: It's not hurricane season yet, but Roger Dean Stadium in Jupiter got hit hard. In an always-quirky, can-only-happen-in-spring-training game between two teams that share a stadium, the Cardinals piled up 20 hits on the way to an 11-1 victory. They haven't had a 20-hit game in the regular season since a 10-6 slugfest at Wrigley on July 14, 2013. The only team to go longer without doing it is the Mariners (May 2012). Two Miami pitchers, R.J. Alvarez and Brett Graves, each gave up 6 hits and 5 runs while getting only 2 outs, something no two Marlins have ever done in the same game when it counts.
Meanwhile, the Gulf coast felt almost no effects of this outburst, as the Pirates collected only three hits in their game with the Phillies-- and won it, 3-2. The last time Pittsburgh won a game with 3 or fewer hits is one you might remember-- "The Rich Hill Game" on August 23, 2017, when Josh Harrison's walkoff homer in the 10th broke up the no-hitter and the shutout.
February 24: Sometimes those hurricanes take 24 hours to work their way across Florida. So this was the day Bradenton got slammed-- specifically a walkoff grand slam by the Pirates' KeBryan Hayes. Pittsburgh hasn't hit a walkoff slam in the regular season since Rob Mackowiak took Joe Borowski of the Cubs deep on May 28, 2004. The only team to go longer without a walkoff slam is the Giants, their last being by Bonds against the Dodgers. Bobby Bonds. In nineteen seventy-three!
Hayes had also homered in the 6th inning of Sunday's contest, something that has never happened in Pirates regular-season history (player's second HR of game is a walkoff slam).
Honorable mention, in another game, to Angels pitcher Alex Klonowski for allowing 4 home runs-- in relief. That's only happened three times in team history, and one of them was last April, by Daniel Bard against the Red Sox. (Also Alan Fowlkes in 1985 and Paul Foytack in 1963.) And two of Klonowski's dingers were to the same batter, Dodgers outfielder DJ Peters. No Angels reliever had served two longballs to the same hitter since Wade LeBlanc, throwing 6+ innings after Garrett Richards got "obliterated", did so to Oakland's Josh Donaldson on May 30, 2014.
February 25: Most spring-training stats are pretty useless, but this is especially true of pitching lines when the strategy is less about winning and more about evaluating players and getting them game experience. But one stood out on this random Monday. Ben Taylor of the Indians faced all nine Texas batters in their game at Goodyear Ballpark. The good news is, two of them struck out. The bad news is that the other seven all scored as the Rangers cruised to an 11-5 win. It's even more impressive that none of the seven hits against Taylor was a homer. Because the last regular-season game where a Cleveland pitcher did that (7+ ER in < 1 IP without also giving up a homer) was on September 11, 1979, when starter Dan Spillner posted that line against the Tigers.
Honorable mention to the Phillies for collecting 12 runs on 13 hits in beating the Tigers. Only one of those hits went for extra bases, and that was a measly double by Luke Williams. The Phillies haven't scored 12+ runs in a regular-season game where they had 0 or 1 extra-base hit since beating the Astros 12-2 on May 16, 1976 (the lone XBH was a Garry Maddox triple).
February 26: If you wondered what it would look like if all 30 teams went to this "opener" strategy started by the Rays last year, well, look no further than Tuesday. A whopping twelve starting pitchers left their games with a no-hitter still intact, most after 1 inning or part of the 2nd. In three games both starters did it. That's not because they're all really doing the "opener" thing (please no!), it's because, as mentioned, the goal right now is not to eat up innings, it's to get as many people as possible into each game. (You'd be correct if you said 12 no-hit starts has never happened in the regular season. The most we found on any one day was four.)
In the Houston/Miami tilt, the first two pitchers for both teams allowed 0 hits, the first knock finally coming from Neil Walker in the bottom of the 4th. That, of course, is another novelty that's never occurred in a game that counts. And the Dodgers' first three pitchers-- Kenta Maeda, Yimi Garcia, and Kevin Quackenbush-- all allowed 0 hits, something that actually did occur last year in another Rich Hill game. On May 19, Hill left his start after two pitches with a blister, resulting in a "bullpen by committee" game; Scott Alexander, Pedro Baez, and Garcia then kept the Nationals hitless until the 6th.
February 27: Trailing 5-2 going to the bottom of the 9th, the Padres apparently decided, eh, why not. These games don't really mean anything, but let's see if we can't win this one anyway. Cue back-to-back two-out homers by Aderlin Rodriguez and Fernando Tatis (that's Junior) to tie the game. (For the record, the A-Rod and Tatis that everyone know did not play for the Rangers at the same time.)Alas, then Ty France popped one up to end the 9th, and at this point we're not even going to play a 10th just for fun. Everybody go home.
