Sampler Platter

Told you this season was gonna be weird.

This week, however, we mean our "normal weird"-- the stuff that has always caught our eye when it happened in prior seasons, the things that you know as soon as they happen that they're going to get a mention in this post. Except this week they all happened together.

Catch Us If You Can

We knew pretty early this week that the Yankees would find their way in here, when one of our favorite plays happened not once but twice in the 1st inning of Wednesday's game. That play is the old "catcher's interference" and it confuses fans, broadcasters, and sometimes even scorekeepers alike who wonder why this batter is suddenly getting sent to first base on what appeared to be Strike 2. A CI is usually called when the catcher moves forward too early and the batter ends up clipping his glove while swinging. Sometimes it's that the catcher sets up too close to the plate, sometimes he sees a runner trying to steal and gets jumpy, and sometimes the batter is just one of those people who stands way back in the box and habitually swings late. Jacoby Ellsbury may know something about that last part. It's such a unique occurrence that it has its own special section (6.01(c)) in the rule book, and lest you think we suddenly have our NFL hat on, it's one of the two infractions in baseball that can be declined by the offense. (Trivia question: What's the other?)

Anyway, back to Wednesday and our hastily-arranged two-game "series" between the Yankees and Orioles. It didn't really matter where Orioles catcher Pedro Severino set up when DJ LeMahieu cranked a leadoff homer, the first one the Yankees have hit in Baltimore since Brett Gardner took Chris Tillman deep on May 30, 2017.

However, second batter Aaron Judge rolled a grounder to short but took Severino's glove off his hand while doing so. Halfway through the play everyone just stops, except for Judge who trots on to first. That was the first 1st-inning CI call against the Orioles since September 30, 2016, and of course the batter that day was Jacoby Ellsbury. Even the Orioles broadcasters commented that the CI call "doesn't happen a lot".

Oh really? Two batters later Giancarlo Stanton fouls off a 2-2 pitch from Asher Wojciechowski and clips Severino's glove in the process. Interference again. Judge, who was still at first from the other call, gets sent down to second. And we have the first known instance in MLB history of a catcher committing (or a team receiving) two CIs in the same inning. The asterisk here is that the American and National Leagues (back when they were, A, separate, and B, the official stats source for themselves) did not report CIs consistently until the early 1960s. Because it's charged as an error, some of the older ones are likely just lumped in with other fielding errors and lost to history. But if it seems unlikely, it probably is. Because the Orioles hadn't even committed two CIs in a game since Dave Skaggs did it against the Mariners on July 24, 1979. The Yankees last received two in a game on July 28, 2015, at Texas, and naturally that has Jacoby Ellsbury written all over it again. (In 2017 he passed Pete Rose to become the all-time leader among (known) CI recipients.)

As mentioned, if you're operating a scoreboard at home it shows up like a "regular" E2. But if you're trying to keep a boxscore at home, the CI can be one of the most confounding plays to deal with. The theory, á la Stanton's foul ball, is that the plate appearance never really ended. We have no idea whether, absent the interference, Stanton would have homered or popped up to the infield. So you can assume absolutely nothing. The batter does not get an at-bat, but neither does the pitcher get credit for an assumed out, as usually happens on other fielding errors. Just because Judge and Stanton got on base due to errors (with a strikeout in between), you can't say the inning "should be" over, because it's equally possible they would have reached anyway. So if they later score, their runs are unearned, but any subsequent runs still count against the pitcher because in reality there's still only 1 out. We know, it confuses us too sometimes. But there is good news: If you are in fact scoring at home, you get to practice this scenario, because the exact same treatment applies to that "free runner" who gets placed at second to start an extra inning.


Trivia answer: For simplicity's sake, we usually say the answer is a balk. In reality it's any "illegal pitching action", explicitly applied to things like doctoring the ball. If you can rope Michael Pineda's pine-tar ball into center for a double, then more power to you, and you get to take the double if you want. But also true of a balk; most of the time the pitcher stops (and protests loudly) when the call is made, but if he goes through with the pitch and the batter hits it, the offense can take that play instead. Now you know. Amaze your friends at the bar. Actually, never mind.


