Sixteen Candles

Last week was kind of that slow week in the middle of August where some teams just start going through the motions because they know they're out of it, some players are just understandably tired after 120 games in 140 days, and so not a lot happened. Turns out that's because they were saving it all for this week. Let's light this candle with a bunch of lit-up scoreboards and a whole other ball of wax. Plus, to keep all those candles lit, we'll be burning some midnight oil.

How Do We Sleep While The Pads Are Burning

You know the game that gives us our title "sixteen" reference. You knew when it happened that it was The Game We Were Gonna Write About. (Actually, you may not have known that exactly when it happened, because you were most likely asleep. Eight-plus years ago when we started doing the "time tweets" every night, of the day's first and last pitches, we adopted the hashtag #TillTheLastOut. So the last two seasons, with the free runners and no marathon 20-inning games, have actually been a little bit of a relief. Which is why Wednesday night, slash Thursday morning, was a neat throwback.

We take you to Petco Park, home of a 22-inning game, two 18-inning games, three 17-inning games, and one that was famously delayed nearly 4 hours by rain before being suspended at 1:38 am and finished the next day (which was, um, already the next day). What better place to watch the free-runner thing crash and burn.

It was meant for games like this, where the only offense consists of Walker Buehler giving up an unearned run in the 2nd and then Blake Snell going one inning too many and allowing a tying homer to Will Smith in the 8th. That will end up making Snell the fourth pitcher in Padres history to throw 7 innings against the Dodgers, strike out at least 10, and not get a win; the others are Wade LeBlanc (2011), Kevin Brown (1998), and Gaylord Perry (1978). Craig Stammen has a 1-2-3 10th. So does Alex Vesla of the Dodgers, around an intentional walk to Tommy Pham so he can't be the one to beat you. The Padres do likewise to Trea Turner in the 11th, and now we're just having an intentional walk-fest. Anyone who has a chance at singling home that runner from second (or maybe third), here, free pass. Plus you set up more force plays. At least they don't have to actually throw the four pitches anymore. (More on that later.) But unfortunately, this "strategy" is working. It brings up the pitcher's spot with the bases loaded, and thanks to all the double-switches from earlier in the game, the Padres are stuck sending pitchers up to pinch-hit for each other. Joe Musgrove becomes the first such Padres batter to strike out with the bases loaded in extras since Colin Rea in 2016. Off to the 12th, where the Dodgers run themselves into an out at home on what is not a force play. And at 11:24 pm we have the fifth game in the Free Runner Era to reach a 13th inning.

The Padres sent four batters to the plate in the 12th, which means two more intentional walks in the 13th would bring that pitcher-turned-pinch-hitter spot up again. Instead of trying to get Manny Machado out, let's pass him and Jake Cronenworth to put us one short of the MLB record for IBBs in a game. And we'll have Ryan Weathers, pitcher, hit a nubber back to his counterpart for a force at home. It's the first time in Padres history that they've had any two pinch-hitters come to bat with the bases loaded in extra innings in a home game. (This is somewhat of an expected outcome, because if you're got the bases loaded in a home game, there's a good chance you walk off the first time and it doesn't happen again.) Only twice before had they had it occur in a road game, and only one of those four pinch hitters (Sean Bergman in 1986) was a pitcher. One of them was Tony Gwynn. But even the best can make outs as easily as Ryan Weathers and propel us to the first 14-inning game in the majors since the Phillies beat Miami on September 27, 2019.

Amazingly, the Padres also run themselves into a non-forceout at the plate in the 14th which leads to nothing happening then either. Perhaps we need to start putting two runners on base and then three as the extra innings pile up. We now have the first Dodgers/Padres game to reach a 15th inning since May 22, 2016 (at Petco, of course), and it is now past midnight. Pacific Time.

Must have just needed that midnight oil. Or a midnight snack. Or the ice cream treat that comes from the phenomenon known as #WeirdBaseball. But we have finally reached the depths of both bullpens where someone is bound to give up a run or two. Billy McKinney, also pinch-hitting for Dodgers pitcher Brusdar Graterol, drives home free runner Chris Taylor while also recording the first go-ahead pinch hit for the Dodgers that late in a game in since at least 1900. And Trea Turner follows with another single to double this game's run total in about 3 minutes. All Corey Knebel needs to do is not give up exactly 2 runs. One is fine. Three is fine. Any number but two.

Fernando Tatis, 2-run homer because of the free runner. It's the fourth multi-run dinger the Padres have ever hit in the 15th or later, and the others all took the lead. Adrian Gonzalez walked off in one of those 18-inning games back in 2008, Mark Parent hit a walkoff in the 16th in 1988, and Merv Rettenmund gave the Padres the lead in the 21st in Montreal in 1977. And for good measure, one more intentional walk to Jake Cronenworth to get to that pitcher's spot again. Cronenworth joined Garry Templeton (1985) and Terry Kennedy (1982) as the only Padres batters to have 3 IBBs in a loss. That pitcher is Daniel Camarena, whose claim to fame will always be hitting a grand slam in his major-league debut. This was not his debut, so no slams. Let's go to the 16th.

There is a Camarena home run, however. It's the one he quickly gives up to A.J. Pollock, and because of the free runner, it's the new weirdness of a 2-run leadoff job. This gives us more phenomena: The last time both teams homered in the 15th or later of a game was on April 10, 2015, when David Ortiz and Mark Teixeira traded jabs. But it's the first game in MLB history where both teams hit a multi-run homer that late in a game. The Dodgers hadn't hit any homer in the 16th since Ramon Martinez off Cincinnati's Ryan Franklin on August 29, 2006. And their last multi-run shot in the 16th or later? That goes back more than a century. Henry (usually abbreviated as "Hy" or "Hi") Myers smacked one against the Phillies on April 30, 1919.

Our final loose end is the final intentional walk of the day, this one coming to Will Smith later in the 16th. You know, the same Will Smith who is responsible for us being here by tying the game in the 8th. That gives this game a total of 11 intentional walks, tying the record for such a thing which was set by the Giants and Cubs on May 2, 1956, just a year after the leagues started tracking IBBs separately from total BBs. That split was Cubs 7, Giants 4, and while there have been four other teams to issue 7 IBBs in a game since then, no one had ever done 8 until the Dodgers on Wednesday (with all of them in extra innings even!).

And as we mentioned, it's a good thing they don't have to throw all 44 of those soft-tosses anymore. Because as it was, our 7:10 start finally came to an end at 12:59. (It's Thursday, so the trolley starts running again at 5:00, you'll be fine.) And although we have had games go past 1 am local in the past two seasons of New Rules, those were all on the east coast and resulted from rain delays. The last time there was baseball on until 4 am Eastern was in the final week of the 2019 season when Ildemaro Vargas finally walked off for the Diamondbacks in the bottom of the 19th at 1:33 am MST.

Candle In The Wind-y City

So of course it was unprecedented to have a game last seven extra innings under The New Rules, but the fun part is that the Dodgers/Padres game upstaged another unique contest from earlier on Wednesday.

The Rockies and Cubs required 10 innings to settle their affairs, and you say, what's exciting about that? Well, it's because this was the night game of a doubleheader after a rainout on Tuesday, and thanks to another provision of The New Rules, doubleheader games are now only scheduled for 7 innings. (Soapbox: We're fine with this for single-admission DHs, but if the games require separate tickets then they should each be 9. Otherwise you have charged the fans the same price for 22% less product. At least encode the tickets with some concession-stand credit or something.) So if you did show up for the day game, you at least got to witness some repeated Cubs comebacks in your limited helping of baseball. C.J. Cron homered for the Rockies in the 2nd, and David Bote responded with a tying shot in the Cubs' half. Brendan Rodgers put the Rockies back ahead right after that with an RBI single, but Austin Romine cranked another homer off Austin Gomber in the 4th to once again make it a tie game. And Gomber does get two quick outs in the 5th, but then surrenders a triple, a walk, and a 3-run bomb to Patrick Wisdom for our final margin of 5-2. Gomber struck out 8 but also gave up those 3 homers and took a loss, the first Rockies pitcher to do that since Jeff Francis in Atlanta, 17 years earlier to the day (August 25, 2004). And it was the third time the Cubs had ever hit three tying or go-ahead homers in the same against the Rockies. Corey Patterson, Fred McGriff, and Joe Girardi won a 12-9 slugfest on August 11, 2002, and back on August 28, 1998, it was Sammy Sosa, Jose Hernandez, and yes-he's-a-pitcher Steve Trachsel who hit them in a 10-5 win.

So now we're on to that night game, which begins with a leadoff walk and Rodgers hitting another homer. Then the Cubs unload on German Marquez in the 2nd. Six hits, a bunt, a wild pitch, and a steal of home end up with Chicago scoring 5 runs and looking like they're cruising to a sweep. Until Justin Steele-- the pitcher of the aforementioned bunt-- gives up two singles to start the 4th, hits Charlie Blackmon with a pitch, and then watches Connor Joe launch his first career grand slam. It was the first lead-flipping grand slam by any visiting player at Wrigley since Adeiny Hechavarria of the Marlins hit one on September 4, 2013. Rodgers hits another single in the 6th to put Colorado ahead 8-5. And then, not as dramatic because there's only 1 out, Ian Happ steps to the plate in the 7th and crushes a game-tying 3-run homer to send us off to Free Runner Land.

The teams trade their free runners in the 8th, and so the big blow is Ryan McMahon's 2-run homer in the top of the 10th. The only other homer the Rockies have hit in the 10th or later at Wrigley Field came from Todd Helton on May 9, 2004. And when Brendan Rodgers adds two more insurance runs with a double, it marks the first time in Rockies history that their top two batters in the lineup (remember Connor Joe's grand slam) had 4 RBI in the same game.

The Cubs do get a meaningless groundout in their half of the 10th to score the free runner and make the final score 13-10. That's significant mostly because it marks the first time the Cubs scored 10 runs and lost since, well, two weeks ago against the Marlins. Wednesday's game was actually the fourth time they've done it this year, tying the 1993 squad for the most such games in the modern era. The last time the Cubs scored 10 runs in either game of a doubleheader and lost was September 19, 1992, against the Cardinals. And although we had some hopeful flashbacks to a 21-inning DH we attended in Seattle in 2004, the last time the second game of a doubleheader required three extra frames now only goes back to August 13, 2014, between Arizona and Cleveland.

And ohhh yeah, let's say that 13-10 in 10 innings in a 7-inning game was the least of the Cubs' notable escapades this week. Their other game against the Rockies, the one we haven't mentioned yet, was on Monday and it would have otherwise been not very notable. Colorado collected 3 runs in the 1st, culminating with one of those famous "timing plays" where Sam Hilliard was out trying to stretch a single into a double (or at least a "second on the throw") but C.J. Cron crossed home in time to have his run stand. And then nothing. David Bote grounds into a double play in the 6th which at least gets the Cubs on the board. Our buddy Connor Joe hits a sac fly to give the Rockies their 3-run lead again. And then Jhoulys Chacin starts the bottom of the 8th by walking three straight batters on 12 straight pitches. Only twice before in Rox history had they issued three 4-pitch walks with 0 outs in the same inning, and the others weren't to consecutive batters. (Weirdly, they did both happen on June 26 against the Padres-- Mark Brownson in 1999 and then Max Suzuki again two years later.)

This will lead to Wisdom singling in one run, but still leaving the bases loaded for David Bote again. Who proceeds to ground into another double play that still scores a run. Long ago it was decided that a batter does not get an RBI when a run scores on a double play; clearly the committee in question was of the mindset that the defense would always rather trade two outs for one run. But since GIDPs were first officially recorded by the leagues in 1933, Bote is the first Cubs batter ever to hit into two run-scoring ones in the same game.