In the regular season, of course, they would play a 10th, at least until the next rules upheaval, but only twice in the regular season has San Diego ever hit back-to-back homers with two outs in the 9th. And neither of those were game-changers. On Opening Day 2010, Adrian Gonzalez and Kyle Blanks did it against Arizona, but the Padres still lost 6-3. The other pair was Graig Nettles and Steve Garvey in Montréal on May 26, 1986, in a game San Diego was already winning.
Honorable mention, at least in the weirdness department, to Yankees starter Chance Adams who faced six batters, got one of them out, and allowed all the others to score, culminating with a triple by Jeimer Candelario. The last Yankee starter with a line of ⅓ IP and 5+ ER in a game that counted was Alex Graman against the Rays on July 19, 2004. And the only one ever to do it against the Tigers was Waite Hoyt in 1923. Although that year turned out okay. So there's still a, um, chance.
February 28: Someone say "game-tying homer with two outs in the 9th"? Back in Clearwater, Darick Hall heard you. He took Cody Carroll deep, with Jake Schiener on first, to cause a 5-5 tie between the Orioles and Phillies. The Phils haven't hit a tying (not go-ahead) homer with two outs in the 9th since Former New Britain Rock Cat Ben Revere did it in Washington on September 5, 2014. The Twins (Joe Mauer in 2010!) are the only team to go longer without one. And that Phils homer hasn't been of the multi-run variety since John Mayberry took Huston Street deep at Coors Field on August 1, 2011.
This day's other oddities included a game-ending base on balls (a true "walk"-off) by the Royals' Bubba Starling, which Kansas City hasn't done in the regular season since Mike Moustakas drew one from Milwaukee's Jose Veras on June 13, 2012.
Sandy Alcantara of the Marlins managed to uncork not one, not two, but three wild pitches in an outing that lasted just two innings. (One of them scored a run.) Only two Marlins hurlers have ever done that when it counts: Brian Sanchez in 2010 and Andre Rienzo on August 3, 2015.
And Dustin Garneau of the Angels launched a pinch-hit grand slam off Texas's C.D. Pelham, a play the Angels haven't done in the championship season since Alberto Callaspo got hold of a Felix Hernandez pitch on May 26, 2012. The hitter for whom Garneau was pinching? The $430 million man, Mike Trout.
March 1: The calendar may change, but the Royals are back to touching the plate again. After Starling drew his game-winning walk as the team's last batter of February, Adalberto Mondesi was back in his leadoff spot as the Royals' first batter of March. So of course he begins the month with a solo homer.
There have been just 96 leadoff homers in the Royals' 50 regular seasons, and only three of them immediately followed a walkoff from the day before. (We did not check for off-days on this one because spring training.) Whit Merrifield did it August 24, 2017, after Eric Hosmer homered the night before; the other instances are Omar Moreno on September 5, 1985 (Pat Sheridan ROE), and Tom Poquette on June 20, 1977 (John Mayberry 2B). The only three Royals to hit a leadoff homer on the first day of a new month are Frank White (May 1979), Cesar Geronimo (May 1982), and Johnny Damon (September 1997).
The Blue Jays also started March with not one but two home runs, from Jonathan Davis and Lourdes Gurriel, despite the Braves later winning the game on a bounce-off (that's a game-ending wild pitch, if you're new to us). Toronto's ledger includes 130 leadoff home runs all-time, but only four that have been followed by another tater from the number-two hitter. Gurriel owns one of those as well; it happened last July 27 against Reynaldo Lopez of the White Sox (Curtis Granderson was the leadoff man).
March 2: The Rays seem to be in a perpetual state of "rebuilding", so it's appropriate that they might go to Lowe's. That's Brandon Lowe, who single-handedly guided them to a 6-5 win over Toronto on Saturday. Lowe brought Tampa Bay out of an early 3-0 hole with a single in the 3rd and a two-run double in the 5th. He then flipped the lead for good with a three-run jack in the top of the 7th. Count 'em, that's not just 6 RBI, but every run the Rays scored in the game. And have we mentioned Lowe was in the leadoff spot?
In their regular-season history, only 11 (Devil) Rays have ever posted a 6-RBI game, the most recent being Joey Butler in the 2015 season finale. None of them did it from the leadoff spot. And none of them did it while also accounting for every run the team scored in a game.
Honorable mention to the Rangers and Giants for playing 18 half-innings, sending 62 batters to the plate, and having none of them score. It turned out to be the only 0-0 tie of spring training, and there hasn't been one of those in the regular season since the Pirates and Cardinals weathered 5+ rainy innings on September 13, 1989.
March 3: Who needs that pesky middle of the order? Brett Gardner and Aaron Judge, batting one-two for the Yankees, each hit a pair of home runs as New York topped Detroit 7-1. In their entire history of games that count (regular- and postseason), the Yankees have never had a game where each of their top two batters had multiple homers. In the past eight seasons it's only happened once in all of MLB-- Josh Donaldson and Teoscar Hernandez for Toronto on September 26, 2017.