Closer To Free

Oh yeah, speaking of that "free runner" who gets placed at second to start an extra inning. As mentioned last week, we've been dealing with this in the minors and some independent leagues as far back as 2014, so the novelty has kinda worn off. And it being a brand-new "feature", we can't really dump a bunch of "first time since" notes about it. We'll let others (such as Jon Sciambi on ESPN radio) point out the first-ever "two-run leadoff homer" in major-league history. But the new rule was designed just to get teams to score one run, because so many of them can't (looking at you, AL West). It's not supposed to end up in a 6.

The Padres choked away a 6-1 lead against the Giants on Thursday, completing the comeback when Mike Yastrzemski collected his fourth career triple (55 more and he'll catch Grandpa!) in the bottom of the 8th. Trent Grisham, who came up in multiple notes this week, trotted out to second as the free runner in the 10th. He promptly trotted home on Tommy Pham's single. And then it got interesting. Although, as discussed above, Grisham's run doesn't count against Tyler Rogers' stats, the other five do. He hit Jurickson Profar. Greg Garcia singled in two runs, the third pinch hitter in Padres history with a multi-run single in extras-- and all of them have been against the Giants. Justin Huber did it in May 2008 and Keith Lockhart hit one in 2003.

Meanwhile, Ty France brought home Profar. Austin Hedges is trying to give up an out, because the Giants don't have one yet, and for some reason they throw home to try and keep this a 4-run game? Garcia beats that throw and ends Rogers' night, but by the time it's over the Padres lead 12-6 and have become the first team ever to record a 6-run extra inning at whatever the Giants' ballpark is called this month. The Pirates had been the last to do it at Candlestick, on September 15, 1996, and their 6 came in handy because they gave back 4 of them and hung on 11-9. The Padres had hung only one extra-inning 6 in the past quarter-century, that being last April in Washington. Prior to that they hung upside-down 6's (or are they right-side-up 9's?) in both the 1995 and 1994 seasons.


I Second That Emotion

As we mentioned, that new "free runner" rule is supposed to increase the likelihood of teams scoring and ending the game instead of just hanging zeroes for hour after hour. But it isn't foolproof.

You probably heard a little something-something about the Dodgers/Astros series this week. But after their little dustup on Tuesday, the teams (minus Dodgers manager Dave Roberts) were back it again Wednesday. Corey Seager opened the scoring with a 2nd-inning homer. Michael Brantley answered that with a ground-rule double to start the Astros' half, and we were stuck at 1-1. For seven more innings. Oh, we got a handful of runners to second base in that time, but of course none of them could be bothered to score. And even though it's an interleague game, it's being played in an AL West stadium, so bring on the new rule. Rather than limping that runner around to second base with 2 outs (usually by walking people, just to add to the excitement) and stranding him there, let's put someone on second base with 0 outs and see if that will help. Nnnnnope.

The 10th inning featured six batters, none of whom got the ball out of the infield. In the 11th Mookie Betts finally connects for an RBI double, but the Astros get a free runner too, and wouldn't you know it, Carlos Correa picks this moment to drop a single in front of Betts in right field. The 12th gets us only another meaningless walk. But remember Jon Sciambi's call of that first-ever 2-run leadoff homer? That dinger belongs to Edwin Rios in the top of the 13th and ultimately brings the longest game of this short season to an end. Thanks to Max Muncy, we have to specify a regular-season game when we tell you that the last Dodger to homer in the 13th or later was Yasmani Grandal's walkoff against the Diamondbacks on May 3, 2015. And Rios joins a pretty fun list of Dodgers to homer against Houston that late in a game; the others are Darryl Strawberry (1991), Steve Yeager (1983), and Ron Fairly (1965).

And if you're wondering (and since we looked it up), the longest games in the minors under the free-runner rule have both gone 15 innings. The single-A team in Charleston, W.Va., showed its Power with a walkoff against Augusta on May 3, 2018; and the other one was just Nuts. Those are the Modesto (Calif.) Nuts who lost to Inland Empire on July 15 of last season after the teams traded runs in the 11th, 12th, 13th, and 14th. (There was also a 17-inning playoff game in the Appalachian League last year, but those are played without the free-runner rule. For now.)


