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.