Meanwhile, in Sarasota, it was the bottom of the Orioles' order that caught our eye. Specifically, the DH'ing number-nine hitter Anthony Santander who collected 3 extra-base hits and 3 RBI. Baltimore's gotten that production from the nine-hole only five times since the move from St Louis, although J.J. Hardy (August 18, 2016) is one of those. And since the American League added the designated hitter in 1973, no regular-season DH, for any team, has ever batted ninth and posted that line.
March 4: You probably know that baseball set an all-time record last year with 5,585 regular-season home runs. Exactly 150 of those were of the leadoff variety. And while he didn't lead the majors in 2018, George Springer of the Astros did in 2017. Since Springer's debut on April 16, 2014, only Charlie Blackmon has more leadoff dingers (29 to 24), and a #BlackmonDinger doesn't really have that ring to it. So it was time for Springer to hit his first home run of the spring(-er), and of course it began Monday's split-squad game against the Mets. None of his 24 regular-season leadoff taters have come against the Mets, though he did hit two homers later in games in a Labor Day weekend series in 2017. Thanks to being in the AL now, Houston's last leadoff homer against the Mets was by Kaz Matsui off Pedro Martinez on August 1, 2008.
At the other extreme, the Cubs' Albert Almora also hit a leadoff homer on Monday against Cincinnati. Despite 46 starts at the top of the order last season, Almora has yet to begin a regular-season game with a round-tripper.
March 5: Speaking of starting early, the Twins erupted for two 1st-inning homers on Wednesday, which isn't unusual. And it's not too unusual that Eddie Rosario (24 HR last year) and Jake Cave (13 in 91 games) were the ones who hit them. But dive a bit deeper. Rosario batted cleanup. And his was a grand slam. Obviously the fourth batter of the game is the first one who's capable of hitting a slam, and the Twins haven't gotten such a homer in the regular season since their fourth-ever game as the Twins. Bob Allison went deep off Baltimore's Chuck Estrada on April 16, 1961. They didn't open Metropolitan Stadium for another five days.
Cave, for his part, wasn't the batter after Rosario. Or even two later. He was the number-nine hitter. And his was a three-run shot to cap an 8-run inning after Adam Kolarek had already been knocked off the mound. The last time Minnesota got a 1st-inning home run from the nine-hole was when Steve Brye hit one at the aforementioned "Met" on July 27, 1973, against Oakland.
Mets Gonna Met Award: Also on Tuesday, the pitching staff of Jason Vargas, Robert Gsellman, and friends allowed 0 earned runs against the Marlins. The Mets lost. Because they committed, let's count along, five errors, including two by Luis Guillorme, which led to three unearned runs. The Mets haven't had a game where they gave up 0 ER and lost since a 2-0 decision against Washington on September 14, 2011. And they haven't committed five errors in a game since a 9-6 loss to the Marlins on September 1 (welcome, callups!) of 2014.
March 6: If the Brewers want to adopt this "opener" craze, might we suggest Jeremy Jeffress. He's a reliever anyway, and on Wednesday he was supposed to make his spring debut in the 4th inning after Jhoulys Chacin threw the first three. He technically did start the 4th inning. However, in an outing that would have landed him in the "opener" hall of fame, Jeffress threw only two (or three, depending on which report you read) pitches to Eduardo Escobar before coming out of the game with "shoulder weakness" and being shut down again. Clayton Andrews had to come in and give up a single to Escobar, meaning Jeffress technically doesn't even get credit for facing a batter.
No starter in Brewers history has ever faced exactly 0 batters, largely because the rules require a starter to finish at least 1 plate appearance unless he "sustains injury or illness". But only three relievers in Brewers history have ever been listed in a regular-season boxscore without either facing a batter or retiring an inherited runner to end an inning. The only one of those three to throw a pitch was Mike Myers, who replaced Steve Woodard in mid-AB on April 3, 1998, and completed a walk to Edgar Renteria of the Marlins. The other two were announced into the game and started warming up, but rain picked up before they ever got to throw a pitch and the games were both called. Those lucky winners were Frank Linzy against the White Sox on June 16, 1973, and Ken Sanders at Kansas City on August 7, 1971.
March 7: The Royals may or may not have had another walkoff (spoiler alert, Emilio Bonifacio homer), but they had their moment already. Let's give this one to Pittsburgh's Cole Tucker, who mashed the Pirates' fifth home run of the game for a walkoff win over Baltimore. As it happens, all five of those homers were solo shots, and that accounted for all five Pirates runs in the 5-4 victory. One, the Pirates have never in their history had a walkoff win over the Orioles in a game that counted (including their two World Series matchups). And two, only twice in their history have the Pirates scored 5+ runs in a regular-season game with all of them coming on solo homers. They lost the more recent of those, April 9, 2014, when Travis Snider, Russell Martin, and Pedro Alvarez took advantage of the wind at Wrigley. And on May 7, 1973, the top five batters in their order-- Dave Cash, Manny Sanguillen, Al Oliver, Willie Stargell, and Richie Hebner-- all hit solo shots for a 5-4 win at Dodger Stadium.