Hit Me With Your Best Shot

Now back to that Tuesday game between the Dodgers and Astros. That game also featured one of our all-time favorite plays, one that involves a player getting hit with a baseball. And nope, not the one that made the news; after all, no one actually got hit, and no one got ejected (which might have made the cut). Instead it was one inning later, in the 7th, and we're talking about baserunners getting hit with balls. It's another situation that doesn't happen much, which is possibly why it also has its own mention in the rule book.

That "entitled to first base" part means that the batter gets credited with a single (again by rule), even though the defense recorded an out on a preceding runner. In most cases that ends up getting scored as a fielder's choice of some type, but again, since the ball is dead when it hits the runner, we can't assume the defense would have actually made the play and/or whether the ball would have gotten through for a single anyway. If you're scoring at home, the putout gets credited to the closest fielder, whether he actually touched the ball or not. (Bonus trivia question: What's the other play where a putout goes to the closest fielder?)

So with this big setup, you probably know that this happened in Tuesday's Dodgers/Astros game, but for even more fun, it happened with the bases loaded. So a single should force in a run, right? Ah, but the preceding runners advance only if they are forced to. And once the ball hits Chris Taylor and he's out, that force is removed. Corey Seager can replace him at first without Mookie Betts (at third) or Cody Bellinger (at second) having to move up. So you get the very rare bases-loaded single without an RBI. Want to know the last one of those? It was June 8, 2015, when Juan Uribe, two weeks into his two-month stint with Atlanta after being traded from the Dodgers, plunked Freddie Freeman while the latter was running from second to third. That also ended the 7th inning, and the Padres wound up forcing extras and winning that game. (What could have been.)

The Dodgers' last "HBB" (as we score it, for Hit by Batted Ball) was on September 15, 2018, when Yasmani Grandal nailed Max Muncy. And since we didn't mention it last week, Seager's play on Tuesday was already the second HBB of this short season. The Dodgers were involved in the first one as well, on the other side. On Opening Night against the Giants, Pablo Sandoval sent a ground ball right into Mike Yastrzemski between first and second (and the putout actually went to the third baseman, because The Shift Is Still A Thing). The last time the Giants pulled off such a plunking was back on June 13, 2013, when Joaquin Arias took out Hunter Pence against the Pirates.


Bonus trivia answer: When one runner passes another on the basepaths. The trail guy is out for passing the runner in front of him and getting the line out of order, but no fielder actually has to touch him or the ball for this to happen. As a result the putout is assigned to the nearest fielder by rule, basically because it has to go to someone.


We almost used this song as the title of the post. If catcher's interference calls are whiskers on kittens, then we definitely have a few (though not all) of our favorite things. We still await the first "Kernels trifecta" by a pitcher this year-- a wild pitch, a hit batter, and a balk in the same game. Fingers crossed. Intermission!


The Hits Just Keep On Comin'

Remember that Yankees/Orioles game with the two CIs in the 1st inning? Well, those two teams played again on Thursday, And it's going to be almost impossible to top something that hasn't happened, well, ever. But that 1st inning also brought us two of something when John Means, who we did not know made 27 starts for the Orioles last year, plunked both Aaron Judge and Gleyber Torres in the span of three pitches. (It's okay, we're sure he didn't Means to. Don't @ us.) Mark Teixeira and Russell Martin were the last two Yankees to receive that gift in the 1st inning of the same game, doing so on June 7, 2011, from Jon Lester. And Thursday's plunkings just made it inevitable that Luke Voit would hit his first career grand slam later in the inning. The Yankees' last 1st-inning slam on the road was by Brian McCann in Houston on June 27, 2015, and they'd never hit one at Camden Yards. In fact they never hit one at Memorial Stadium either. Their last one against the O's franchise came before it even moved to Baltimore; it was September 9, 1942, when the two St Louis teams shared Sportsmans Park and Joe Gordon took knuckleballer Johnny Niggeling deep.

That would, of course, not be the last excitement to come from Thursday's game. You can debate the excitement level of a 94-minute rain delay, which can't be good for those cardboard cutouts. But Jonathan Loaisiga got summoned to dry things out, and after an eight-pitch 7th inning, let's send him back out. The first eight pitches of the 8th went fine. The ninth one hit Anthony Santander. And the tenth one hit a cardboard cutout in left field and flipped a 6-5 Baltimore deficit into a 7-6 Baltimore lead. Pedro Severino had just hit the sixth lead-flipping homer in the 8th or later by an Orioles player against the Yankees; Manny Machado's walkoff on September 5, 2017, had been the last one.