Monday's game would ultimately be won when Rafael Ortega launched a walkoff homer against Daniel Bard, also scoring Jason Heyward who had led off the 9th with a single. The only other Cubs batters to hit a multi-run walkoff homer against the Rockies are Kris Bryant (2015), Aramis Ramirez (2010), and Moises Alou (2002).

Light The Chicago Sky And Hold On Tight

We told you the Cubs weren't nearly done with their escapades. So if that wasn't the game you thought we'd "have to" write about, well, here it comes. Yep, it's Friday's barnburner on the shores of 35th Street as the MLB schedulers decide we haven't seen the Cubs and White Sox play each other in almost three weeks. And well, at least we've never seen them play each other quite like this.

Patrick Wisdom opens the festivities with a 3-run homer, the first time the Cubs have had their third batter hit a 3-run dinger in a road game since Anthony Rizzo in Cincinnati on April 22, 2017. By the time Dallas Keuchel gets all the way through the order, it's still the 1st inning and the Cubs have opened a 6-0 lead, the last run even scoring on a delayed steal where Jason Heyward was technically "caught" but was safe on an error. Keuchel leaves after giving up another leadoff single in the 2nd, paving the way for Reynaldo Lopez to throw 5 hitless innings in "relief"-- the first White Sox pitcher to do that since Terry Forster in Anaheim on April 13, 1975.

So while the Cubs are being held hitless, it's just up to the Sox to try to come back. Which naturally they do. And it only takes one inning. Keegan Thompson starts the 3rd by giving up two doubles, an error, and a single before getting replaced. The replacement in question, Adrian Sampson, immediately gives up a 3-run homer to Yasmani Grandal. And he's going to go all the way around the order as well before getting out of the inning. The Sox sent 13 batters to the plate and eight of them scored, marking their first 8-run inning in a home game since May 14, 2017, against the Padres. Michael Rucker gives up 4 more runs in the 5th to make it 13-6 already. And alas, Reynaldo Lopez has to leave the game at some point. So on comes the rest of the Sox bullpen, which on this night is just as susceptible as the Cubs'. By the time Garrett Crochet gives up a pair of doubles in the 8th, it's back to 14-10 and you're starting to look up Bears football scores. (But Chicago is playing Chicago, so how does that work?)

Except 14-10 isn't the football score you'll be looking up. Two walks in the bottom of the 8th lead to another 3-run homer for Yasmani Grandal, who turns in the first 8-RBI game for the White Sox since Robin Ventura did it in Arlington on September 4, 1995. As for Grandal's 4 hits to go with the 8 RBI, that had only been done once before in Sox history, by Carl Reynolds against the Yankees on July 2, 1930. And 17-10 looks like a football score too. Until the Cubs kick a meaningless field goal and play for the onside kick. Craig Kimbrel, yes the one who pitched for the Cubs until a few weeks ago, is still making each of his outings interesting. This time he gets two quick outs and then serves up a dinger to Patrick Wisdom. The same Patrick Wisdom who started this whole mess with the homer in the 1st. He is going to join Sammy Sosa (2004) and Moises Alou (2002) as the only Cubs batters to hit multiple homers in a loss on the South Side. And combined with Grandal, it's only the fourth Cubs/Sox game where a player for each time hit multiple homers. Jose Abreu and Kyle Schwarber did it in 2017, and Paul Konerko was part of both other pairs with Aramis Ramirez in 2006 and Tood Hundley in 2002.

Kimbrel still has to get one more out, by which we mean walking Matt Duffy and giving up another homer to Ian Happ. (There's your 3 meaningless points for the Cubs.) Both of those 9th-inning taters came with the Cubs trailing by at least 6 and down to their final out; they hadn't hit two such homers in the same game since John Boccabella and Jimmie Schaffer did it against the Cardinals on September 12, 1963. But finally Kimbrel gets his last out and seals the Cubs' first loss when scoring at least 13 runs since a 16-15 nailbiter in Montreal on May 14, 2000. It's also the seventh time ever that the Cubs and White Sox have both scored 13 runs on the same day; the last of those was September 14, 2017. But it's the first of those seven occurrences on which they didn't both win (they couldn't, because they're playing each other).

One If By Land, Two If By Sea, Four If By Air

Our baseball week actually began on Monday with one of those games you knew we'd mention. Last Sunday's tilt between the Red Sox and Rangers was hurricane-d out, but both teams had an off-day on Monday, and the Rangers were only going to Cleveland, so hey, stick around, we'll make it up tomorrow. So we had the rare 1:00 start on a non-holiday Monday, although Boston generally has at least one of those every year.

And sure enough, this one had all the makings of a midweek day game where nobody's awake and oh yes, there's an AL West team involved too. Alex Verdugo's 2-run homer looks like it might hold up for a win until Matt Barnes takes the mound in the 9th. He gives up three singles and a double that likely would have given Texas the lead, except that it bounced over the low fence into the bullpen and trail runner Nick Solak got sent back to third. Instead of leaving Barnes out there to give up the losing run as well, Garrett Whitlock comes on and strikes out two batters to send us to Free Runner Land. After both teams score theirs in the 10th, the Rangers can't get a ball out of the infield in the 11th, and so you already know how the Sawx are going to play their half. Sacrifice bunt to get the free runner to third. Except Dennis Santana errs on the throw to put two on. Now you need a force at every base, so the old intentional walk follows in short order, although it was to Alex Verdugo, who basically has been Boston's entire offense so far. Since last season under The New Rules, it's the second time Boston's gotten an intentional walk with first base occupied in extra innings; they had a total of two in the 14 seasons before that. And unfortunately, these things usually work out for the defense, or else they wouldn't keep doing it. This one, however, um, didn't.

Travis Shaw, walkoff grand slam. It's only been three years (July 14, 2018) since Xander Bogaerts had their previous one, but it's been almost 60 years since they hit one in the 11th inning. That was Dick Stuart against the Orioles on April 28, 1964. The others in team history in the 11th or later are by Carroll Hardy (1962), Clyde Vollmer (1951), Vern Stephens (1949), and Leon Culberson (1946).

We've used this before, but the original "16 Candles" to which our title refers is not the Molly Ringwald movie, but a doo-wop song by The Crests from 1958. If you'd like something more upbeat, may we suggest Billy Joel's oral history of four decades jammed into four minutes, complete with flamethrowers. Intermission!

CandleSox

Ah, but as they say, the extra innings giveth, the extra innings taketh away. (Nobody says that.) We skipped over an 11-9 game against the Twins on Tuesday to bring you to the 10th inning on Wednesday, made possible by Kyle Schwarber's first home run with the Red Sox. Hansel Robles would be tasked with getting Josh Donaldson out to start the 10th, and he, well, didn't. In fact his second pitch ended up in the bleachers for the old-fashioned multi-run leadoff homer, the first one of those the Twins have hit since we adopted New Rules last summer. And we might not have mentioned this game either, except that Robles goes on to give up a single, hit a batter, and then serve the bleachers with another souvenir off the bat of Jake Cave. It's the first time the Twins have hit multiple homers in the same extra inning since Chris Herrmann and Pedro Florimon did it in Anaheim on July 23, 2013. It was earlier that same season-- April 10 against Baltimore-- that the Red Sox last had a reliever give up 5 runs, 2 homers, and take a loss; Robles duplicated the "feat" of Joel Hanrahan from eight years ago.

On Thursday the Sox were back in the win column behind Chris Sale and Bobby Dalbec, plus a little help from the Minnesota bullpen. Sale went 1-2-3 on nine pitches in the 2nd. He then went 1-2-3 on nine pitches in the 3rd. We flipped to this game for the 4th, as frequently happens when no-hit bids start reaching those scary middle innings, and the announcers are mentioning "immaculate innings". If you don't already know, it's baseball-speak for striking out the side in the minimum of nine pitches. Hang on, look at Sale. The 2nd inning doesn't qualify because two of those outs were put in play. They just happened to all be on the third pitch. But the 3rd inning, yes, strike 3, strike 6, and strike 9. If that sounds like something Sale might have done before, you'd be right. Twice during the first half of the 2019 season. In fact, the only other pitcher known to have thrown three immaculate innings is Sandy Koufax.

None of Koufax's came in a no-hitter, however. And no, none of Sale's have either. Willians Astudillo made sure of that with a 5th-inning blast over the Green Monster. But that still only got Minnesota back to within 4-2. Dalbec had driven home their first 3 runs with another Monster shot in the 2nd. And even after Sale departs in the 6th, Dalbec is just getting started.

Edgar Garcia will be the aforementioned "help" from the Twins bullpen. He gets to face 12 Sox batters... and get five of them out. Hit batter, single, wild pitch, 2-run single from Dalbec. Two more walks to load the bases. Through some miracle, gets a double play to make this look a little better. Then Rafael Devers smokes him for another 2-run shot and the Sawx have gone up 10-2. For whatever reason (possibly conceding at this point), Garcia gets to go back out for the 7th. Where Dalbec is going to end his night with yet another home run. In Twins/Senators history, only two other relievers have given up 7 runs and 2 homers while getting no more than 5 outs: Jason Miller and Julio DePaula, within two weeks of each other in 2007. By the time this finally ends, Astudillo has pitched again, and actually not given up a run, but also becoming the second Twins player in the designated-hitter era (1973) to homer in a game in which he also pitched. The other is Chris Gimenez in 2018.

Now as for Dalbec, if you've been counting, he's driven in 7 of those 12 Red Sox runs. Did we mention he's batting 9th? Only one other batter in Sawx history has had a 7-RBI game out of the 9-hole, and you might remember it because it pops up a lot. Jackie Bradley did it in the 22-10 game against Seattle in 2015. As for 3 hits, 3 runs scored, and 7 RBI batting 9th, only four players in MLB history have pulled that off-- the two Bostonians just above, plus Ramon Vazquez of the Rangers in 2007 (that's The 30-3 Game at Camden Yards), plus Brian Giles of the Mariners in 1990. Making the search "2 homers and 7 RBI batting 9th" only adds two more batters to the four just named-- Robert Person of the Phillies in 2002, and Braves pitcher Tony Cloninger in his famous Two Grand Slams Game in 1966.

More Midnight Oil

We've never tallied up exactly how often the last game of the night belongs to each team, but the Mariners feel like a good choice to lead the pack. While some of the other western teams have moved their games up to 6:30 or 6:45, the Mariners persist in their 7:10 starts. So when they end up with late drama, it's even later than most other teams. In fact they came very close to touching the midnight oil this week also.

The M's started the week with a strange 2-game "series" (is that really even a series?) in Oakland, not even part of a home-and-home such as MLB used to do a few years ago. In fact these two teams play other seven times in the last 10 days of the season, so whatever. But they made it interesting on Monday.

Trailing 3-2 in the 9th (because AL West), Ty France led off the inning with a home run, and unfortunately for "tie game" purposes, this one does not involve a free runner. It was the fifth time this year that France has hit a game-tying (not go-ahead) dinger in the 6th inning or later; he's just the second batter in team history to do that. Raul Ibañez hit six of them in 2013. Care to take a guess when France's fourth such homer was? Yeah, the previous game, last Sunday against Houston. If you expand the search to include tying or go-ahead homers, only four players in team history have hit them in the 9th or later of consecutive team games. The others are Alvin Davis (August 1986), Tom Paciorek (May 1981), and Leon Roberts (June 1978).

But it wasn't even the first tying homer of this game. Back in the top of the 6th, Mitch Haniger had cranked a 2-run job to get Seattle on the board before Matt Olson took the lead right back in the bottom half. Between Haniger and France, it's the first game in M's history where they hit multiple tying homers in the 6th inning or later. Happily for "last game of the night" purposes, we have Jake Bauers coming up later in the inning. Because he smacks a 2-run single to give the Mariners the win. The last Seattle hitter with a multi-run, go-ahead single in the 9th in Oakland was Casey Kotchman on April 5, 2010.