And if you'd like a taste of how the Orioles will be this year, consider that Yefry Ramirez gave up the first four of those homers before Branden Kline surrendered the walkoff. Dylan Bundy memorably gave up four taters before recording an out in a game against the Royals last May, but no O's reliever has done it since Brian Bass versus the Rays on April 12, 2009.
March 8: Five homers giveth, five homers taketh away. Instead of hitting them, the Pirates allowed five longballs to Toronto in getting shut out 11-0. The Jays certainly do enjoy their home runs thanks to Rogers Centre, but they've never hit five in a regular-season game against the Pirates, home or away, and they've never beaten the Pirates by an 11-run margin (their largest is actually just 6).
Honorable mention to Cardinals pitcher Daniel Ponce de Leon (so renamed by MLB this year to have spaces in it) for his 4-inning save in a split-squad game with Houston. "Ponce", who famously stirred the grave of Bumpus Jones by flirting with a no-hitter in his MLB debut last year, pulled off a feat no Cardinal has accomplished in the regular season in two decades. Their last 4-inning save was by Kent Bottenfield in a 2-0 win over Arizona on June 14, 1998.
March 9: Some days we have to go hunting. And some days it falls right in our lap. Anytime two teams combine for 32 runs, 28 hits, 9 errors, and a 17-15 final score, it's making our post. It just is. Especially when it comes from those two AL East powerhouses, the... uh... *checks notes* Orioles and Rays?
Yep, the Orioles hung an 8-run 2nd on Andrew Kittredge, although only one of the runs was earned thanks to all those errors. The Rays responded with six of their own in the first two frames, and away we go. 12-6 when Ryan Mountcastle homers in the 4th. Austin Hays makes it 14-6. Rays say 14-9. And onward, with the 32nd and final run coming on a Martin Cervenka homer in the 9th.
In the past three regular seasons, the Orioles have only reached 17 runs in a game once-- and it, too, was against the Rays. That was last May 13, though Tampa Bay didn't exactly reach 15 on their side. They scored 1. The Rays have never scored 15+ in a regular-season game and lost; in fact, no team's done it since the Rangers dropped a 19-17 decision to Boston on August 12, 2008. (If you're thinking of the 18-17 Rockies game with the Chris Iannetta walkoff, that was a month earlier.)
Now let's dole out those errors. The aforementioned Martin Cervenka committed three of them by himself, including a catcher's interference. And that's only half of Baltimore's total. Your final scoreboard totals: 17-15-6 over 15-13-3. There hasn't been a linescore of 17-15-6 in a real game since at least 1905 (before that we start losing the "hits" column, and plus different writers could score the same game differently back then), although we did find a 17-15-5 posted by the Tigers on August 14, 1929. 15-13-3 was a little easier to find; for that we "only" had to go back to a Reds win at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh on September 27, 1941, the next-to-last day of that season.
And we know you're wondering about a 17-15 final in general. There have been four of those in major-league history: The old NL Washington Senators beat the Braves on July 24, 1893; the Phillies beat Chicago by the same count the following year; and the other Philadelphia team, the A's, beat Cleveland in June 1925. The most recent 17-15 final was by the current Washington NL team, then the Montréal Expos, again over the Cubs on September 24, 1985.
And in case you missed it over the offseason, we've added a feature to the bar at the top of the page entitled "Every Score Ever". It won't give you those other three 17-15 games, but it'll give you the most recent occurrence (in this case 1985) and usually a link if you ever hit upon a strange one. Go play around with that while we finish Part 2.
Spring training doesn't count. We know that, the players know that, MLB knows that. For many players it's an audition not for the major-league club, but to see where in the minor-league system they'll be placed. So statistically it's not significant at all. But because all the games truly are exhibitions-- and most of them are played like it-- they're also overflowing with wackiness that you wouldn't otherwise see in the regular season.
Unfortunately, because it doesn't count, that wackiness is not readily researched on our favorite sites like Baseball Reference or Retrosheet or FanGraphs or even MLB's own site. So we play a little game of "what if". This strange thing, that we know is made possible mostly because the games don't count... what if that were to happen in a real regular-season game that does count? Because that we can search. And do. So we've picked one (sometimes two) of the weirdest boxscore lines and quicky happenings from each day and figured out just how much weirder they would be. Let's play.
February 21: The Mariners and Athletics were all set to get everything started (sound familiar?) in the lone game of the day at Hohokam Stadium. Seattle's Shed Long hit a leadoff double against Nick Blackburn and later scored. With one out in the 2nd, Long made another, um, long trip to second base with an RBI double that scored Dylan Moore. And then it rained. And kept raining. And after just 1½ innings we said forget it. So neither of those doubles counts (and of course it's spring training anyway). But the last batter to open a team's season with a leadoff double, and then hit another double his second time up, was Houston's Dexter Fowler in 2014. Aaron Miles of the Rockies did it in 2005. No Mariner has ever done it. Still.