But we haven't completely passed Judge-ment on this game yet. Cole Sulser was handed the Orioles' 1-run lead and said, nah, I don't want this. After a walk and a single, Aaron Judge mashed a 3-run shot for the final score of 8-6, becoming the fourth Yankees batter to hit a lead-flipping homer in the 9th at Camden Yards. The rest of that list is Alex Rodriguez (2010), Aaron Boone (2003), and Scott Brosius (2001). Combined with Voit's slam, it was also the fourth time the Yankees had ever hit a 3-run and a 4-run homer at Camden Yards. Both-mentioned-already A-Rod and Russell Martin were the last to do it, on April 23, 2011.

And for Loaisiga? Well, he finished that 8th inning despite giving up the lead, so he was technically still in the game when the Yankees took it back in the top of the 9th. He thus gets both a blown save and the win, another favorite combination that we affectionately refer to as a "BS win". The latest Yankees pitcher to work at least three innings and "earn" one of these was Mariano Rivera against the Blue Jays on September 6, 1996.

On Friday, Judge homered for a third straight game, once again flipping the lead, this time against Boston. It was only from 0-1 to 2-1, and it was in the 3rd inning, but it still made him the first Yankee to hit a lead-flipping homer in back-to-back games since Tino Martinez did it against Anaheim on August 3 & 4, 2001.

And it turns out the Yankees weren't done hitting grand slams yet either. On Saturday, Gio Urshela effectively put the game away early with a 2nd-inning slam after Zack Godley gave up three straight singles to start the frame. Urshela became the first Yankees batter to hit a slam against the Red Sox while batting 8th or 9th in the order since Fred Stanley took Mike Torrez deep on June 20, 1978. He later stole a base, the first Yankee with a slam and an SB since Brett Gardner on May 12, 2014. And combined with Voit's dinger on Thursday, it was the first time the Yankees had hit 1st- or 2nd-inning grand slams twice within three days of each other since George Selkirk and Joe DiMaggio did it in consecutive games on August 21 & 22, 1940.

On Sunday Judge not only extended that homer streak to five games, the longest since Alex Rodriguez did it in September 2007, he cranked another homer in the 8th inning to propel the Yankees to a series sweep of the Red Sox. Judge thus tied A-Rod's 2007 campaign by hitting 6 homers in the team's first 8 games, and also hit the leaderboard with 14 RBI (A-Rod had 16 through 8 games, as did Babe Ruth in 1932). As the cardboard cutouts rose in response to the game-winner (can they do that?), it was the Red Sox who had to slump back in their seats after watching Xander Bogaerts also hit two homers earlier in the game. "X" ended up as the first Bostonian with 4 hits and multiple homers in a loss at the new Yankee Stadium; the last to do it across the street had been David Ortiz on May 29, 2005. Tack on 3 runs scored and 3 RBI, and he's the first Red Sox hitter to do that in any loss, home or road, since Jim Rice against the A's on May 29, 1977.


Hold On For One More Day

Once the save rule was accepted as an official statistic in 1969 (through it was tweaked slightly for a few years thereafter), the next logical step was to come up with another new thing to reward those middle-inning setup guys in addition to the closer. They can't get a save because they didn't finish the game. But theproverbial pat on the head wasn't good enough anymore, so someone invented the stat we love to hate, the "hold". In theory it's not a terrible idea, pitcher enters in what would otherwise be a save situation, leaves with his team still leading, but doesn't actually finish the game. In practice, however, frequently the reason that pitcher leaves the game is because he just flushed your team's lead away and now the tying run is on second. (But it hasn't scored yet, so give him his "hold" and make the next guy try to wriggle out of this!) We also want to create something called a "blown hold", where this pitcher is not in a save situation, but the pitcher after him is. In other words, if you turned a 6-run lead into a 2-run lead, you probably didn't pitch very well.