The Mariners would welcome in Kansas City for the weekend, and the Royals very quickly wore out their welcome. Oh sure, they gifted Seattle 4 early runs, including both a homer and a bases-loaded walk by Jake Fraley. But after letting Yusei Kikuchi allow only 1 hit through 5 innings, they decided that was plenty. In the 6th we'll start with back-to-back singles from Ryan O'Hearn and Emmanuel Rivera, and now here's that pesky "third time through the order" gremlin. Whit Merrifield cranks a double to score one. Nicky Lopez draws a walk to reload the bases. Kikuchi is promptly replaced by Joe Smith. And Joe Smith's pitching baseball is promptly replaced by home-plate umpire Mike Estabrook after Sal Perez deposits his first one into the seats for a lead-flipping grand slam. It's the first Royals slam in Seattle since Alcides Escobar took Roenis Elias deep on May 11, 2014. Perez has now hit four of them, tying Carlos Beltran and trailing Danny Tartabull (5) and Frank White (6) on the Royals' franchise list. And it turns out one of Perez's other slams also flipped the lead; that was June 21, 2017 against Houston. The only other players in Royals history to hit two of those are Beltran, White, and George Brett.

So 10:36 was already a late enough finish (and the last in the country by 12 minutes that night), but it doesn't hold a candle to the days on either side. You already know about 12:59 am in San Diego on Wednesday night. You probably didn't hear that we almost hit #WeirdBaseball again on Friday. Unlike his previous start, when Kris Bubic took a no-hitter into the 7th, the Mariners jumped on him for 5 more early runs including a 2-run double and a bases-loaded walk both by Luis Torrens. Torrens will add a sac fly later in the game to become just the sixth player in Mariners history with 4 RBI on 1 hit, where that hit wasn't a home run. The others are Carlos Ruiz (2017), Jose Lopez (2008), John Olerud (2000), Dave Magadan (1993), and Dave Valle (1989). But that sac fly isn't going to come for a while. At least not until rookie Logan Gilbert tries to make it through the 4th inning. Which he eventually does, but he also scatters three singles around the first two outs. Which brings up Sal Perez with the bases loaded.

History, repeat thyself. If you guessed that no player in Royals lore had ever hit slams in consecutive games, that was an easy question. In fact it's happened only two other times so far this century: Tyler Saladino of Milwaukee did it two seasons ago, and Carlos Beltran did it for the Mets in July 2006. Only two other catchers in the live-ball era have hit slams in back-to-back games: Mike Piazza in 1988 and Bill Dickey in 1937. (Hold that thought on the team doing it, unless you clicked the video. Then don't tell the rest of us.)

We're skipping innings 6 through 9 because literally nothing happened. (Remember, AL West.) There were three baserunners and a double play. Total. Both teams will advance their free runner to third in the 10th and score on a sac fly (this is where Torrens comes back in). Carlos Hernandez gave up that sac fly for the Royals, ruining his shot at an impressive win; he threw 5 innings (the 6th through the 10th), allowed just 1 hit, and struck out 6. Even without getting the W, he's the first Royals reliever to post that line since Doug Bird at Milwaukee on August 24, 1977.

This will finally end in the 12th when Edward Olivares, who came on as a defensive replacement in the 7th, lifts a 2-run homer to score Kansas City's free runner. It's just the second time the Royals have hit an extra-inning homer at the Mariners' current home, and the other is only Sal Perez again (July 5, 2017, not a grand slam). Olivares also was responsible for that sac fly in the 10th, the second player in team history to have both a sac fly and a homer in a game he didn't start. The other is Clint Hurdle in Toronto on August 11, 1978. The Mariners do make things a little scary in the bottom of the 12th by scoring their free runner and then putting two more batters (the winning runs) on base with 2 outs. But Jarred Kelenic strikes out to finally end the game... at 11:50 pm. No ice cream for you.

Cheap Trick: Hit Grand Slam

We told you to hold that thought about the Royals hitting grand slams in back-to-back games. Turns out the Thursday-Friday combo in Seattle was the second time they'd ever done that. Because the first... was Wednesday-Thursday. Yes, backing up two days, we're going to their series finale in Houston where the slam actually was wasted by the Royals getting walked off. The walkoff caught our eye (and the pitcher's leg) immediately, the slams didn't matter until later.

It's 3-1 in the 7th and the Astros are trying to squeeze one more inning out of Lance McCullers. Which goes well until Michael Taylor hits a 2-out single, and then Emmanuel Rivera and Cam Gallagher combine to draw back-to-back walks on fifteen pitches. That's how we load the bases, but that also runs McCullers' pitch count to 107 and summons Cristian Javier. And his pitch count will be exactly 1 when Whit Merrifield unleashes today's grand slam into the Crawford Boxes. For all the achievements Merrifield has had in Kansas City, it was only his second career grand slam. That's partly due to him always batting leadoff, so the 7-8-9 guys aren't as likely to load up the bases for him. But it turns out his other slam was also at Minute Maid Park, on May 7, 2019. The only other visiting player to hit two there is Brian McCann.

By now you also know that this will give the Royals a string of three consecutive games with a grand slam, where they'd never even hit two before. However-- and how quickly we forget-- remember "Slam Diego"? Yes, the Padres had a string last year of slamming in four straight games. (Spoiler alert, the Royals didn't hit one on Saturday, so that streak is safe. However, Sal Perez did homer again on both Saturday and Sunday to tie Mike Sweeney for the longest homer streak in Royals history at 5 games.)

Merrifield's slam also flipped the lead back in favor of Kansas City, but pinch hitter Michael Brantley will undo that in the 8th. His RBI single was similar to one Aledmys Diaz hit against the Mariners on April 28; the last time Houston had two tying pinch hits in the 8th or later was 2008 by Geoff Blum and Darin Erstad.

So we head to the bottom of the 10th and one of the strangest walkoffs of the year. Remember, the Astros are the team who walked off on a nubber that went about 8 feet in 2018. This one isn't quite that bizarre, but it did go about 58 feet, right back to the mound where it ricocheted off Joel Payamps' hip. After that there is obviously no play on the winning run at home, so you'll almost always see the defense let out a sigh and let the ball just lay there and concede the walkoff infield single. Nope. Payamps, likely just out of habit since he was already running toward first, picked it up anyway and shoveled it over, even after the winning run had already scored. There is, of course, a "rules" conundrum here, because is the batter really out? The book says the game ends immediately when the winning run scores. On a fair ball with less than two outs, there's nothing requiring the batter to touch first or somehow resolve his at-bat. His at-bat actually ends as soon as the ball is hit (he becomes "batter-runner" in rule-book parlance). The first-base umpire does follow through with the "out" call, and in these days of replay, we can understand playing it out. There could be some weird challenge about interference, or the "winning run" missing the plate, such that if the run got wiped out and the inning had to continue, the out would still count.

So with the looming question of whether the out should really count at all, you're also wondering, when the heck have you seen a game-winning groundout to the pitcher? Glad you asked. That last happened on September 17, 2013, when the Brewers pulled off a suicide squeeze. Logan Schafer had to awkardly lunge over the plate to get the bunt down, and Cubs pitcher Justin Grimm had no play, actually watched Jeff Bianchi score the run, and then just threw over to first for no reason. (At least he gets credit for another third of an inning and not a single?) The last time the Astros walked off on any groundout (note, that 8-footer above is technically a walkoff error) was on August 30, 2006, with the bases loaded. Aubrey Huff sent one right to the Brewers' Jeff Cirillo, who was close enough to step on first, but that also removed the force play at home and Mike Lamb beat the throw that would have finished the double play.

Bottom Of The Bag

⚾ Dansby Swanson, Monday: Second player in Braves history whose solo homer ended up as the only run of a game against the Yankees. Chipper Jones hooked one just inside the pole in the opener of the 1999 World Series.

⚾ Josh Donaldson, Friday: First Twins batter to hit a multi-run homer in the 1st inning, have that be the team's only runs of the game, and have it stand up for a win, since Kent Hrbek at Oakland on April 11, 1990.

⚾ Jesús Sanchez, Sunday: First batter in Marlins history to hit a solo or 2-run homer in the 1st inning, have that be the team's only runs of the game, and have it stand up for a win.

⚾ Ryan Mountcastle, Tuesday: Tenth Orioles batter this season to have 2 homers in a loss. Only other team in MLB history to have 10 players do that is the 1998 Mariners.

⚾ Austin Hays, Saturday: With Ryan McKenna on April 11, first time Orioles have hit two pinch-hit triples in the same season since Jim Dwyer and Mike Young in 1985.

⚾ Glenn Otto, Friday: First pitcher to make his MLB debut in a Rangers uniform and allow 0 runs while striking out 7+ batters.

⚾ Joey Wendle, Sunday: First player in Rays history with 2 homers and 6 RBI in a road game.

⚾ Shohei Ohtani, Wednesday: First pitcher to bat leadoff and strike out 3 times in a game since the Phillies' Tom Seaton, double-switched as a reliever, against the Giants on May 29, 1913.

⚾ Shohei Ohtani, Thursday: First Angels batter whose leadoff homer was the team's only run of a game since JB Shuck against Cleveland on August 20, 2013.

⚾ Nate Lowe, Tuesday: First Rangers batter with a 5-hit game that included at least 3 RBI since Josh Hamilton's 4-homer game at Camden Yards on May 8, 2012.

⚾ White Sox/Cubs, Sat-Sun: First time in "Crosstown Cup" history that the two teams have traded 7-run wins against each other in consecutive games.

⚾ Jake Latz, Wednesday: First Rangers pitcher to give up 3 homers in his MLB debut since Ryan Snare did it in his only career appearance on August 6, 2004.

⚾ Indians, Saturday: First time they had four bases-loaded plate appearances in the same extra inning since April 27, 1984, in Detroit (in the 19th!).

⚾ Genesis Cabrera, Thursday: First Cardinals pitcher to give up 6 runs while getting 0 outs since Bill Steele against Pittsburgh on September 8, 1912.

⚾ Nationals, Sunday: First game in franchise history (1969) where they had 3 or more hits and all of them were homers.

⚾ Cardinals, Wednesday: Second walkoff win in team history against the Tigers. Other was June 12, 1999, on an Edgar Renteria single in the 14th.

⚾ Christian Walker, Monday: First batter in D'backs history to get credited with 3 RBI on a single.

⚾ Edmundo Sosa, Saturday: First Cardinals batter to have 2 triples and 5 RBI in a game since Ken Boyer against the Reds on April 29, 1962.

⚾ Austin Riley, Tuesday: Second game in a week with 3 hits and a hit-by-pitch (also did it August 18). Last Braves batter to have two such games so close together was Buck Herzog on May 14 & 18, 1918.

⚾ Victor Reyes, Friday: Second known pinch-hit inside-the-park homer in Tigers history. Ben Ogilvie had one against the Brewers on June 2, 1976.

⚾ Aaron Judge, Thursday: First go-ahead single for Yankees in 9th or later in Oakland since Tino Martinez off Doug Jones on August 11, 1999.

⚾ Taylor Houck, Sunday: First Red Sox pitcher to walk 4 batters and hit 3 others since Dana Kiecker on July 5, 1990.

Five More Minutes

Not five more hours, although that's a thing too. But last week's post had a lot of "dreamy" stuff in it. From Field of Dreams, to throwing a no-hitter in your first start, to lots of fun walkoffs, it was a week to remember. So this week we'll forgive everyone for still being groggy and throwing up a bunch of forgettable "snooze-button" games. But a few teams woke up by the end of it. So we still have a few of our favorites from the "dog days" of August.

Party Like It's 1999

By now you know we love a good 15-run game because it gives us plenty to write about. Odds are good that somebody went off for 3 homers or 6 RBI or some pitcher imploded. Alas there weren't too many of these games this week. Perhaps everyone just got tired of running around the bases all summer.

