It was a nice little break, but still you waited three whole days for baseball to come back. And then it didn't, because the lone game on Thursday-- which was already an anomaly because All-Star Thursday has been reserved as a makeup date in recent years-- got postponed. So you had to wait another day until the Twins and Tigers had a day/night doubleheader at 2:00 on Friday. And then that got rained out. So it was actually the Phillies' twinbill that started at 4:06 on Friday that got the honor of being our first game back after nearly five entire days (remember, no Sunday night game in All-Star week either). So with only three days of games, it's hard for a theme to develop. In the spirit of Seinfeld we considered trying to do a post about nothing. And then a whole lot of not-nothing happened.
Battle Of The Network All-Stars
There was one game stuck in there, and we usually don't do any notes and stuff about the All-Star Game because it doesn't count and everybody's just having a bunch of fun out there. But we're going to steal an idea we use during spring training and look back at Tuesday's 5-2 American League win as if it were a real game played as part of the championship season. (We admit this works better when the game is more interesting than, well, 5-2.)
⚾ Nine different NL pitchers recorded a strikeout (and the one who didn't was Craig Kimbrel). That actually happened in a real game back on April 16, one where the Dodgers scored 5 runs in the 12th and the Padres had already intentionally made it a bullpen game and were already on pitcher number seven by the 8th inning. Not shockingly, of the 17 games in MLB history where nine pitchers from the same team had a strikeout, all of them are this century, and 12 of them are in the last five seasons. It also happens that all of them are extra-inning games; no team's ever done it in a 9-inning affair. Yet.
⚾ Neither starting pitcher allowed a hit. Now granted, we know they only worked 1 inning. But Shohei Ohtani and Max Scherzer became the latest to pull off that little nugget. In our new world of "openers" we were surprised that this has only happened 12 times in the modern era, and only two of them involve the Rays. But that includes the latest occurrence, on September 17, 2019, against the Dodgers when Blake Snell and Caleb Ferguson headed up dueling bullpen games. The most amusing one we found was from May 9, 1943, when Al Milnar of the Indians faced four batters and walked them all. Meanwhile his opponent, Bob Muncrief of the Browns, faced four batters, walked three of them, and had one reach on an error. So not only did neither starter give up a hit, but neither one got an out. As for 0 hits and 0 walks by both starters, a la Ohtani and Scherzer, well no, that's never happened in the regular season.
⚾ Vlad Guerrero Jr homered for the AL's second run of the night. No, of course there's nothing unusual about Vladdy going yard. But we are at Coors Field. And the Jays don't get there very often. Turns out Junior did hit a dinger the last time they visited, on May 31, 2019, off Chris Rusin. And the only Jays player to hit two homers there in the regular season is Edwin Encarnacion, who did it in the same game back on June 27, 2016.
⚾ The Zunino giveth, the Zunino taketh away. (Needs work, we know.) That's catcher Mike of the Rays, who was responsible for the final run for both All-Star teams. No, he didn't magically get traded in the middle of the game. In the top of the 6th he came to the plate and hit a solo homer. In the bottom of the 6th he committed a passed ball to allow Manny Machado to score from third. We thought this might take a while since offensive stats and defensive stats don't merge easily, plus you have the added condition that we wanted a run-scoring passed ball. But it turns out Zunino actually did this earlier in the season. On May 11 against the Yankees he committed 2 PBs in a row to score DJ LeMahieu from second, then atoned in the bottom of the same inning with a solo homer. (They still lost.)
⚾ And one final side shout-out to a local All-Star. Opposite the MLB game on Tuesday, we were taking in the All-Star game of the Futures Collegiate Baseball League (think Cape Cod if you're unfamiliar) and the exploits of one Nick Martin of Westfield State (go Owls). Martin was named as a last-minute replacement and wasn't even on the roster. So imagine everyone's surprise when he gets into the game in the 8th inning and then steals second, third, and home on the same trip around the bases. A straight steal to boot, and that's after one of his teammates was tagged out doing the same thing an inning earlier. Ever seen three stolen bases in an All-Star game? Not an MLB one. In fact, the list of those who've even stolen two in the MLB game is only five players long. Starlin Castro was the last to do it, in 2011. And the other four, well, one of these things is not like the others: Kenny Lofton (1996), Roberto Alomar (1992), Kelly Gruber (1990), and Willie Mays (1963).