If you suspected this might have something to do with Craig Kimbrel of the Cubs, you'd be right. He's not the only one who set off the alarm this week, just the loudest. It all begins on Monday against the Reds, and to be fair, Kimbrel probably wasn't thrilled about coming into the game at nearly midnight, after a rain delay pushed the start back to 8:30. But here we are. We're up 8-5, get three outs and we'll see if any of the chili places are still open at this hour. Walk. Wild pitch. Groundout (this is key). Walk. Stolen base. Walk. Hit batter (8-6). Walk (8-7). Pitching change. And as mentioned, it actually doesn't matter what Jeremy Jeffress does with the bases loaded in a 1-run game. Kimbrel entered in a save situation (8-5 starting the 9th) and left with the lead. Give that man a "hold". Years back, the Elias Sports Bureau also added the most mimimal of performance standards for a hold, decreeing that a pitcher must get at least one out to qualify. Which Kimbrel did. No Cubs reliever had issued four walks, thrown a wild pitch, and hit a batter, in any outing, since not-the-Dodgers-manager Dave Roberts did it in Philadelphia on April 25, 1978. And only two other pitchers have ever been gifted a hold while walking 4+ and hitting a batter: Dick Selma of the Phillies, who needed 3 innings to do all that in 1970; and "Wild Thing" Mitch Williams of the Rangers on the final weekend of the 1986 campaign.

Now, that batter whom Kimbrel hit, Freddy Galvis. That wasn't exactly a new phenomenon in this game. True, Galvis only got hit once. But so did his teammates Curt Casali and Jesse Winker. And in return, Reds pitchers plunked Willson Contreras. And Albert Almora. And Kris Byrant. And Anthony Rizzo. Twice. Yes, we have a combined total of eight hit-by-pitches in a single game. (Because the Cubs are involved, this instantly brought back memories of the game from 3 years ago this week where John Lackey hit four batters just by himself. We got to look that one up while sitting on the floor of the airport in Salt Lake City waiting out a ground stop. But we digress.) The last major-league game we could find that had eight total HBPs was between Louisville (Colonels!) and St Louis on July 31, 1897. The lone newspaper blurb we were able to dig up only mentions "inferior work", which apparently encompasses the Browns' 5 errors as well.

For his trouble on Monday, Craig Kimbrel got a few days off to maybe not do that again. Maybe by Friday he'll be ready to-- yeah, he almost did it again. At least this time he was gifted a 5-run lead over the Pirates, so no save situation and thus no hold. Which is good, because within four pitches both Josh Bell and Colin Moran had homered to turn a 6-1 game into a 6-3 game. To his credit, Kimbrel settled down and got the next three batters to end the game. But it was already (in 25 appearances with the Cubs) the fourth time he'd given up multiple homers in a relief outing of 1 inning or less. That ties Kyle Farnsworth and Hector Rondon for the most such games ever in a Cubs uniform.


Five-Three Mafia

Kimbrel's escapades weren't the only Cubs-related blip on our radar this week, however. On Wednesday the rest of the bullpen was having its issues, surrendering three runs to the Reds in the 7th inning and still having the bases loaded after a double by Nick Senzel and two walks. And if a double play is a "pitcher's best friend", well, Duane Underwood might be about to marry what happened next. Playing in just his sixth MLB game, Japanese transplant Shogo Akiyama scorched a ball right to Kris Bryant at third. Umpire Larry Vanover, positioned behind Bryant, apparently couldn't tell that the ball short-hopped into Bryant's glove and so called it a catch. Bryant promptly got up and stepped on third to retire Senzel before he could get back, and threw across to first to double-- er, triple-- off a very confused Tucker Barnhart who was still standing 20 feet off the bag. Adding the rules quirk that a catch/trap play is only challenge-able in the outfield, not the infield, the play ends up standing as the first TP turned by the Cubs since May 10, 1997. That had been the longest drought of any team without turning one, an honor which now passes to the Angels by a couple of months. The Reds last hit into one on September 23, 2016, against Milwaukee, a very similar play from the opposite side of the infield.

Our friends at SABR have, over the years, compiled a list of all the triple plays in MLB history, on which Wednesday's play is the 721st entry. (It's permanently linked on the right navigation bar of this blog.) But it's only the 11th of those where the third baseman got the first two outs and then threw to first to finish it, ((5))-3 if you're scoring at home. The previous one of those plays happened 18 years plus 1 day earlier, on July 28, 2002, by Mike Lowell and Derrek Lee, and it remains the only one the Marlins have ever turned.