Except maybe Joey Votto. While you've been hearing about Miguel Cabrera being stuck on 499 homers all week (he finally got un-stuck on Sunday), Votto has been rolling off the milestones all summer. He reached 300 career homers at the end of April. He got his 1000th career RBI right before the All-Star break, and then passed Pete Rose on the team's career list a couple weeks ago. So when Votto began his week on 1998 career hits, you knew this wouldn't be long. Seven innings to be exact.

An otherwise-meaningless single in the 3rd puts Votto squarely on 1999. The Reds manage to score 4 runs without Votto's help, such that he comes up again with no outs in the 7th. And proceeds to bloop one just over second base to roll over the odometer. We're not sure if they took the ball out of play for him (they usually do), but either way, Michael Rucker didn't like the next ball very much either. Because Kyle Farmer roped it to left for a double, and Rucker finally leaves with the bases loaded. Votto's now on third, so when Dan Winkler promptly walks Aristides Aquino, he also collects career run number 1090 (he rolled that odometer at the end of 2019).

Winkler, however, apparently missed the memo that not all the Reds batters are waiting to get hit number 2000. Because he certainly seemed interested in helping them. Tyler Naquin singles. Jonathan India hits a 3-run double-- with Naquin's game against Pittsburgh on April 6, the first time in Cubs history that multiple leadoff batters have collected 5 RBI in a game. And when Jake Jewell becomes the third Cubs pitcher of the inning, guess who's up again. Not only is Votto going to finish an 8-run inning, he's not even going to get to savor hit number 2000. Because 2001 goes flying down the left-field line, making Votto the first player since Eddie Mathews in 1965 to get hits 2000 and 2001 in the same inning. Monday's 3-hit game also tied Votto with Johnny Bench; they've each had 134 of those for the Reds along the way, appropriate since Bench is also around Votto on the tops of all those leaderboards. The Reds were also nice enough to point out that the only other National League player to reach the milestones of 300 homers, 1000 RBI, and 2000 hits in the same season was Billy Williams in 1971.

But let's not forget that 8-run inning. The Reds had one of those on May 13 at Coors Field, the first time they've had two in a season since 2016. As for Winkler's 4 runs and 1 out, that earned him a dubious spot in Cubs history, mostly because he did the same thing (actually 6 runs and 0 outs) in his previous game. The other Cubs pitcher to pull that off in consecutive outings was Tex Carleton in July 1938. And Winkler won't get a chance to three-peat; the Cubs released him later in the week.

From that "shoulda saved some runs" file, the Reds scored only 1 run each in the remaining two games against the Cubs, both of them on solo homers. But they did have an interesting line on Friday when the Marlins came to town. The Reds posted a fairly boring 5 runs on 6 hits and 1 error. But Miami had 3 runs, 4 hits, and 2 errors. So a slightly different quirk than the Red Sox game last week with different numbers in every inning. But Friday was the first game in Great American Ball Park history where the two teams combined to use each number 1 through 6 in the final summary.

Angels Of The Morning

Those 14 runs by Cincinnati on Monday stood up as the highest-scoring game for most of the week, but we did have a few higher combined scores that got there. The most notable of those was on Thursday at Comerica Park where the Tigers unloaded for 6 early runs against Jose Quintana of the Angels. Quintana joined Shohei Ohtani (June 30) as the only Angels starters this year to give up 6+ runs while getting no more than 4 outs, and Quintana is the first to also give up a homer along the way since Jhoulys Chacin on August 11, 2016.

It's already 9-2 by the time we get to the 5th, but Matt Manning has already needed 96 pitches after giving up 5 hits and 4 walks. He will end up not finishing the 5th inning, and here's the opening for the Angels. Derek Holland starts the 6th by giving up three singles, and Joe Jimenez replaces him and lets all three of those runs score. He of course does this by allowing a single and two walks of his own, and Brandon Marsh's triple eventually plates all of those too. Marsh also had an RBI triple in the 2nd, and is the first Angels batter with two three-baggers since Erick Aybar on September 2, 2011. The only other batter in Angels history with a multi-triple game in Detroit was Jerry Remy on August 28, 1977.

The Angels have gotten back to 10-9 when Michael Fulmer is tasked with pitching the 8th. And Max Stassi proceeds to hit the first lead-flipping homer for the Angels in the 8th or later at Comerica. The last one they hit over at Michigan and Trumbull was by Jim Edmonds on August 11, 1998. Shohei Ohtani then adds an insurance sac fly, becoming the first Angels batter with 2 hits, 2 walks, and a sac fly in the same game since Chili Davis did it against the Twins on June 7, 1994. Only two others in team history have done it out of the leadoff spot: Luis Polonia in 1992 and Rick Miller in 1978. The 13-10 final was Detroit's first time scoring double digits and losing since Opening Day 2018 against the Pirates (they memorably returned that 13-10 score a couple weeks later). And while Miguel Cabrera still didn't hit #500, he did tie Al Kaline by having his 26th 3-RBI game that did not feature a homer. He also tied Cecil Fielder with his seventh career 4-RBI game in a loss; the only Tigers batter with more is Hank Greenberg (9).

But Ohtani is much more than just 8th-inning sac flies. (As the kids say, big if true.) You see, every five or six days Ohtani wanders out to the mound and decides to be a pitcher as well. He even bats for himself in those games, despite being in a league that has the Designated Hitter option. Which means nearly every game has some kind of weird first-time-ever note by a pitcher batting leadoff or an AL pitcher batting at all. It's sort of a gift that keeps on giving.

This week Wednesday was your day to watch Ohtani hurl some baseballs at opposing batters, and the Tigers didn't have many answers. They grounded into double plays in both the 1st and 2nd, with the only damage being Willi Castro's solo homer in the 5th. So Ohtani is already in line for the win when he decides to add another insurance run. And this isn't an 8th-inning sac fly. This is an 8th-inning homer. He is the third pitcher in Angels history to throw 8 innings, allow 1 run, and also hit a homer on offense; the others to do it-- Clyde Wright in 1970 and Fred Newman in 1964-- were before the DH. Similarly, only four other Angels pitchers have ever homered in the 8th inning or later: Bob Lee in 1965, Ken Tatum twice in 1969, and the asterisk that is Francisco Arcia, a position player pitching in a 19-run blowout in 2018. That dinger also happened to be Ohtani's MLB-leading 40th of the season, giving him some pretty good company on another list. Only two other players have hit 40 homers in a season and pitched in even one game during that same season. Rocky Colavito threw 3 innings in a doubleheader for Cleveland in 1958, a season where he hit 41 dingers. The other, you might have guessed, is Babe Ruth who did it three times.

And since we're working backwards through the Angels/Tigers series, Tuesday's opener was an 8-2 affair that was only decided when the Halos blew up for 6 runs in the top of the 9th off Gregory Soto. Even though 3 were unearned, Soto was the first Tigers pitcher to surrender 6 scores while getting 2 outs since Rick Porcello managed to do it in a start, also against the Angels, on April 20, 2013. Those runs included a grand slam by Jo Adell, who became the first Angels batter ever to hit one at Comerica. Their last one over at The Corner was by Lance Parrish on June 17, 1990. And Adell was only the third Angels batter to hit a slam in the 9th inning against Detroit, joining Dick Schofield in 1986 and Jay Johnstone in 1970.

Sleepwalking (Off)

We'll admit, we sometimes do not give enough love to games that happen on Sundays. That's because most of this post is already written and done on Saturday night, particularly this week when there was a hurricane a-comin' this way. So you might have missed Gregory Polanco's walkoff sac fly for the Twins last Sunday. He didn't even reach "bottom of the bag" status with that one. Well, he'll show us, right?

That 9th-inning fly ball beat the Rays 5-4 and sent Minnesota off to a midweek series with Cleveland. And Monday's opener was a back-and-forth affair between Griffin Jax and Cal Quantrill, both of whom would be worth some decent Scrabble points if you could use names. Max Kepler hit his fifth leadoff homer against the Indians, breaking a tie with Brian Dozier for the team's most ever versus Cleveland. Bradley Zimmer then hit Cleveland's second lead-flipping homer at Target Field, after Edwin Encarnacion on June 3, 2018. So after Ryan Jeffers ties things with a homer in the 6th and gets both starters off the hook, we stall out and head to Free Runner Land again. Caleb Thielbar strikes out two batters such that Cleveland doesn't score. Which means it only takes a walkoff double in the bottom of the 10th, by-- of course-- Jorge Polanco. Minnesota hadn't had a game-winning two-bagger in extras since Denard Span against Kansas City on September 13, 2012. But remember the sac fly from Sunday. Polanco is the first Twins batter with a walkoff anything in back-to-back team games since Jacque Jones had a single and a homer against Baltimore on July 19-20, 2005.

But what if that's not good enough for you? What if you just want More Polanco More Often? Well, he did have 2 hits and a stolen base in Tuesday's loss, and did drive in the Twins' only run in the 8th. But we must skip ahead to Wednesday for All Your Polanco Needs. And technically he's got Alex Colome to thank for this one. Up 7-5 in the 9th, Colome allows an RBI double to Jose Ramirez, who then finds his way to third with 2 outs. And ball four to Bradley Zimmer is also a wild pitch which allows Ramirez to scamper home with the tying run. The last Twins pitcher to blow a save in such fashion (wild-pitch in the tying run in the 9th) was Len Whitehouse against the Angels on July 29, 1984. But this just sets up Polanco for more heroics. With Ryan Jeffers out there as the free runner in the 11th, Polanco hits a 1-out single for an 8-7 walkoff, his third game-winner in four days. And if that seems like it could be a team record, you'd be right. We're missing some plays from the first couple decades of Senators history, so can't be airtight back to 1901, but at least in Twins history (1961), he's easily the first player to have three walkoffs in a 4-day span. In fact, he also had one on July 11 going into the All-Star break, so we didn't realize Polanco had already broken this record earlier in the week. But prior to him, the Twins' record for the fastest to accumulate three walkoffs... was a whopping thirty-seven days. That was by Joe Nossek in 1965.

Sleepless In Seattle

If you've been with us for any length of time, you know the AL West is one of our "favorite" topics because many of their games are duller than watching those cornstalks grow in Iowa. Oh look, it's 3-1 again, the starting pitcher went 6 innings and struck out 5, the "star hitter" was 1-for-3 with a double, and there's just nothing interesting about this game. Plus it's usually about 1:30 in the morning by the time they finally end. So we do at least owe the AL West some credit when they do something interesting.

We will take you to the series finale in Arlington on Thursday between the Mariners and Rangers. Seattle won the first two games of the series, both of them by 3-1 counts (we told you so!), and Spencer Howard would at least make sure the Mariners scored more than 3 runs this time. In fact he gave up 5 of them including a 3-run homer to Mitch Haniger, who will also end up scoring 3 runs himself. Nelson Cruz was the last Mariners DH with 3 RBI and 3 runs scored, doing that at Oakland on April 23, 2017.

The teams trade a couple runs such that it's 7-2 going to the 9th. And enter Anthony Misiewicz for his 52nd appearance of the season, the most for a Seattle pitcher by this point of a season since Edwin Diaz set the record with 60 games pitched in 2018. Might be too many appearances. Two singles and a double to start the Rangers 9th; Misiewicz will join Brandon Brennan in 2019, Arthur Rhodes in 2008, and John Montague in 1979 as the only Mariners pitchers to have multiple games in a season where they gave up 3 runs and got 0 outs. Misiewicz also did it against the Padres on May 23. But still it's 7-4 until Diego Castillo gives up a 3-run, game-tying shot to Jason Martin. Only two other batters in Rangers/Senators history had tied the game with a 3-run homer when down to the team's final out: Lee Stevens against the Royals in 1999, and Jeff Burroughs against Boston in 1975. It was the first time the Rangers scored 5 runs in a 9th inning since June 4, 2019, against Baltimore.