February 22: Okay, let's try this again. This time the Mariners were the home team at Peoria Stadium, and this time we played nine whole innings. Dee Gordon walked, stole a base, and scored a run his first time up, so, yeah, he's in midseason form. Let's put in Tim Lopes to hit a double and 2 singles instead. In the regular season, only two Mariners have ever had 3 hits, including an extra-base knock, and 2 runs scored in a game they didn't start. They were Leon Roberts against the Yankees on May 7, 1979; and Ben Gamel at Coors Field on May 30, 2017.
Honorable mention to the Tigers for collecting 8 doubles in a 13-2 beatdown of Southeastern University, who was happy just to be nominated. (Not to be confused with Nova Southeastern U in Davie, as we almost did.) The Tigers haven't had an 8-double regular-season game since July 10, 2014, in Kansas City. And they haven't had seven different players with one (Ronny Rodriguez had two) since beating the Twins 18-2 at the Metrodome on July 15, 1982.
February 23: It's not hurricane season yet, but Roger Dean Stadium in Jupiter got hit hard. In an always-quirky, can-only-happen-in-spring-training game between two teams that share a stadium, the Cardinals piled up 20 hits on the way to an 11-1 victory. They haven't had a 20-hit game in the regular season since a 10-6 slugfest at Wrigley on July 14, 2013. The only team to go longer without doing it is the Mariners (May 2012). Two Miami pitchers, R.J. Alvarez and Brett Graves, each gave up 6 hits and 5 runs while getting only 2 outs, something no two Marlins have ever done in the same game when it counts.
Meanwhile, the Gulf coast felt almost no effects of this outburst, as the Pirates collected only three hits in their game with the Phillies-- and won it, 3-2. The last time Pittsburgh won a game with 3 or fewer hits is one you might remember-- "The Rich Hill Game" on August 23, 2017, when Josh Harrison's walkoff homer in the 10th broke up the no-hitter and the shutout.
February 24: Sometimes those hurricanes take 24 hours to work their way across Florida. So this was the day Bradenton got slammed-- specifically a walkoff grand slam by the Pirates' KeBryan Hayes. Pittsburgh hasn't hit a walkoff slam in the regular season since Rob Mackowiak took Joe Borowski of the Cubs deep on May 28, 2004. The only team to go longer without a walkoff slam is the Giants, their last being by Bonds against the Dodgers. Bobby Bonds. In nineteen seventy-three!
Hayes had also homered in the 6th inning of Sunday's contest, something that has never happened in Pirates regular-season history (player's second HR of game is a walkoff slam).
Honorable mention, in another game, to Angels pitcher Alex Klonowski for allowing 4 home runs-- in relief. That's only happened three times in team history, and one of them was last April, by Daniel Bard against the Red Sox. (Also Alan Fowlkes in 1985 and Paul Foytack in 1963.) And two of Klonowski's dingers were to the same batter, Dodgers outfielder DJ Peters. No Angels reliever had served two longballs to the same hitter since Wade LeBlanc, throwing 6+ innings after Garrett Richards got "obliterated", did so to Oakland's Josh Donaldson on May 30, 2014.
February 25: Most spring-training stats are pretty useless, but this is especially true of pitching lines when the strategy is less about winning and more about evaluating players and getting them game experience. But one stood out on this random Monday. Ben Taylor of the Indians faced all nine Texas batters in their game at Goodyear Ballpark. The good news is, two of them struck out. The bad news is that the other seven all scored as the Rangers cruised to an 11-5 win. It's even more impressive that none of the seven hits against Taylor was a homer. Because the last regular-season game where a Cleveland pitcher did that (7+ ER in < 1 IP without also giving up a homer) was on September 11, 1979, when starter Dan Spillner posted that line against the Tigers.
Honorable mention to the Phillies for collecting 12 runs on 13 hits in beating the Tigers. Only one of those hits went for extra bases, and that was a measly double by Luke Williams. The Phillies haven't scored 12+ runs in a regular-season game where they had 0 or 1 extra-base hit since beating the Astros 12-2 on May 16, 1976 (the lone XBH was a Garry Maddox triple).
February 26: If you wondered what it would look like if all 30 teams went to this "opener" strategy started by the Rays last year, well, look no further than Tuesday. A whopping twelve starting pitchers left their games with a no-hitter still intact, most after 1 inning or part of the 2nd. In three games both starters did it. That's not because they're all really doing the "opener" thing (please no!), it's because, as mentioned, the goal right now is not to eat up innings, it's to get as many people as possible into each game. (You'd be correct if you said 12 no-hit starts has never happened in the regular season. The most we found on any one day was four.)