Sooooo can we do a whole post about one game? Well, we've done it before. But honestly, San Diego, what. the. heck. was. that?
It was an eventful weekend at Nationals Park, and as you probably know, not all of it involved baseball. Happily, we are here to talk about the baseball part, and the Padres gave us plenty of material. We had a section just last week about the Nationals hanging 15 runs at Petco Park, and how they are lapping the field at being involved in 15-run games over the last few seasons. So another 15-run game at Nationals Park doesn't feel too weird... until we mention that it's for the other team. And we're not stopping at 15.
Erick Fedde had a relatively calm start to Friday's outing before giving up three straight 2-out singles in the 1st. That, plus a delayed steal of home by Tommy Pham, already gives the Padres 3 runs. Which Chris Paddack promptly returns by issuing a single, a walk, and a 3-run homer to Juan Soto. Soto is the first player in Nats/Expos history to twice in the same season hit a 3-run dinger as the team's third batter of a game. Want to guess when his other one was? In the 15-5 game last week at Petco-- off Chris Paddack. You can't make this up.
Fedde starts the 2nd with three walks (and a required sacrifice bunt because for some reason pitchers are batting again), and all of them eventually score as well. That happens after he's already been yanked from the game, the first Nats starter to give up 6 runs while getting 4 outs in a home game since Jason Marquis against Pittsburgh on July 3, 2011. That brings Andres Machado out of his All-Star break slumber, and that goes equally well. He faces four batters, gets one out, and that only came because of an interference call. So it's 6-3 and the bases are still loaded when we awaken Paolo Espino from his four-day nap. Wil Myers, very much already awake. And the lucky one who gets to hit the Padres' first-ever grand slam in Washington (either stadium). Surprisingly, in 35 years of playing in Montréal, the Padres only ever hit one there either, by Mike Ivie off Gerry Hannahs on May 20, 1977.
So it's 10-3 and you can stop now. No. No you can't. Jake Cronenworth, who greeted Machado with a double last inning, rattles one into the right-field corner for a triple (and another run). Tommy Pham and Eric Hosmer hit back-to-back doubles to start the 4th. Sam Clay gets to pitch the 5th, and Cronenworth molds that into a solo homer. (If you're paying attention, he's a single shy of the cycle, and it's the 5th inning.) It is already 13-4 when Wander Suero wanders out to the mound for the 6th and heeeeere comes the fun part.
Tommy Pham, solo homer. Hosmer walks. Wil Myers homers again, the Padres' first multi-homer game at Nationals Park since Matt Kemp on July 22, 2016. Yadiel Hernandez, now in left field after a double switch, drops a fly ball that leads to two more unearned runs (that's 18). Suero departs with 5 more on the board and one still on base. But at least he won't be the one who gives up that magic single to Jake Cronenworth. Nope, that happens on the very first pitch from Ryne Harper, and it completes the third cycle in Padres history. The other two both happened at Coors Field, and we've mentioned both players already: Wil Myers in April 2017 and Matt kemp in August 2015. It was also the first cycle by a visiting player at Nationals Park. Pham singles in a 19th run as the Padres bat around, but at least he gets stranded this time. (More on this soon.)
Miguel Diaz gets charged with protecting a 15-run lead, which he does by giving up homers to Juan Soto (again) and Gerardo Parra and turning it into an 11-run lead. That one inning doubled the number of homers the Nats/Expos have ever hit when trailing by 14 runs or more; Anthony Rendon hit one two years ago against the Diamondbacks, and the Expos did it once in 1997 when Rondell White homered off Atlanta's Paul Byrd.
Despite another error, Harper gets through the top of the 7th unscathed, and finally there's a "0" up there and we can stop digging up our list of teams to score in every inning. It was the first time the Padres had scored in the first 6 frames since June 24, 2016, in Cincinnati. And finally you think, maybe they're done. Maybe 19 is just enough. Maybe they're gonna put all the bench players in and this thing will limp to a finish. Maybe final Nats pitcher Jefry Rodriguez can-- mm, yeah, no, he can't.