But this takes us off to Free Runner Fun Land again, and the aforementioned Mitch Haniger is your bonus guy in the 11th. Which means Ty France gets to hit the first-ever multi-run homer for the Mariners that late in a game in Arlington. Three Seattle batters-- and here's a fun list-- have hit solo shots there in the 11th or later: Ken Griffey Jr (1994), Jay Buhner (1991), and Jerry Narron (1981).

All My M's Live In Texas

And if you're planning a Mariners road trip, you couldn't do better than a quick trip down I-45 from Dallas for a weekend series against the Astros. The execution, however, well,...

Yusei Kikuchi was sent to the mound in Friday's game, and well, yu-sei it didn't go well. Kikuchi got tagged for 7 runs and 3 homers without escaping the 3rd inning; with Darren McCaughan on July 26, it's the first time multiple M's pitchers have posted that line against the Astros in the same season. Jake Meyers hit a 2-run homer in the 2nd; Yordan Alvarez and Yuli Gurriel went back-to-back in the 3rd, and by the time we're all done with this, the Astros have scored multiple runs in each of the first 5 innings of a game for the first time in team history. We were surprised that we didn't have to go back further to find the last time any team did it, but that was the A's against the Astros on September 10, 2019.

And once again, we might not have written anything about this game if it hadn't been followed up with Saturday's escapades. Finally topping that 14-run Cincinnati game from Monday, the Astros piled up a 15-1 win, their second-largest victory ever against the Mariners behind a 21-1 on September 8, 2019. Taylor Jones, whom you are entitled to have never heard of, came up a single shy of the cycle, which is rare by itself. But only four other batters in Astros history have collected a homer, a triple, a double, 3 runs scored, and 4 RBI in a game: Jeff Bagwell in 2001, Chris Truby in 2000, and Cesar Cedeño twice in the 1970s. Jacob Wilson, also an Astros batter you might not have heard of, also had a triple and a double; with Jones they are the fourth set of teammates in Houston history to do that in the same game. Jose Altuve and Matt Downs did it at Washington in 2012; the other pairs are Gerald Young and Kevin Bass (1989 at Philadelphia) and Cedeño with Jim Wynn against the Dodgers in 1972. The 12-3 loss on Friday, followed by the 15-1 thumping on Saturday, marked the first time the Mariners had given up 12 runs in back-to-back road games since June 1 and 2, 2016, in San Diego. They did bounce back on Sunday to avoid the sweep, but needed 11 innings to do it. Ty France hit a tying shot in the 9th, joining Ryon Healy (August 2018) as the only Mariners to do that at Minute Maid Park. And then it was up to Kyle Seager for most of the late theater. Although France singled home the free runner for the lead in the 11th, it was Seager who followed with a 3-run homer to put the game away. He's the first Seattle hitter with a 3- or 4-run shot that late in a game since... Kyle Seager tied a game against the White Sox with a 14th-inning grand slam on June 5, 2013, after they had given up 5 runs in the top half. (They still eventually lost.)

Yeah, a lot of teams were sleepwalking through the middle of August, no doubt some of them realizing that with only six weeks left, there's not much to play for at this point. So if you, like them, have just not felt like dragging yourself to work on a Monday morning later, may we suggest the official siren's call of that famous Snooze button. Intermission (and five more minutes!)

Sole Cycle

Taylor Jones may have become the fifth player this year to miss the cycle by the single, but we also had the third completed cycle of the 2021 season this week. That was brought to us by Freddie Freeman, who pulled off the feat Wednesday in Miami.

Freeman doubled in the 1st inning, only to see Jorge Soler get thrown out on a play at the plate to keep the game scoreless. He tripled to lead off the 4th, always the hardest hit to get, and then scored on an Austin Riley single. The single came in the very next inning after Atlanta batted around and scored 4 runs against Jesús Luzardo in the 4th. And when Charlie Morton struggled to get out of the 5th, Freeman batted again in the 6th and cranked a 2-run homer to make the score 7-2 and complete the 333rd cycle in MLB history. That's only slightly less rare than a no-hitter, of which there are currently 313. It's the third cycle this year (versus eight! no-hitters); the others were by Jake Cronenworth (July 16) and Trea Turner (June 30). The Braves' last cycle was... oh look, by Freddie Freeman on June 15, 2016. That only made him the first player in Braves history to do it twice, and the 28th in MLB history. Only one other Braves batter had hit for the cycle and scored 4 runs in the game where he did so; that was Bill Collins against the Phillies on October 6, 1910. And only one other batter had recorded a cycle at Marlins Park since it opened in 2012; that was Cody Bellinger of the Dodgers on July 15, 2017.

Thanks in part to Freeman's cycle, the Braves held an 11-3 lead going to the 9th inning of Wednesday's game, which makes it somewhat irrelevant that the Marlins managed to score 6 runs in the bottom of the 9th and "only" lose by 2. Miami's last game with a 6-run 9th was on August 5, 2015, against the Mets... and that was also a loss after trailing 8-0 to start the frame.

Dual Cycle

So what happens after we've already written that previous section, than Daulton Varsho of the Diamondbacks meets Coors Field. Varsho unloaded a 3-run homer in the 2nd to give Arizona the lead for good, their seventh lead-flipping 3- or 4-run bomb there and the first since David Peralta on July 10, 2008. Varsho then went back on Snooze for a few innings, finally stirring in the 8th with a leadoff double and another run scored. And with 2 outs in the 9th, and Arizona holding a 7-3 lead, Varsho can't just go quietly. He legs out an RBI triple to score Peralta and also post the "single shy of the cycle" line. He is the sixth to do it this year, and the first for Arizona since A.J. Pollock on July 21, 2017. The only other D'backs hitter with those three hits and 4 RBI in a game is Greg Colbrunn, who recorded Arizona's second completed cycle on September 18, 2002.

And if you put Jones and Varsho together, you have the first instance of "single shy of the cycle" on consecutive days since Josh Reddick of Houston and Steven Souza of the Rays did it on April 19 & 20, 2017.

Royal Rumble

Forget players getting 3 or 4 hits, there were teams who couldn't be bothered to get 3 or 4 hits this week. The Cubs needed a 34-minute rain delay (no mention if there was a secret clubhouse meeting such as the one during the World Series) to finally figure out how to get a hit off Kris Bubic on Saturday. The Royals starter set down 18 of the first 19, walking only Frank Schwindel, before a severe thunderstorm passed just to the south of Wrigley Field and caused a halt in play during the 7th-inning stretch. (They did not, thankfully, keep Harry Caray playing on a loop.) Combined with the Royals having just batted and scored in their half of the inning, Bubic's time to sit around between pitches was just shy of 50 minutes, right around the limit where you'd want a pitcher to continue versus having his arm "cool down" too far. And sure enough, Patrick Wisdom shoots one just inside the left-field pole to take the pressure off. But while Bubic made a quick exit, and the Royals fans were left to ruminate over still not having a no-hitter since Bret Saberhagen in 1991.

But three relievers after Bubic also couldn't be bothered to give up a hit. Meaning Wisdom's 2-run homer (with Schwindel having walked ahead of him) wound up being their only hit of the game. It was the second time in the modern era that the Cubs had done that (had 1 hit and it was a homer); pinch-hitter Walt Moryn did it in the fourth game ever played at Candlestick Park, April 16, 1960. If was the Cubs' first game with 1 hit but multiple runs scored since August 13, 1971. And when catcher Robinson Chirinos was called for a controversial plate block and thus an obstruction error in the 5th, it gave the Cubs a final line of 2 runs, 1 hit, and 1 error. The last team to "dial 2-1-1" on a linescore was the Yankees on May 29, 2016. The Cubs last did it on September 6, 1937, when Phil Cavaretta got the only hit off Cincinnati's Les Grissom.

As for Bubic, he became the first Royals pitcher ever to allow 1 hit (any length outing) and strike out 9+ in a ballpark that isn't either in Kansas City or St Petersburg. (They've strangely done it four times at home and three times at The Trop.) And Saturday's game came one day after the Royals collected 5 homers in a 6-2 win at Wrigley. According to StatsPerform, it's the first time in team history they'd hit 5 solo shots in a game. It's also just the Royals' second time ever hitting 5 dingers in a National League ballpark; the other was in San Diego on June 10, 2017.

And if you're wondering, Saturday marked the 43rd time this year we've taken a no-hitter scare into the 7th inning (including the completed ones). Bubic being the first to do it for the Royals, those are now spread across 25 of MLB's 30 teams; we now await agitation from the Marlins, Rays, Rangers, Blue Jays, and Nationals.

A Pirate Looks At Four

Although the Pirates weren't part of any of those scares (at least not this week), they seem to have run out their hit supply with that 14-4 doubleheader game aganist the Brewers last weekend. It didn't help that they ran into the Dodgers, now winners of 9 straight before Sunday and making a run at the Giants for the NL West. The Pirates, meanwhile, finished their next six games with 26 hits total and only won the last of those games on Friday because it wasn't against the Dodgers.

On Monday the Pirates managed 6 hits-- their high point of the week-- but half of them came off the bullpen in the late innings. After neither team scored in the first 6 innings, the Pirates even had a brief 1-0 lead until Billy McKinney homered off Anthony Randa to blow that save. In the 8th it was Max Muncy's turn to homer off Chasen Shreve, and then turn it over to Kenley Jansen for his 24th save. Muncy's shot was the Dodgers' first go-ahead homer against the Pirates that late in a home game since Andre Ethier took Jason Grilli deep on April 10, 2012. It was also the second time this year that the Dodgers scored 2 runs, both on solo homers, and won. The other-- also against Pittsburgh (June 9 at PNC). They hadn't pulled that off against the same opponent twice in a season since the Expos in 1988.

That 2012 game where Ethier homered in the 8th also featured a 2nd-inning triple by Pirates 3B Casey McGehee. We bring that up because that was the last Pirates triple at Dodger Stadium until Ben Gamel hit one on Tuesday. Bryan Reynolds and Yoshi Tsutsugo also chipped in doubles... and it didn't matter because that was more than half their hit total. Pittsburgh still lost 4-3, mostly because their own pitchers, Wil Crowe and Cody Ponce, couldn't stop giving up doubles. The Dodgers collected six of the two-baggers, more hits than the Pirates had total, their first 6-double game against Pittsburgh since July 29, 1980.

And sometimes the blowouts are easier to take than the close losses. Wednesday would be the low point of the Pirates' week, although they did manage one hit off "opener" Justin Bruihl in his major-league debut. After that, however, Mitch White came in and threw seven innings of "relief" during which the Pirates got just two more hits. White became the first Dodgers pitcher to throw 7 innings out of the bullpen since Tom Candiotti did it against the Mets on July 18, 1994.

Meanwhile, Max Muncy was at it again, this time joined by A.J. Pollock in the leadoff spot. Together they combined for 5 hits, 6 runs, and 6 RBI-- again, way more than the Pirates had as an entire team-- and Los Angeles rolled to a 9-0 shutout. Muncy had 2 homers and drove in 4, which he also did against the Mets last Sunday. The last Dodgers batter to post that line twice in four days was Shawn Green in May 2002; you may remember one of those games being his 4-homer outburst in Milwaukee. Meanwhile on Wednesday, J.T. Brubaker found a dubious place in Pirates history, becoming the team's first pitcher on record to allow 5 runs and 2 homers in three straight starts while not going more than 5 innings in any of them. And since the Dodgers moved to California in 1958, only twice have the Pirates been handed a 9-0 shutout or worse there. The other was by Orel Hershiser on July 4, 1984.

After somehow exploding for 12 hits on Saturday, the Pirates were back to "usual" form on Sunday, posting the now-familiar 0-on-4 against Adam Wainwright. (Waino also poked a double for his 50th career extra-base hit, trailing only Bob Forsch and Bob Gibson among Cards pitchers.) But that also meant seven of their last eight games had seen the Pirates collect 6 hits or fewer. They've hung that 0-on-4 three times in this little mini-streak alone, nine times this season (the team record is 12), and six just since July 27. In the modern era, the Pirates have never before been on the wrong end of six 4-hit shutouts in less than a month.