In the Houston/Miami tilt, the first two pitchers for both teams allowed 0 hits, the first knock finally coming from Neil Walker in the bottom of the 4th. That, of course, is another novelty that's never occurred in a game that counts. And the Dodgers' first three pitchers-- Kenta Maeda, Yimi Garcia, and Kevin Quackenbush-- all allowed 0 hits, something that actually did occur last year in another Rich Hill game. On May 19, Hill left his start after two pitches with a blister, resulting in a "bullpen by committee" game; Scott Alexander, Pedro Baez, and Garcia then kept the Nationals hitless until the 6th.
February 27: Trailing 5-2 going to the bottom of the 9th, the Padres apparently decided, eh, why not. These games don't really mean anything, but let's see if we can't win this one anyway. Cue back-to-back two-out homers by Aderlin Rodriguez and Fernando Tatis (that's Junior) to tie the game. (For the record, the A-Rod and Tatis that everyone know did not play for the Rangers at the same time.)Alas, then Ty France popped one up to end the 9th, and at this point we're not even going to play a 10th just for fun. Everybody go home.
In the regular season, of course, they would play a 10th, at least until the next rules upheaval, but only twice in the regular season has San Diego ever hit back-to-back homers with two outs in the 9th. And neither of those were game-changers. On Opening Day 2010, Adrian Gonzalez and Kyle Blanks did it against Arizona, but the Padres still lost 6-3. The other pair was Graig Nettles and Steve Garvey in Montréal on May 26, 1986, in a game San Diego was already winning.
Honorable mention, at least in the weirdness department, to Yankees starter Chance Adams who faced six batters, got one of them out, and allowed all the others to score, culminating with a triple by Jeimer Candelario. The last Yankee starter with a line of ⅓ IP and 5+ ER in a game that counted was Alex Graman against the Rays on July 19, 2004. And the only one ever to do it against the Tigers was Waite Hoyt in 1923. Although that year turned out okay. So there's still a, um, chance.
February 28: Someone say "game-tying homer with two outs in the 9th"? Back in Clearwater, Darick Hall heard you. He took Cody Carroll deep, with Jake Schiener on first, to cause a 5-5 tie between the Orioles and Phillies. The Phils haven't hit a tying (not go-ahead) homer with two outs in the 9th since Former New Britain Rock Cat Ben Revere did it in Washington on September 5, 2014. The Twins (Joe Mauer in 2010!) are the only team to go longer without one. And that Phils homer hasn't been of the multi-run variety since John Mayberry took Huston Street deep at Coors Field on August 1, 2011.
This day's other oddities included a game-ending base on balls (a true "walk"-off) by the Royals' Bubba Starling, which Kansas City hasn't done in the regular season since Mike Moustakas drew one from Milwaukee's Jose Veras on June 13, 2012.
Sandy Alcantara of the Marlins managed to uncork not one, not two, but three wild pitches in an outing that lasted just two innings. (One of them scored a run.) Only two Marlins hurlers have ever done that when it counts: Brian Sanchez in 2010 and Andre Rienzo on August 3, 2015.
And Dustin Garneau of the Angels launched a pinch-hit grand slam off Texas's C.D. Pelham, a play the Angels haven't done in the championship season since Alberto Callaspo got hold of a Felix Hernandez pitch on May 26, 2012. The hitter for whom Garneau was pinching? The $430 million man, Mike Trout.
March 1: The calendar may change, but the Royals are back to touching the plate again. After Starling drew his game-winning walk as the team's last batter of February, Adalberto Mondesi was back in his leadoff spot as the Royals' first batter of March. So of course he begins the month with a solo homer.
There have been just 96 leadoff homers in the Royals' 50 regular seasons, and only three of them immediately followed a walkoff from the day before. (We did not check for off-days on this one because spring training.) Whit Merrifield did it August 24, 2017, after Eric Hosmer homered the night before; the other instances are Omar Moreno on September 5, 1985 (Pat Sheridan ROE), and Tom Poquette on June 20, 1977 (John Mayberry 2B). The only three Royals to hit a leadoff homer on the first day of a new month are Frank White (May 1979), Cesar Geronimo (May 1982), and Johnny Damon (September 1997).
The Blue Jays also started March with not one but two home runs, from Jonathan Davis and Lourdes Gurriel, despite the Braves later winning the game on a bounce-off (that's a game-ending wild pitch, if you're new to us). Toronto's ledger includes 130 leadoff home runs all-time, but only four that have been followed by another tater from the number-two hitter. Gurriel owns one of those as well; it happened last July 27 against Reynaldo Lopez of the White Sox (Curtis Granderson was the leadoff man).
March 2: The Rays seem to be in a perpetual state of "rebuilding", so it's appropriate that they might go to Lowe's. That's Brandon Lowe, who single-handedly guided them to a 6-5 win over Toronto on Saturday. Lowe brought Tampa Bay out of an early 3-0 hole with a single in the 3rd and a two-run double in the 5th. He then flipped the lead for good with a three-run jack in the top of the 7th. Count 'em, that's not just 6 RBI, but every run the Rays scored in the game. And have we mentioned Lowe was in the leadoff spot?