With two outs in the 8th, Tommy Pham draws another walk and scores on a Wil Myers single. If this feels repetitive, it's only because Pham wound up scoring 5 runs including that steal of home in the 1st. Only one other player in Padres history had touched the plate 5 times in a game, Al Martin against Houston on April 16, 2000. And with that grand slam from way back in the 2nd, Myers would end up driving in 7 Padres runs, the first in team history to do that while hitting 7th or lower in the batting order. If you drop the threshold to 5 RBI, it's the fifth such game for Myers (from any spot), trailing only Phil Nevin and Ken Caminiti for the most in Padres history.
And how does one more for the road sound? Jorge Mateo, possibly the most useless home run in Padres history with 1 out in the 9th. Only two other Padres batters have ever homered with the team already up by 15, and they weren't in the 9th. Brian Buchanan hit one against the Marlins on August 23, 2002, and Brad Ausmus took Todd Burns of the Cardinals deep in 1993. That was also the fifth run off Jefry Rodriguez; with Suero and starter Fedde, they're the first trio of pitchers in franchise history to each give up 5 runs in the same game.
So now let's take a look at this 24-8 final. We already know it's the most runs ever scored by the Padres or allowed by the Nationals. That 2002 game from the last paragraph ended with a score of 18-2 and is the only other 16-run win in Padres history. And the only other times the Nationals franchise lost by 16 were both road shutouts from the Expos days: A 16-0 at St Louis on August 11, 1980, and an 18-0 on May 24, 2000, in their first series at (then) Pacific Bell Park.
Ever seen a 24-8 score before? Okay, maybe in a video game or your softball league at work. But in a major-league game? No you haven't. 24-8 had been among the remaining combinations that had never happened in the "official" MLB annals dating to 1876. There is one game from the National Association, on May 4, 1874, in which Philadelphia beat Baltimore by a 24-8 count, but most sources don't consider the National Association of 1871-75 to be a true "major league". You can make that call for yourself as to whether it is a true "scorigami", as a never-before-seen final is known. Either way, you weren't around in 1874 to see the other one. And you probably didn't read about it either; we found one Pennsylvania newspaper where it gets three lines around the announcement of a book reading and two death notices.
Back to Jake Cronenworth, he pulled off another thing you've never seen. Yeah sure, he hit for the cycle, but he did so in a game where his team scored 24 runs. And while we did find three other players to do that, exactly none of them were from the 20th century. Sam Thompson of the Phillies did it in 1894, and the others even predate that, to when the mound was still 55 feet away. They are Tip O'Neill of the Cardinals in 1887 and Cincinnati's John Reilly in 1883.
And even through Juan Soto's team lost by 16, remember he still had those two homers to drive in half the Nationals' runs. Combine his line with Cronenworth's and you've got a tremendous list. Only five times in MLB history has a player from each team had 4 hits, 4 RBI, and 10 total bases in the same game. The last instance was by Willie McGee and Ryne Sandberg on June 23, 1984. And if that's not impressive enough, try the other combos: Mike Schmidt and Rick Monday (1976); Willie Horton and Carl Yastrzemski (1965); and Lou Boudreau and Ted Williams (1946).
Wanna Be Re-Starting Something
We jump ahead to Saturday, and while other things were happening on South Capitol Street, it was also raining on and off in Philadelphia. The Marlins and Phillies got stuck in one rain delay in the 5th right after the game had become official, but that wasn't a long one and the umpires sent everyone back onto the field to try and finish. In the 9th, with it raining again, the Phillies couldn't be bothered to finish it, blowing the save and ending up in extra innings. Two pitches into the 10th we put the tarp on and go home, let's save this for another day. This is within minutes of the Nationals game also getting suspended, and shout-out to the folks at Retrosheet for having this list readily available. The last time there were two suspended games on the same day was July 27, 1958-- AND one of those was a Phillies game. In fact both Pennsylvania teams had their games suspended because of the old state Sunday curfew law, to the point where Giants manager Bill Rigney was ejected for "stalling" to try and reach the curfew (a forebearer of "playing for the rain delay"). Unlike this weekend, those games were not completed the next day-- but they were completed on the same day, September 9, when the old eight-team NL schedule repeated itself and the same opponents were back in town.