California Dreaming

And in our final bit about needing some Z's, the Mets had another one of those schedule quirks where they had to play a Sunday night game and then hop a plane for California. There was a similar dustup on Labor Day a few years ago where they had a 12:30 pm start the next afternoon in Cincinnati. And the most recent bargaining agreement moved the Sunday night starts from 8 pm back to 7. Unfortunately, #PaceOfPlay along with the national TV broadcast means they still don't end before 11. So it was that the Mets finally reached their hotel in San Francisco at 4:30 am (Pacific) on Monday, "fresh" off a 10-run loss to the Dodgers. So it was probably good that they only lost Monday's opener by 2 runs, mostly as a result of Trevor May giving up 3 insurance runs in the 7th.

That inning included back-to-back homers by Brandon Belt (as pinch hitter) and Kris Bryant, his first time ever having a multi-homer game against the Mets (no, he never did it with the Cubs). The last Giants batter with 2 homers in a home game against New York was Bengie Molina on May 7, 2007. And the last run came on an RBI triple from Brandon Crawford, his fourth hit of the game. Unfortunately Wilmer Flores then flied out to end the inning, meaning Crawford collected those four hits, including the triple, and never ended up scoring a run. Stranded every time. No Giants batter had pulled that off since J.T. Snow at Montreal on April 29, 1999.

On Tuesday the Mets didn't have a huge "hitting" problem, getting 7 of them off Logan Webb, they had a "putting them together" problem. Three came with 2 outs, another was removed on a double play, and the Mets' only breakthrough finally happened in the 8th when Pete Alonso hit a 2-run homer to knock Webb out of the game. They still lost, partly because Tommy La Stella cranked a 2-run shot as the Giants' second batter of the game and they trailed from the outset. Joe Panik (2015), Willie McCovey (1966), and Felipe Alou (1963) are the other Giants to hit such a homer against the Mets. Alonso, however, did create us a Mets-related note. Seems Jonathan Villar also homered in the 8th inning of Monday's game, which didn't really matter since they trailed by 4 at the time. But it's just the second time in Mets history that they've hit an 8th-inning homer (or later) in consecutive games in San Francisco. The other pair to do it was Gary Carter (August 31) and Keith Hernandez (September 1) in 1985, and both of them went deep off setup guy Mark Davis.

The Mets have still only been in town for about 56 hours when Wednesday afternoon's finale begins, and in another phenomenon we notice about west-coast day games, basically nothing happens until very late and you really want those free runners to start popping up so that someone will score. (It's called "getaway day" for a reason, y'all.) The Giants' only run comes from a LaMonte Wade double in the 3rd. And it takes the Mets nine innings and seven Giants pitchers to answer it, but here's J.D. Davis hitting a sac fly to score Pete Alonso and send us to free runner land. The Mets hadn't hit a tying sac fly in the 9th since Chin-Lung Hu against Washington on April 27, 2011.

And they hadn't hit a 3- or 4-run homer in the 12th inning or later since Jeff Kent went deep against the Cardinals' Bryn Smith on September 24, 1992. We bring that up because that's exactly what Kevin Pillar ended up doing after the teams traded free runners in the 11th. The only other 3-run shots hit by the Mets that late in a game were by Howard Johnson in 1986, George Foster in 1983, and a Tim Harkness walkoff grand slam against the Cubs on June 26, 1963. The 6-2 final marked the first time the Mets had scored 6+ runs in a game with all of them in the 9th inning or later since beating the Expos 9-6 on September 13, 1997.

Bottom Of The Bag

⚾ Riley Adams, Tuesday: First Nats/Expos catcher with 3 hits, 3 runs, and 3 RBI in a home game since Gary Carter did it 44 years earlier to the day (August 17, 1977).

⚾ Max Fried, Friday: First Braves pitcher to throw an individual shutout on 90 pitches since the feat's namesake, Greg Maddux himself, September 13, 2000.

⚾ Andrew Benintendi, Sunday: Second Royals batter to have a 3-hit, 3-RBI game at Wrigley Field. Other was Mike Sweeney on July 19, 1999.

⚾ Garrett Richards, Wednesday: First Boston pitcher to throw 4+ hitless innings in relief against the Yankees since Mike Maddux, September 9, 1995.

⚾ Christian Yelich, Saturday: Second grand slam hit by Brewers in the 8th or later against the Nats/Expos franchise. Raul Casanova had the other off Steve Kline on June 13, 2000.

⚾ Joey Gallo, Monday: Second lead-flipping homer ever hit by Yankees in the 1st inning against the Angels. Mike Pagliarullo off Kirk McCaskill, September 4, 1987.

⚾ Austin Meadows, Thursday: First batter in Rays history to draw multiple bases-loaded walks in the same game.

⚾ Nelson Cruz, Tuesday: Sixth-oldest player ever to have a 2-homer, 5-RBI game, behind Carlton Fisk, Barry Bonds, Dave Winfield, Ted Williams, and Graig Nettles.

⚾ Mike Zunino, Friday: First Rays catcher ever charged with three passed balls in the same game.

⚾ Elias Diaz, Saturday: Second 3-run walkoff homer this year (also July 1 vs Cardinals). Only other Rockies batters ever to hit two are Dante Bichette, Charlie Blackmon, and Jason Giambi-- and theirs were not in the same season.

⚾ Cedric Mullins, Wednesday: First leadoff homer ever hit by Orioles at Tropicana Field. Had been the only active American League park where they'd never hit one.

⚾ Tigers, Sunday: First time scoring in the 9th, 10th, and 11th innings of the same game since May 30, 1994, in Baltimore.

⚾ Odubel Herrera, Wednesday: First Phillies leadoff batter to triple and double in a loss since Jimmy Rollins against Detroit on June 15, 2007.

⚾ Charlie Barnes, Friday: First Twins pitcher to allow 8 hits and 5 walks to the Yankees since Frank Viola on May 7, 1983.

⚾ Brewers, Tuesday: Second game in team history where they converted 14 hits into only 2 runs and still won. The other was against Cleveland on May 15, 1973, and was ended by a Dave May walkoff homer in the 17th.

⚾ Jose Ramirez, Saturday: Second Clevelander ever with a homer, a double, a stolen base, and 3 RBI in a game against the Angels. Current Dodgers manager Dave Roberts did it on August 30, 1999.

⚾ Sam Hilliard & David Peralta, Friday: First game in majors where both teams had a pinch-hit triple since Florida's Scott Cousins and Milwaukee's Joe Inglett on September 24, 2010.

⚾ Rockies, Monday: First game in team history where they hit both a leadoff homer and a walkoff homer.

⚾ Chas McCormick, Thursday: First Astros batter to draw a bases-loaded walk in extra innings of a road game since Adam Everett at Cincinnati, April 18, 2002.

⚾ Jake Cronenworth, Tuesday: Second inside-the-park homer of the year, joining Tony Gwynn Jr (2010) and Gene Richards (1982) as the only Padres batters with two in a season.

⚾ Frankie Montas, Sunday: First pitcher in A's history to throw 7+ scoreless innings, allow 2 hits, strike out 9, and NOT get a win. Because...

⚾ LaMonte Wade & Donovan Solano, Sat-Sun: First time in (at least) modern era that Giants have hit a pinch-hit, lead-flipping homer in the 8th or later of consecutive games.

Living The Dream

Being the hero in a sporting event is something that a lot of kids (and heck, plenty of adults too) dream about. Hitting the walkoff homer in the World Series. Nailing that 3-pointer at the buzzer. Only a handful even get a chance at that dream, and even fewer actually have it come true. And maybe your dream has nothing to do with sports. Maybe it's to save the world. Or be an important business mogul. Or just to live a long and happy life. Regardless, we sure did hear a lot about dreams this week. Let's take that 99-yard game-winning touchdown all the way down the, um, field.

Groundhog Day
(Or, Just Another Dream.)

Oh, we're going to get to the week's other big movie reference later on. But similar to the repeating premise of the Bill Murray movie, have you ever had the same dream on multiple occasions over the course of a few nights or even a few months? There are apparently quite a few common themes, and several schools of thought as to what it means. Some think it means the dream is destined to come true. Others believe it's a sign of unresolved issues. And if you're gonna start delving into unresolved issues, well, the Yankees have plenty this season.

Let's join the start of their week in Kansas City. It's sort of a boring mid-August series opener where Jameson Taillon is matching zeroes with Carlos Hernandez until we get all the way to the 7th. That's when Aaron Judge connects for a 1-out double and Luke Voit singles him home for a 1-0 lead. Taillon is already at 83 pitches, so after a leadoff single to Emmanuel Rivera, he's going to get lifted in favor of Jonathan Loaisiga. Who promptly commits a pickoff error and a balk to advance Rivera to third, and then blows the save on a sac fly. But that's fine, it's still only 1-1 and there's two innings left.

Tyler Wade starts the 8th with our old friend a catcher's interference call. With two outs Judge brings him around to score and it's 2-1. And once again the Royals start their half with a single and then a walk which prompts Loaisiga's exit. Two batters later, Chad Green has blown that save on a tying single by Andrew Benintendi. Now it's 2-2 and we're off to the 9th.

This time Luke Voit isn't going to wait for someone else to get on base, he's just going to hit a solo homer himself to put the Yankees up 3-2. He's the first Yankees batter to have multiple go-ahead hits in the 7th or later of the same road game since Derek Jeter did it in Baltimore on June 2, 2006. Now all we need is Zack Britton to get the last three outs. And if he had, we wouldn't be writing about this game.

Two-out walk to Whit Merrifield. Stolen base. Game-tying single by Nicky Lopez. Third blown save in as many innings for the Yankees. And now our recurring plot thickens a little bit because we don't even need to wait for runners to show up. They're already out there as we repeat this exercise for a fourth time. Kyle Higashioka and Brett Gardner combine to drive in two runs this time, so maybe we'll break this cycle of 1's and finally end this game.

Welllll, we broke the cycle of 1's. Clay Holmes, here's a 2-run lead, how do you feel about blowing another one? Holmes does give up the first (free) run on a sacrifice fly, but that also accounts for the second out of the inning. So as long as Hanser Alberto doesn't drive in Benintendi who's chilling out at second base...

Yes, of course he did. Meaning the Yankees just blew four save chances in four innings, a first since the save rule was created in 1969. The Astros are the only other team to blow four total saves in a game, against the Cubs on September 28, 1995, and theirs weren't by consecutive pitchers. This has also created a situation where Monday's game was tied (at either 0, 1, 2, 3, or 5) after each of the first 10 innings, a phenomenon not seen at Kauffman Stadium since June 6, 2011, against Toronto.

Finally in the 11th the Yankees are so tired of repeating this movie that they bust out for three runs against Greg Holland. This is capped by a bases-loaded single from Brett Gardner, who would finish with 2 hits and 2 walks. He also did that against Kansas City on August 30, 2016, and joins Wade Boggs, Rickey Henderson, and Willie Randolph as the only Yankees leadoff batters with multiple such games against the Royals. DJ LeMahieu drove in the free runner in the 11th with a double, becoming the sixth Yankees batter with a two-bagger and a three-bagger in the same game at Kauffman. Turns out Gardy was the last to do that, on May 10, 2013. And it gave the Yankees 5 runs in extra innings for the first time since July 4, 2019... and a whopping 8 runs in the game with all of them in the 7th or later. They hadn't done that last part since an 11-0 shutout of Detroit on April 28, 2009.