In their regular-season history, only 11 (Devil) Rays have ever posted a 6-RBI game, the most recent being Joey Butler in the 2015 season finale. None of them did it from the leadoff spot. And none of them did it while also accounting for every run the team scored in a game.
Honorable mention to the Rangers and Giants for playing 18 half-innings, sending 62 batters to the plate, and having none of them score. It turned out to be the only 0-0 tie of spring training, and there hasn't been one of those in the regular season since the Pirates and Cardinals weathered 5+ rainy innings on September 13, 1989.
March 3: Who needs that pesky middle of the order? Brett Gardner and Aaron Judge, batting one-two for the Yankees, each hit a pair of home runs as New York topped Detroit 7-1. In their entire history of games that count (regular- and postseason), the Yankees have never had a game where each of their top two batters had multiple homers. In the past eight seasons it's only happened once in all of MLB-- Josh Donaldson and Teoscar Hernandez for Toronto on September 26, 2017.
Meanwhile, in Sarasota, it was the bottom of the Orioles' order that caught our eye. Specifically, the DH'ing number-nine hitter Anthony Santander who collected 3 extra-base hits and 3 RBI. Baltimore's gotten that production from the nine-hole only five times since the move from St Louis, although J.J. Hardy (August 18, 2016) is one of those. And since the American League added the designated hitter in 1973, no regular-season DH, for any team, has ever batted ninth and posted that line.
March 4: You probably know that baseball set an all-time record last year with 5,585 regular-season home runs. Exactly 150 of those were of the leadoff variety. And while he didn't lead the majors in 2018, George Springer of the Astros did in 2017. Since Springer's debut on April 16, 2014, only Charlie Blackmon has more leadoff dingers (29 to 24), and a #BlackmonDinger doesn't really have that ring to it. So it was time for Springer to hit his first home run of the spring(-er), and of course it began Monday's split-squad game against the Mets. None of his 24 regular-season leadoff taters have come against the Mets, though he did hit two homers later in games in a Labor Day weekend series in 2017. Thanks to being in the AL now, Houston's last leadoff homer against the Mets was by Kaz Matsui off Pedro Martinez on August 1, 2008.
At the other extreme, the Cubs' Albert Almora also hit a leadoff homer on Monday against Cincinnati. Despite 46 starts at the top of the order last season, Almora has yet to begin a regular-season game with a round-tripper.
March 5: Speaking of starting early, the Twins erupted for two 1st-inning homers on Wednesday, which isn't unusual. And it's not too unusual that Eddie Rosario (24 HR last year) and Jake Cave (13 in 91 games) were the ones who hit them. But dive a bit deeper. Rosario batted cleanup. And his was a grand slam. Obviously the fourth batter of the game is the first one who's capable of hitting a slam, and the Twins haven't gotten such a homer in the regular season since their fourth-ever game as the Twins. Bob Allison went deep off Baltimore's Chuck Estrada on April 16, 1961. They didn't open Metropolitan Stadium for another five days.
Cave, for his part, wasn't the batter after Rosario. Or even two later. He was the number-nine hitter. And his was a three-run shot to cap an 8-run inning after Adam Kolarek had already been knocked off the mound. The last time Minnesota got a 1st-inning home run from the nine-hole was when Steve Brye hit one at the aforementioned "Met" on July 27, 1973, against Oakland.
Mets Gonna Met Award: Also on Tuesday, the pitching staff of Jason Vargas, Robert Gsellman, and friends allowed 0 earned runs against the Marlins. The Mets lost. Because they committed, let's count along, five errors, including two by Luis Guillorme, which led to three unearned runs. The Mets haven't had a game where they gave up 0 ER and lost since a 2-0 decision against Washington on September 14, 2011. And they haven't committed five errors in a game since a 9-6 loss to the Marlins on September 1 (welcome, callups!) of 2014.
March 6: If the Brewers want to adopt this "opener" craze, might we suggest Jeremy Jeffress. He's a reliever anyway, and on Wednesday he was supposed to make his spring debut in the 4th inning after Jhoulys Chacin threw the first three. He technically did start the 4th inning. However, in an outing that would have landed him in the "opener" hall of fame, Jeffress threw only two (or three, depending on which report you read) pitches to Eduardo Escobar before coming out of the game with "shoulder weakness" and being shut down again. Clayton Andrews had to come in and give up a single to Escobar, meaning Jeffress technically doesn't even get credit for facing a batter.