It's also worth mentioning that the Yankees and Red Sox waited 50 rain-free minutes to start Saturday's game, then played most of it in the rain before Gary Sanchez and Gleyber Torres homered to break a tie in the 6th. But for those homers, we could have had a third suspended game on Saturday, something which is not known to have happened in MLB history.
Instead, the game was promptly called soon afterward, technically resulting in a complete-game victory for Gerrit Cole. You may recall last Saturday when he talked himself into a 1-0, 129-pitch win over the Astros. That makes him just the fourth pitcher in Yankees history to throw back-to-back complete games with 11 strikeouts in each. The others are Ron Guidry (1978), Bob Turley (1955), and Red Ruffing (1934). And the last Yankee to throw any CG with 11 K's against Boston was Mike Mussina on September 2, 2001-- affectionately still known as The Carl Everett Game. (Expletive optional depending on which side of the rivalry you're on.)
Yes, the Yanx/Sawx rivalry is always a big thing, and it's frequently overplayed in our opinion. But we can all agree that hurling baseballs at opposing players from the stands is not the ideal way to start the commotion. Intermission!
Pitt Stop Start
Getting back to the Pirates, it turns out they no longer have to worry about state curfew laws. Pennsylvania now allows them to stay up past their bedtime. The Mets, however, may want to make a side trip to Harrisburg and lobby for those getting reinstated. New York led Saturday's game 6-0 after 7 innings, with rookie Tylor Megill confounding the Pirates in his fifth start in the bigs. Now if only it hadn't taken him 93 pitches and they could've left him out there.
Seth Lugo appears for the 8th and is the poster child for our own made-up stat, the "blown hold". A pitcher can't actually get a hold if he's not in a save situation to start with, and 6-0 does not qualify. But if your outing results in the next pitcher being in a save situation, eh, well, it probably wasn't good. Walk. Single. Double. Walk. Fly ball. Kevin Newman beats out a potential double play for another run, but more precariously keeps the inning going. That's just enough time for Wilmer Difo to crank a 3-run homer to suddenly turn this from 6-0 into 6-5. Difo was the first Pirates batter with a 3- or 4-run, pinch-hit homer against the Mets since Mike Diaz went deep off Roger McDowell on June 7, 1987.
And it'll be another Diaz who puts this one away in the 9th. Unfortunately that's Mets closer Edwin, of 19 converted saves but just enough close calls to make the locals nervous. Brandon Nimmo has hit a solo homer to put the Mets back up by 2. Diaz plunks Ke'Bryan Hayes and walks Bryan Reynolds to put the tying runs on base. Diaz induces two strikeouts, but in between John Nogowski singles to load them up; he now represents the winning run and gets pinch-run for.
Not gonna matter. Because Jacob Stallings does this. From 0-6 to 9-7 in two innings, the Pirates have come all the way back and added the dagger of their first walkoff grand slam since Rob Mackowiak against the Cubs on May 28, 2004. That was the second-longest drought without a walkoff slam of any team, but the Pirates have nothing on the Giants-- who haven't had one since Bonds. No, Bobby Bonds-- in 1973!
The Pirates' last walkoff slam when trailing is going to invoke visions of another perilous Mets closer, though he wasn't a Met at the time. Brian Giles hit it off then-Astro Billy Wagner on July 28, 2001. The last one the Mets gave up was by Giancarlo Stanton on May 13, 2012, and that happened to be the first grand slam in "Miami Marlins" history after the rebrand. J.D. Davis, who drove in four of those early runs with a pair of homers, became the first Mets batter to have multiple dingers in a loss in Pittsburgh since Willie Montañez on May 24, 1978.
And that Pirates comeback? Well, 9 late runs isn't exceedingly rare. The last time they scored that many from the 8th onward was Opening Day 2018, in a memorable 13-10 back-and-forth with the Tigers. But the last time they scored 9+ runs in a game with all of them coming in the 8th or later, was so far back that it happened during their first road trip away from Forbes Field. That 9-0 win-- 3 in the 8th and 6 in the 9th-- was at Boston's South End Grounds on July 22, 1909.
Apparently the Pirates were so excited by their 5 runs in the 8th and 4 in the 9th that they roared out of the gate on Sunday still wanting to score more runs. Taijuan Walker made that possible in more ways than one, first by giving up multiple doubles to Wilmer Difo and Joe Nogowski and then by, well, making one of the most Mets-ian plays in recent memory. Yep, that's a fair ball because it's still on the line when he touches it, and then he just ignores it until after three Pirates runs have scored. So already it's 6-0 Pittsburgh and here we go again.