Now yes, technically the Royals do still get to bat one more time, and Edward Olivares singles home their free runner to make our final score 8-6. But now this 11th inning is brought to you by the pitching stylings of Wandy Peralta, who makes history not by finally converting the save, but just by throwing a pitch. After the blown saves in innings 7, 8, 9, and 10, Peralta's mere presence made the Yankees the first team in the "save era" to even have five chances in one game. There hadn't been a game in the majors that was scoreless through 6 innings, and then saw both teams score 6 runs after that, since the Braves and Marlins did it in August 2019. And according to Elias, Monday was the first game in MLB history where both teams scored in the 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th innings. They tweeted that before it happened again in the 11th.

In Your Wildest Dreams

Dreaming about taking the lead and then losing it, over and over again, finally worked out for the Yankees in that game. Some recurring dreams, however, take the form of nightmares. Like, say, there's a baseball coming toward you and you don't know what to do so you just freeze, and doink. That's going to be the remaining two games at Kauffman, at least insofar as the Yankee defense is concerned. On Tuesday Higashioka airmails one into center field while trying to catch Michael Taylor stealing. Happily there are two outs, it doesn't cost the Yanks anything, and Higgy even makes up for it by hitting a lead-flipping homer a couple innings later. That was the first one they'd hit at Kauffman since Robinson Cano took Ervin Santana deep on May 12, 2013.

However, in the 5th it's Whit Merrifield trying to steal third when Higgy's throw goes down the line and Whit scores to tie the game. Another run scores in the 7th when Taylor leads off with a double, Alberto tries to bunt him to third, but just-into-the-game Stephen Ridings launches that throw into the tarp. Kansas City gets its final run in the 8th when Benintendi hits a squibber to first that Luke Voit boots. (That's an E1, an E2 (actually two), and an E3 if you're scoring along.) So three of the Royals' 8 runs are going to end up being unearned, and it was the first time the Yankees committed 4 errors against Kansas City since August 30, 1975. Around all that, Sal Perez was busy hitting two homers, the first Royals batter to do so in a home game with the Yankees since Jeff King on May 2, 1998.

But this is about recurring nightmares, and Wednesday's defense wasn't any better. This time the Yankees were fortunate enough to be facing Brady Singer, who spotted them 10 hits and 5 runs in the first 4 innings, which was enough to hold on for a win. The Royals hadn't had a starter give up 10 hits and not get through the 4th since Jason Hammel against the White Sox on September 11, 2017, and they hadn't done it against the Yankees since Brian Bannister posted that line in their last visit to the old Yankee Stadium on August 17, 2008.

The Royals do get their second and final run in the 5th when backup shortstop Andrew Velasquez airmails a throw, although there was only 1 out at the time and the run would have eventually scored anyway. Two innings later, Rougned Odor launches another one that allows Cam Gallagher to reach, though he gets stranded at third. After that a series of defensive switches causes Odor to move from third base over to second, where he proceeds to mishandle a potential game-ending double play. So if you're still scoring at home, you just added second, third, and short to your errors. Yes, in the span of two games the Yankees had E1, E2, E3, E4, E5, and E6. We don't have an easy way to check that, but we do know it's their first occurrence of back-to-back 3-error games since the first two contests of the 2007 season against Tampa Bay. And of course, they did still win the game, so maybe they'll forget that one when they wake up tomorrow... in a cornfield in Iowa? (Wait for it.)

Walking On A Dream

In younger days did you ever dream of being 18? Odds are you went through a phase, some longer than others, where parents or other adults were just The Oppressors and you just wanted to be 18 so you could leave the house and be An Adult and "not have to listen to them anymore". (How'd that work out?) But no, here you are stuck on 17 with nothing adult-y to show for it except maybe a driver's license. And even that still comes with restrictions for a little while. Maybe they'd let you take the car on the weekend if you got good grades. Say, A's.

Instead of being 17 and getting A's, what about being the A's and getting 17? Yep, that happened on Thursday as Oakland pummelled the Indians. Not only did they score 17 runs, but like a 17-year-old with a whiny little sibling, they let Cleveland have exactly nothing. And this wasn't a case of just one hitter against one pitcher. This was the older kid and all his friends just ganging up on the younger kid and all his friends.

Eli Morgan runs into some trouble in the 2nd after a double, two walks, and two hit batters, the second of which forces in the third Oakland run. But he escapes and gets three fly balls on just seven pitches in the 3rd. Matt Chapman, one of the walks from the 2nd inning, draws another one to lead off the 4th, scores on a groundout, and Starling Marte's double later makes it 5-0. So Morgan's done but the game isn't out of reach. Until it is.

Mitch Moreland greets Justin Garza in the 5th with a solo homer. Garza then issues three straight walks, the last to Chapman again, and gets pulled, ending up as the first Cleveland pitcher to face four batters and have all of them score since Bryan Shaw did it in Pittsburgh on June 19. The last time two Clevelanders had that happen in the same season was 2006 by Jason Davis and Rafael Betancourt. Francisco Perez is summoned to get out of the bases-loaded jam, which he doesn't do. He does get three outs, but not before another walk to score a run and then two more RBI singles from Starling Marte and Matt Olson. It's suddenly 10-0 and your sibling would be trying to invoke the mercy rule. Sorry, kid, we don't have that here.

Perez loads the bases again in the 6th before leaving and gets charged with two more runs to get us to 12-0. Seth Brown has a sac fly in there along with Matt Chapman drawing a fourth free pass. It's still 12-0 in the 8th when Alex Young gives up a leadoff single and then, what else?, a fifth walk to Chapman. Only eight A's batters have ever drawn 5 walks in a game, and we'll just give you the previous three before Chapman-- Mark McGwire (1997), Jose Canseco (1992), and Rickey Henderson (1982). So that's apparently the "threat level" that Cleveland feels Chapman poses. (Did we mention they're already losing by 12?) So this is going to lead to the bases being loaded again, plus Mark Canha driving home two more with a double, plus Stephen Piscotty's 2-out single making it 16-0.

Blake Parker, who is now just taking one for the team, faces Mitch Moreland to start the 9th, and here at Kernels we love to make fun of the "most useless" homers in team history. Like, really, you're up 16-0 in the 9th, did you really really need to do that? (It's much like the logic behind a sacrifice fly, which seems to believe that a batter is intentionally trying to give himself up to get the run home instead of, you know, trying to launch one into Lake Erie and just missing it.) Anyway, Moreland has taken our cake when it comes to the most unnecessary homer in A's history. It was the team's first ever to be hit with a 16-run lead in the 9th; two seasons ago, Mark Canha and Khris Davis both hit them with a 15-run lead. But that also made Moreland the first A's designated hitter ever to have a multi-homer game in Cleveland.

So we have only one bit of suspense left. Matt Chapman was due up fourth, and the leadoff homer means he is guaranteed to bat again. And normally we would be yelling "stop walking people" at a pitcher with a 16-run lead in the 9th. But in this case we might make an exception. You see, in the modern era there's only been one player to draw 6 walks in a 9-inning game, and that's HOF'er Jimmie Foxx in 1938. Chapman... struck out swinging, thus also messing up one of our favorite boxscore lines, the complete-game 0-for-0. But when Jake Dikeman rolls through the bottom half, the A's have their largest shutout win in franchise history. They also have the fourth game in team history where seven different players collected multiple RBIs. The previous of those was a 23-2 dumping on Texas in the next-to-last game of 2000. And there were even a couple friends who didn't expect to get in on the action. Josh Harrison left the game in the 3rd with a quad strain, meaning Tony Kemp had 3 hits and 3 runs scored off the bench. Only two others in A's history had pulled that off: Fred Heimach against Washington in 1922, and Danny Murphy at Boston in 1902.

What better outlet for all kinds of dreams than writing songs about them? So we ended up with way too many choices for dream-related section headers. And we're still going to miss quite a few good ones. But here's one link and here's another to tide you through the next section. Dream Sequence number 1!

Smokin In The Boys Room

For some kids, being 17 also meant dreaming of that next birthday when you could legally buy cigarettes instead of having your friend's older brother get them for you. (PSA: This is wrong. Don't do this.) But even though the Brewers ended up stuck on 17 on Thursday and couldn't smoke tobacco, there was no law against them smoking some baseballs.

Maybe we should have seen it coming. After all, there was a little experimentation phase on Wednesday when Milwaukee dropped a 7-spot in the 1st inning. And that didn't come off a triple-A spot-starter who had been hanging out in Des Moines dreaming of his shot in the bigs. No, this came off of (checks notes) Jake Arrieta? Yes, the same Jake Arrieta who won the Cy Young with the Cubs in 2015 and threw two no-hitters in the span of 8 months. Kolten Wong leads off with a double. And right away it's obvious it's not Arrieta's night. Two more singles. Groundout. Three more singles. Another double to make it 6-0. Opposing pitcher Corbin Burnes grounds out at the plate before he throws a pitch. Wong hits his second double of the inning to add the extra point before Arrieta gets the last out. Wong is the first batter in Brewers history to hit multiple 1st-inning doubles in the same game, and Milwaukee hadn't hung a 7 in the 1st since April 18, 2010, when they hit double digits against the Nationals.

Arrieta did end up staying in the game and throwing 3 more innings, so as a whole his line doesn't look quite as bad. But still it was his sixth start this season where he allowed 6+ runs and didn't get beyond the 4th. The only Cubs pitcher with more such starts in a season is Jim Bullinger who did it seven times in 1996. And it appears Arrieta will not get the chance to tie Bullinger's mark; after Wednesday's game the Cubs released him.

Meanwhile, Corbin Burnes fanned a total of 15 Cubs batters including a record-tying 10 in a row between the 2nd and 5th innings. For half a century Tom Seaver had been the answer to that trivia question, having struck out 10 straight Padres on April 22, 1970. It was just 7 weeks ago when Aaron Nola of the Phillies duplicated the feat, and now here we have Burnes doing it again. As for the total of 15, Burnes is only the second Brewers pitcher to do that; Ben Sheets fanned 18 Atlanta hitters on May 16, 2004-- two days before Randy Johnson threw his perfect game against them. There's also a very fun list of opposing pitchers to strike out 15 Cubs in a game at Wrigley Field. In addition to Burnes, it includes Al Leiter of the Mets (1999), Sandy Koufax (twice), and another Dodger, Dazzy Vance in 1924.

But we still have to fast-forward back to our game of 17. On Thursday it was Kyle Hendricks's turn on the mound, and presumably his mission was to not give up 7 more runs in the 1st. To his credit, he did that part. He waited until the 2nd to give up a team cycle to the first four hitters, such that it's soon 3-0 with two more runners still on. Willy Adames will end up capping a 5-run frame with a bases-loaded single, and here we go again. The Cubs do get one back, so at least there's no shutout this time. But the 5th is nearly a repeat of the 2nd. Luis Urias, who doubled as part of that earlier team cycle, doubles again. Mix in a single, a walk, and a grand slam by Manny Piña and it's suddenly 9-1. Piña's slam was the first by a Brewers batter at Wrigley since Chris Carter on September 17, 2016. It also ended up chasing Hendricks from the game, giving him his third start for the Cubs where he surrendered 11 hits and 7 earned runs (actually 9 in this game) while getting no more than 12 outs. Since earned runs were adopted by the National League in 1912, no other Cubs starter had even managed to do that twice.

Ryan Meisinger then has to try and stop the bleeding, and he does get two strikeouts in the 6th before Urias records his third double of the game. Jace Peterson brings him in and Piña hits another homer later in the inning to make it 13-1 and give himself 6 RBI on the day. Jonathan Lucroy (2012), Jeromy Burnitz (2001), and Marquis Grissom (1999) are the only other Brewers to have 6 RBI in a game against the Cubs. Meisinger turns things over to Jake Jewell for another trip around the order, and the hits just keep on comin'. Urias comes up with two on and instead of hitting his fourth double of the game, he decides to go yard for a 16-1 lead.