No starter in Brewers history has ever faced exactly 0 batters, largely because the rules require a starter to finish at least 1 plate appearance unless he "sustains injury or illness". But only three relievers in Brewers history have ever been listed in a regular-season boxscore without either facing a batter or retiring an inherited runner to end an inning. The only one of those three to throw a pitch was Mike Myers, who replaced Steve Woodard in mid-AB on April 3, 1998, and completed a walk to Edgar Renteria of the Marlins. The other two were announced into the game and started warming up, but rain picked up before they ever got to throw a pitch and the games were both called. Those lucky winners were Frank Linzy against the White Sox on June 16, 1973, and Ken Sanders at Kansas City on August 7, 1971.
March 7: The Royals may or may not have had another walkoff (spoiler alert, Emilio Bonifacio homer), but they had their moment already. Let's give this one to Pittsburgh's Cole Tucker, who mashed the Pirates' fifth home run of the game for a walkoff win over Baltimore. As it happens, all five of those homers were solo shots, and that accounted for all five Pirates runs in the 5-4 victory. One, the Pirates have never in their history had a walkoff win over the Orioles in a game that counted (including their two World Series matchups). And two, only twice in their history have the Pirates scored 5+ runs in a regular-season game with all of them coming on solo homers. They lost the more recent of those, April 9, 2014, when Travis Snider, Russell Martin, and Pedro Alvarez took advantage of the wind at Wrigley. And on May 7, 1973, the top five batters in their order-- Dave Cash, Manny Sanguillen, Al Oliver, Willie Stargell, and Richie Hebner-- all hit solo shots for a 5-4 win at Dodger Stadium.
And if you'd like a taste of how the Orioles will be this year, consider that Yefry Ramirez gave up the first four of those homers before Branden Kline surrendered the walkoff. Dylan Bundy memorably gave up four taters before recording an out in a game against the Royals last May, but no O's reliever has done it since Brian Bass versus the Rays on April 12, 2009.
March 8: Five homers giveth, five homers taketh away. Instead of hitting them, the Pirates allowed five longballs to Toronto in getting shut out 11-0. The Jays certainly do enjoy their home runs thanks to Rogers Centre, but they've never hit five in a regular-season game against the Pirates, home or away, and they've never beaten the Pirates by an 11-run margin (their largest is actually just 6).
Honorable mention to Cardinals pitcher Daniel Ponce de Leon (so renamed by MLB this year to have spaces in it) for his 4-inning save in a split-squad game with Houston. "Ponce", who famously stirred the grave of Bumpus Jones by flirting with a no-hitter in his MLB debut last year, pulled off a feat no Cardinal has accomplished in the regular season in two decades. Their last 4-inning save was by Kent Bottenfield in a 2-0 win over Arizona on June 14, 1998.
March 9: Some days we have to go hunting. And some days it falls right in our lap. Anytime two teams combine for 32 runs, 28 hits, 9 errors, and a 17-15 final score, it's making our post. It just is. Especially when it comes from those two AL East powerhouses, the... uh... *checks notes* Orioles and Rays?
Yep, the Orioles hung an 8-run 2nd on Andrew Kittredge, although only one of the runs was earned thanks to all those errors. The Rays responded with six of their own in the first two frames, and away we go. 12-6 when Ryan Mountcastle homers in the 4th. Austin Hays makes it 14-6. Rays say 14-9. And onward, with the 32nd and final run coming on a Martin Cervenka homer in the 9th.
In the past three regular seasons, the Orioles have only reached 17 runs in a game once-- and it, too, was against the Rays. That was last May 13, though Tampa Bay didn't exactly reach 15 on their side. They scored 1. The Rays have never scored 15+ in a regular-season game and lost; in fact, no team's done it since the Rangers dropped a 19-17 decision to Boston on August 12, 2008. (If you're thinking of the 18-17 Rockies game with the Chris Iannetta walkoff, that was a month earlier.)
Now let's dole out those errors. The aforementioned Martin Cervenka committed three of them by himself, including a catcher's interference. And that's only half of Baltimore's total. Your final scoreboard totals: 17-15-6 over 15-13-3. There hasn't been a linescore of 17-15-6 in a real game since at least 1905 (before that we start losing the "hits" column, and plus different writers could score the same game differently back then), although we did find a 17-15-5 posted by the Tigers on August 14, 1929. 15-13-3 was a little easier to find; for that we "only" had to go back to a Reds win at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh on September 27, 1941, the next-to-last day of that season.
And we know you're wondering about a 17-15 final in general. There have been four of those in major-league history: The old NL Washington Senators beat the Braves on July 24, 1893; the Phillies beat Chicago by the same count the following year; and the other Philadelphia team, the A's, beat Cleveland in June 1925. The most recent 17-15 final was by the current Washington NL team, then the Montréal Expos, again over the Cubs on September 24, 1985.
And in case you missed it over the offseason, we've added a feature to the bar at the top of the page entitled "Every Score Ever". It won't give you those other three 17-15 games, but it'll give you the most recent occurrence (in this case 1985) and usually a link if you ever hit upon a strange one. Go play around with that while we finish Part 2.
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