(You didn't really think you'd get a Three 6 Mafia song by clicking that header, did you? C'mon man.)


Bottom Of The Bag

⚾ Tyler Anderson, Sunday: Second reliever in modern era (1901) to strike out 10 batters and allow 0 hits (any length outing). Hal Brown of the Orioles did it over 8 innings on August 31, 1955.

⚾ Christian Vazquez, Thursday: Second Red Sox batter ever to have a multi-homer game in Queens. Remember when the Yankees borrowed Shea Stadium for two years? Yep, Fred Lynn on April 16, 1975.

⚾ Foster Griffin, Monday: Third pitcher in live-ball era to make his MLB debut on his birthday and get credited with a win. Other were Edwin Jackson (2003) and Zach Day (2002).

⚾ Eloy Jimenez, Saturday: Fourth White Sox batter ever with a 4-hit, 4-RBI game at Kauffman Stadium, joining A.J. Pierzynski (2011), Carl Everett (2003), and Ralph Garr (1976).

⚾ Mike Yastrzemski, Wednesday: First Giants batter whose second homer of the game was a walkoff since Nate Schierholtz, also against the Padres, on July 6, 2011.

⚾ David Fletcher & Brian Goodwin, Friday: First game in Angels history where the top two batters in their lineup each had multiple hits and multiple walks.

⚾ Tyler Heineman, Tuesday: First catcher (any team) called for interference twice in team's first five games of a season since Butch Wynegar of the Twins in 1978.

⚾ George Springer, Saturday: Second go-ahead homer of career when down to team's final out (other was April 5, 2017). Only other player in Astros history to hit two is Craig Biggio.

⚾ Whit Merrifield, Mon-Tue: Second leadoff batter in Royals history with a homer and 3+ RBI in back-to-back games. Other was George Brett, July 28-29, 1977.

⚾ Shane Bieber, Thursday: Second pitcher in Indians history with 13+ strikeouts and 0 walks in a road game. Sam McDowell did it in nearby Bloomington on July 19, 1970.

⚾ Nationals, Wednesday: Second extra-inning shutout of 4 runs or more in franchise history. Other was May 26, 1982, in Houston, big blow being a Tim Wallach 3-run homer.

⚾ Franklyn Kilome, Saturday: Second pitcher ever to make his MLB debut with the Mets and throw 4+ innings of relief while allowing no more than 2 hits. Buzz Capra did it against the Cubs on September 15, 1971.

⚾ Teoscar Hernandez, Monday: Second American League batter to hit a leadoff homer at Nationals Park. Ian Kinsler of the Rangers took Garrett Mock deep on June 21, 2008.

⚾ Travis d'Arnaud & Dansby Swanson, Friday: First Braves teammates with a double, a stolen base, and at least 2 RBI in same game since Al Dark & Earl Torgeson on July 9, 1948.

⚾ Francisco Lindor & Carlos Santana, Tuesday: First time Indians have hit a 1st-inning homer in both games of a doubleheader since Joe Carter did it himself against Milwaukee on August 11, 1989.

⚾ Matt Kemp, Sat-Sun: Second player ever to serve as Rockies DH in back-to-back games and homer in both of them. Corey Dickerson at Cleveland, May 31 & June 1, 2014.

⚾ Tyler Stephenson, Monday: First player to make his MLB debut in a Reds uniform and homer in it since Guillermo Garcia on July 19, 1998. First to do it in his first plate appearance since Ted Tappe on September 14, 1950.

⚾ Dallas Keuchel, Friday: Became first pitcher to win his first two starts with the White Sox, despite striking out no more than two batters in either, since Harry Byrd in 1955.

⚾ Yasmani Grandal & Eloy Jimenez, Wednesday: Second teammates in White Sox history to hit 9th-inning sacrifice flies in the same game. Minnie Minoso & Larry Doby did it in Washington on June 7, 1956.

⚾ Trevor Bauer, Sunday: Fourth Reds pitcher ever to throw an individual shutout in an American League park. Aaron Harang did it in Cleveland in 2006. The others were both in the 1919 World Series, so insert your own asterisk.