Or do we? Walker is the second pitcher in Mets history to give up 6 runs to the Pirates while getting only 1 out, the other being Craig Anderson in their inaugural season (loss #49 on June 25, 1962). But with the pitchers already being switched around, Tyler Blankenhorn cranks a 3-run pinch-hit homer in the top of the 4th. There'd only been one other of those so early in a Mets game; Hawk Taylor hit a grand slam off another Pirates hurler, Bob Veale, on August 17, 1966. And here we are at 6-4. And then 6-5. And in the top of the 9th, there's no way Michael Conforto might... no.
Yep. Lead-flipping homer to bring the Mets all the way back after surrendering 6 runs before getting the second out of the game. They hadn't had any lead-flipping homer in the 9th inning against the Pirates since Chris Jones walked off in extras on July 31, 1996. And the 7-6 final meant that all the Pirates' runs came in the 1st inning. Sound familiar? We haven't done the whole thing yet (and will update when we do), but we can go back 30 years pretty quickly, and in that timeframe the Pirates have never had a game where they scored 6 or more with all of them in the 1st inning.
Now who wants those curfew laws back?
That Nationals/Padres series was literally interrupted about halfway through and led to 12½ innings being played on Sunday. The suspended game from Saturday was already 8-4 when we returned to Nationals Park, so there was some chance, but you kinda knew where that was headed. The Padres added two more in their half of the 7th to provide our final score of 10-4, after just dropping 24 runs in Friday's game (which seems soooo long ago now). However, it did give us some more notes to play with. Fernando Tatis already had four hits and a stolen base before the "incident" on Saturday, so combined with Tommy Pham's line from Friday (remember the 5 runs scored?), it's the first time in Padres history that a player has done that in consecutive games. And speaking of Pham, he would single in the resumption such that he reached base for a fifth time in that game. After 4 hits and a walk on Friday, he collected 3 hits and 2 walks in Saturday's game, joining a very small list of Padres players to reach base five times in consecutive games. The others are Adrian Gonzalez (June 2009), Brian Giles (August 2004), and Gene Tenace (May 1977), and none of them also managed to score multiple runs in both games as Pham did.
Then it came time to play Sunday's regularly-scheduled game, in which the Nationals erupt for 4 runs in the 3rd off Joe Musgrove. Eric Hosmer answers that with a 3-run homer, and the Padres eventually claw back to take the lead in the 8th. Never fear, Juan Soto is here. (That should be a t-shirt or something.) He blasts a 2-run homer in the 8th to go back to 7-6, the first lead-flipping homer for the Nats/Expos in the 8th or later against San Diego since Henry Rodriguez went deep off Andres Berumen on May 24, 1995.
As a last-ditch effort, Trent Grisham is going to tie things yet again with a 2-out single in the top of the 9th, the first such tying hit the Padres have had against the Nationals since Josh Naylor did it on June 7, 2019. It's still not enough. Because in the bottom of the 9th, Mark Melançon gives up a single, hits Victor Robles with a pitch, and then watches as Alcides Escobar plops a ball into center field for a walkoff single. Washington hadn't had a game-winning single against San Diego since Austin Kearns did it on July 26, 2009. So at least they got something good out of the weekend.
But still, look at those scores. 24-8, 10-4, and 8-7. The Padres rolled up 41 runs in three games, their most in team history over any three-game span. The previous mark had been 38, and it was a fairly-infamous series at Coors Field in June 2019 that involved a 16-12 and a 14-13. And before this Nationals series, before the All-Star break, the Padres' previous road game had been an 11-1 win in Philadelphia on July 4. With the Friday and Saturday finals, that meant they scored 10+ runs in three consecutive road games. The only other they ever did that was at Coors Field too-- April 6 through 8 of 2001 (10-6, 14-10, and 11-3).
Remember that Tigers game that would have been the first one of the week after Yanx/Sawx got cancelled, but then it got cancelled too? That became a day/night doubleheader on Saturday, and Robbie Grossman has been waiting six days to even make contact with a baseball. (Seven since he's had a hit.) In a lefty/righty move, Akil Baddoo gets to sit against the pitching of Charlie Barnes, and Grossman moves up to the leadoff slot. By the way, Barnes is making his major-league debut as a spot starter, having come across the river from triple-A St Paul for the doubleheader. So Grossman's never seen him. But after four pitches he's seen enough, and rips the fifth one to left-center for a leadoff homer. That was the second leadoff homer for the Tigers this year; both have been by Grossman, and both have come against the Twins (May 8 off Jose Berrios). For Barnes, it's not even unusual for a pitcher to give up a dinger to the first batter he sees; Edwar Colina did that for the Twins last year.
No, it's the rest of the game that gets unusual. Jonathan Schoop follows Grossman with a single, but then Barnes gets three outs in a row. Then three in the 2nd. Then three in the 3rd. He finally gets pulled in the 5th after facing Grossman a third time and that silly "third time through" superstition kicking in, even though Detroit still has only the one run. And Minnesota doesn't have any. Jose Ureña gave up meaningless singles in the 2nd and 3rd and erased one of them on a double play. And don't forget, even though you paid full price to attend this game, you still only get 7 innings because of the night game later on. So when the teams manage only one baserunner in the 6th and 7th combined, we have a 1-0 final with the only run being Grossman's leadoff homer. It's the first occurrence of that in Tigers history, and according to Baseball Almanac it's the 27th in MLB history. Nick Markakis of the Orioles was the last to do it on August 3, 2014. And one leftover note on Barnes, who of course got the loss as a result of that leadoff homer: He's the first Twins pitcher to lose his debut despite giving up only 1 run since Brad Havens lost a 2-0 contest, also at Detroit, on June 5, 1981.
The aforementioned night game also had its share of fun, and you at least got 8 innings out of this one. Akil Baddoo, now back in the lineup with righty Kenta Maeda on the hill, delivers a 3-run triple in the 2nd, just as Grossman had done against the Royals back on May 11. The Tigers have had only one other season at Comerica where they had multiple 3-run triples; that was 2001 by Juan Encarnacion and Damion Easley.
The Twins were able to claw back and send this one to extras, whereupon Joe Jimenez wild-pitches in their free runner in the top of the 8th. That forces Jonathan Schoop to hit a game-tying single to score the Tigers' free runner, and then Miguel Cabrera to do this. That's about a 6-second hang time that allows Schoop to score all the way from first while Miggy just stands on the bag admiring it. It was his 11th walkoff anything, breaking a tie with Kirk Gibson and Lance Parrish. (Lou Whitaker is believed to hold the team record with 20, but we don't have every play-by-play for the Greenbergs and Cobbs of the world, so we can't be certain.) The 5-4 win, combined with the 1-0 from earlier, is the first time the Tigers have swept a doubleheader from the Twins, both by 1 run, since April 24, 1984. And the last time the Tigers started Game 1 of a twinbill with a homer and then ended Game 2 with a walkoff was July 8, 1962, against Baltimore, with Jake Wood scoring the run in both cases.
And finally, one team that refused to get started this weekend was the Texas Rangers. They may have been outshadowed by the news that the Blue Jays would finally be returning to Toronto in a couple weeks, but for now they still get to face them at Sahlen Field and maybe throw us a few (we hope) final Buffalo notes. But yeah, not really. Friday's game was a 10-2 drubbing highlighted by two more homers from Vlad Guerrero Jr after his All-Star escapades. That gave him 30 on the year, setting a team record for the fewest number of games (88) needed to achieve a 30-HR season. Vladdy was only two of the Jays' five homers in the game, their most against Texas since May 14, 2010. And Jordan Lyles gave up four of those taters, which he also did on June 16 in Houston. He's the first starter in Astros history to have multiple games in the same season where he surrendered four homers and didn't get out of the 5th inning.
On Saturday the Jays spared us from the threat of yet another suspended game by just cancelling early. The same weather that got Philadelphia and New York was over the western part of the state early in the day and they just said, nah. We'll play two on Sunday instead. This at least was a single-admission doubleheader, so you're getting 14 innings for the price of 9 instead of getting cheated out of a couple. And the Rangers still couldn't solve Jays pitching. Hyun-Jin Ryu threw a complete-game 3-hitter in the opener, defeating Texas 5-0, and getting the first individual SHO by a Jays pitcher since Mark Buehrle had one in Washington on June 3, 2015. Yes, we know it's only a 7-inning CG, but technically it counts. The only team to go longer without having someone throw an individual shutout is the Brewers (Kyle Lohse in 2014). It was the first time the Rangers had been shut out on 3 hits in a game "at" Toronto since Roger Clemens did it to the on September 7, 1997.
Annnnnd it would be the last time that happened until, oh, a little over 3 hours later. The second game, even worse. Toronto, like their new neighbors down in Pittsburgh, blew up for a 6-spot in the 1st inning against Mike Foltynewicz, with a Lourdes Gurriel grand slam doing most of the damage. The Rangers sent Folty back out for the 2nd, and the Jays proceeded to send more baseballs into the night sky, finally knocking him out after 10 runs and only 5 outs. The only other starter in Rangers history to hit those dubious marks was Kenny Rogers against the White Sox on May 16, 1993. Folty is also the first starter in Rangers history to give up 10 runs and 4 homers in a game, no matter how many innings you let him stay out there.
The last time the Jays piled up 10 runs by the end of the 2nd inning was on August 12, 2015, in a home game against Oakland. And oddly, just like on Sunday, they figured that was enough and started packing for that return to Canada next week. Didn't score again the rest of the game. But as mentioned, this is a 7-inning doubleheader game, so their bullpen can fairly easily connect a few more zeroes. Between Steven Matz, Rafael Dolis, and Tayler Saucedo, the Jays combine to shut out the Rangers again, this time doubling their 5-0 to a 10-0. In franchise history the Blue Jays had never shut out their opponent in both games of a twinbill (although, thanks to that roof they are trying to get back to, they don't play very many these days).
Bottom Of The Bag
⚾ Hunter Dozier, Sunday: Third player in Royals history to have 4 hits, including 2 for extra bases, but score 0 runs and drive in 0 runs. Billy Butler did it July 1, 2009, against the Twins, as did Freddie Patek at Yankee Stadium on June 20, 1972.
⚾ Max Fried, Saturday: First Braves pitcher to have 3 hits, 2 runs scored, and 2 RBI in a game on offense since Carl Morton against the Cubs, June 12, 1975.
⚾ Myles Straw, Friday: First Astros batter to hit a 3-run double in Chicago since Brad Ausmus did it on the North Side, May 30, 2003.
⚾ Austin Meadows, Sunday: Second batter in Rays history with a go-ahead sac fly in the 7th or later in a National League park. Quinton McCracken did it at Shea on June 9, 1998.
⚾ Willson Contreras, Saturday: Third Cubs batter with a multi-run, go-ahead homer in the 9th or later at Chase Field. Others are Anthony Rizzo (May 23, 2015) and Tyler Houston (June 8, 1999).
⚾ Austin Meadows, Friday: Second go-ahead hit the Rays have ever had in the 9th or later in Atlanta. The other was a Fred McGriff solo homer, 20 years earlier to the day (July 16, 2001).
⚾ Willy Adames, Sunday: Third player in Brewers history with 2 hits, 2 runs, 2 RBI, and 3 walks in a road game. Others are Richie Sexson at Cincinnati (May 10, 2003) and Tommy Harper at Comiskey (September 26, 1970).
⚾ Kris Bubic, Saturday: First Royals pitcher to throw 6 innings in relief and allow no more than 2 hits since Todd Wellemeyer got to mop up after an 11-run 1st at Cleveland on August 13, 2006.
⚾ Jordan Holloway, Friday: First pitcher in Marlins history to throw 5+ innings in "relief" and not allow a hit.
⚾ Will Smith, Sunday: First Dodgers player with 3 hits, 3 RBI, and a stolen base in a road loss since Delino DeShields at Philadelphia, August 24, 1995.
⚾ Mookie Betts & Max Muncy, Saturday: First Dodgers teammates in (at least) the modern era to have 4 hits and 10 total bases in the same game.
⚾ Trey Amburgey & Hoy Park, Friday: First time two Yankees have made their MLB debuts in the same game since Tyler Austin & Aaron Judge, August 13, 2016.
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