Frank Schwindel and Patrick Wisdom proceed to hit back-to-back homers in the bottom of the 7th, and remember what we said about meaningless homers. Forgetting even the B2B part, it's the first game where the Cubs hit multiple homers when trailing by 14 or more since Rick Stelmaszek and Carmen Fanzone did it against the Dodgers on August 20, 1974. Those were Stelmaszek's only career home run and Fanzone's only career grand slam; they both retired at the end of that season.

We still have the unfinished business of Luis Urias, who is due up in the 9th against Andrew Romine, who yes, is generally an infielder but did pitch a handful of times for Detroit and Seattle during his time there. And who gave up that 17th and final run when Urias smoked another solo shot to center field. So count 'em, that's 5 hits (all for extra bases), 5 runs, and 5 RBI. And we can eliminate one category right away. Urias is the first batter in Brewers history to score 5 runs in a game. Full stop. No qualifiers. The Marlins are now the only active franchise never to have a player do it. So if you look just at the 5 hits and 5 RBI, only two others have done that for the Brew Crew: Prince Fielder in 2010 and Scott Fletcher in 1992. As for 5 extra-base hits, no Brewers batter had ever done that; the last "Milwaukee" hitter with that line was Joe Adcock in his 4-homer game at Ebbets Field in 1954. Urias also joined Ryan Braun (2012) and Richie Sexson (2003) as the only Brewers hitters to accumulate 14 total bases in a game (the others each had 3 homers).

We mentioned Manny Piña's 6 RBI. Throw on Jace Peterson's line and Thursday was the third occurrence in MLB history of three players on the same team having 3+ hits, 3+ runs, and 4+ RBI. Mike Andrews, Reggie Smith, and George Scott of the Red Sox did it in a 21-11 game in 1970; while the White Sox saw Minnie Minoso, Bob Niemann, and Sherm Lollar pull it off in a famous 29-6 contest with the A's in 1955. Combined with the 10-0 win from Wednesday, it's the second time in Brewers history they'd won consecutive games against the same team by double digits. The other was in Cleveland on August 19 and 20, 1987. The Cubs had not lost consecutive games by 10+ since July 2 and 3, 1999, in Philadelphia.

And one more feel-good story to wrap this up. As mentioned, Andrew Romine pitched the 9th and gave up that homer to Urias. Well, it turns out the pitcher he replaced, Manuel Rodriguez, had been due up as the last batter of the 8th. So David Ross sent up a pinch hitter-- Andrew's brother Austin Romine. He struck out. But Austin's a catcher by trade. So Ross said, put your gear on and y'all go "have a catch". (Yes, it grates us also. Since it's been a thing this week.) They became the first brothers to play in the same game for the Cubs since Rick and Paul Reuschel on May 30, 1978. But they became the first brothers, for any team, to comprise both halves of the battery at the same time since Larry and Norm Sherry both played for the Dodgers over parts of three seasons. Their last appearance together was on June 28, 1962, against the Mets.

So, see, sometimes it's okay for your older brother to throw you some smokes after all. Just as long as they're baseballs.

Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Cards

Okay, we just spent a lot of time on "Brewers". Back in the day some of you were legally able to buy alcohol at 18 as well. However, that was pushed back to 21 a while ago, so for most, age 20 is when you daydream about strolling into a bar on your next birthday and acquiring another legal vice. And if you're gonna do a crawl on your last night of being 20, with that celebratory first legal beverage at midnight, you can't go wrong doing it in Boston.

On Wednesday there were a couple of Rays pitchers who felt like crawling away. Maybe to a bar, maybe under a rock, pretty much anywhere except on the mound at Fenway. Enter Josh Fleming. Not a superstar, but serviceable. Record of 9-5, ERA around 4, 2-to-1 strikeouts to walks, usually tops out around 75 pitches and gives the Rays five, sometimes six decent innings. Usually.

Enrique Hernandez, double. Hunter Renfroe, double. Xander Bogaerts, double. For the first time in 90 years the Red Sox began a game with three straight doubles; it last happened on May 8, 1931, when Hal Rhyne, Jack Rothrock, and Bill Sweeney made quick work of Cleveland starter Wes Ferrell. They're eventually all going to score for a 3-run 1st. (Keep track of these innings, by the way.) The process repeats in the 2nd when Hernandez and Renfroe double again, also scoring Bobby Dalbec who walked ahead of them. So we add a "2" card to the Fenway scoreboard in the 2nd. The 4th, however, is when it all comes apart. Rafael Devers joins the parade of doubles. Kevin Plawecki draws a bases-loaded walk. Marwin Gonzalez singles home another run, and then Dalbec-- still with bases loaded-- drives in two more to make it 10-0 and knock Fleming out of the game. That would be a "5" in the 4th, and it causes Fleming to be the first Rays starter to give up 10 runs and not get out of the 4th since Jeff Niemann in Anaheim on August 25, 2010. He's also just the second pitcher in Rays history to allow 17 baserunners (there have been 11 hits and 6 walks to this point) in any outing. The great Tanyon Sturtze pulled that off, also against the Red Sox, on May 6, 2002.

Fleming's replacement, Dietrich Enns, gets out of the 4th but quickly walks two more batters in the 5th. J.D. Martinez makes it 11-0, another walk re-loads them, and then Dalbec unloads them yet again with his fourth triple of the year. That gives him 5 RBI, the first Red Sox #8 or #9 batter to drive in 5 without homering since Coco Crisp hit three bases-loaded singles against the White Sox on July 21, 2007. It also means we're up to 14-0 and we've dropped a "4" plate into the scoreboard. Lest you think this ends in a 14-0 shutout, well, remember the intro, and also have this solo homer from Brandon Lowe in the 5th. That's a "1" since we didn't have one of those yet.

Things now calm down for a while and it looks like this just might crawl along to a 14-1 or 15-3 or some other lopsided thing with an infielder pitching the 9th. Enns actually stays in the game through the 7th but he's way done after 65 pitches. Let's see if Francisco Mejia can keep this under control. If by "control" you mean hitting Dalbec with the first pitch of the inning. Two more singles score him and then it's Xander Bogaerts' turn to crush a 3-run homer. 18-1 and our "meaningless homer" theme continues. Bogaerts is the first Bostonian to homer with the team already ahead by 14 since... Xander Bogaerts on July 25, 2019. Person he hit that off of? Why, none other than Austin Romine, generally the catching half of the Romine battery that would make an appearance the next day. The last Red Sox batter to hit two homers when already up by 14 was Ted Williams (who hit at least four, but the last was in 1954).

With the bases clear, we'll now start over by hitting J.D. Martinez with a pitch and then adding a triple and a single to top off the Red Sox score at 20. That triple by Connor Wong gave them a total of 7 doubles and 2 triples, numbers they had not collected in a game at Fenway since July 12, 1924. Not only did Dalbec have those 5 RBI without a homer, but Renfroe had 4; they're the first Boston teammates with 4 each but no homers since Marty Barrett and Wade Boggs on August 21, 1986. The last time the Sawx scored 20 runs in a game was a 22-10 win over Seattle on August 15, 2015, that still comes up occasionally; the Rays hadn't allowed 20 since the Yankees dropped a 21-4 on them on July 22, 2007. And if you're still working that manual scoreboard, you just used a "6" card in addition to the 3-2-5-4 from earlier. The Red Sox are the first team to score 20 runs in that exact combination (2+3+4+5+6) of innings since the Rockies on September 23, 2003. And remember the Rays have the "1" accounted for. So while we're sifting through our lists of 20-1 and 20-2 and even 20-3 final scores in MLB history, leave it to Phillips Valdez-- who is in fact a pitcher, not a position player trying to "protect" a 19-run lead-- to get us the next card in the sequence.

Single. Walk. Wild pitch. Walk. Single (20-2). Strikeout. Single (20-3). Phillips (comma, Brett) off Phillips (Valdez), first grand slam in MLB's modern era to be hit with a team trailing by 17 runs. First homer of any type in Rays history to be hit when trailing by more than 15. (Rene Rivera, in 2015, held their previous mark for futility.) And when Mike Zunino lofts another solo shot two batters later, that 19-run lead has become a 12-run lead and you just pulled out a "7" card. Valdez is the first Boston reliever to give up 7 runs while getting 3 outs since Rob Stanifer did it against the Yankees in a famously-lopsided 22-1 game on June 19, 2000. And it's the 11th game in major-league history to end with an exact score of 20-8; the previous was a Rockies win over the Giants at Coors on September 18, 2006.

But in case we didn't make it obvious enough, look at those inning cards you used up. Boston 3-2-5-4-6. Tampa Bay 1-7. It's the first game in MLB's modern era to use every number from 0 to 7 in at least one half-inning.

Teenage Dream

The Red Sox, as it turns out, were not completely done after Wednesday's little outburst. Sure, you can be 17 and dream about voting or playing the lottery or getting a credit card; you can be 20 and dream about being able to go to bars legally. But we passed over the first big daydream-- 16. With a license. And a car (or at least access to one). And "freedom". Boston knows a little something about freedom too, what with that whole Tea Party, revolution-y thing. And after hammering the Rays on Wednesday, they had some more tea-ing off to do against the Orioles on Saturday.

This one did not, at least, start off with three straight doubles. Instead it's two singles and a hit batter to load the bases with nobody out in the 1st. A wild pitch from Jorge Lopez scores the first run and deprives Rafael Devers of the chance to hit a fourth-batter grand slam. No, he's relegated to just a 3-run shot, but still it is 4-0 after four batters and here we go again. Lopez manages to get out of that inning but then gives up two more in the 2nd. Things look a little better for the Orioles when Austin Hays and Trey Mancini hit back-to-back homers in the 3rd off Chris Sale, making his "triumphant" (?) return to the majors after Tommy John surgery. Two years plus one day after his last appearance on a mound, he would become the first pitcher in Red Sox history to give up 2 homers in a season debut but also strike out 8 and get a win.

Meanwhile, over on the Baltimore side, Lopez has hit a snag again in the 4th after allowing two more singles and another hit batter. He's at 81 pitches when Paul Fry finally replaces him, with Lopez being the second starter in the modern era-- for any team-- to allow 9 hits, throw 2 wild pitches, hit 2 batters, and not get out of the 4th. Sam Gray of the Athletics had an unfortunate early-season meeting with the "Murderers' Row" Yankees on April 13, 1927. Fry gets out of the 4th with a double play, but then we hand the ball to Adam Plutko for the 5th. And hopefully you haven't put away those scoreboard cards yet.

Walk, triple, Bobby Dalbec home run. Walk, single, single, J.D. Martinez 3-run homer. And suddenly this game has jumped from 7-2 to 14-2, with Plutko becoming the second pitcher in Orioles/Browns history to give up 7 runs and 2 homers while getting only 2 outs. Dylan Bundy did it in a start on May 8, 2018, kicking off a disastrous May/June stretch that year where more O's starters allowed 5 runs in a game than didn't. Dalbec will add another solo shot in the 6th, and did we mention he bats 9th? Only three other Red Sox #9 batters have had a multi-homer game against the O's franchise: Jackie Bradley (2018), Sonny Siebert (1971), and Wes Ferrell (1934). And Dalbec's Saturday performance comes on the heels of Friday's 8-1 win where he posted a homer and two doubles. In MLB's modern era (1901), he's the first player for any team to collect 8 total bases in consecutive games while hitting 9th in both of them.

Finally Hunter Renfroe adds the final nail with a solo homer in the 8th, making our final score 16-2. And the hand-operated scoreboard at Fenway hadn't needed this many lofty-numbered cards in over 68 years. The last time the Red Sox scored 16+ runs twice in four days was in June 1953; in back-to-back games with the Tigers they dominated by scores of 17-1 and then 23-3.

You know how sometimes an actual dream will go on so long, and you're convinced that you've been napping for hours, and yet you look and it's only been 15 minutes? This post is kinda like that. So here's another classic plus one by a voice taken from us too early. Dream Sequence number 2!

Runnin' Down A Dream

The Red Sox may have hung a 6 and a 5 against the Rays on Thursday, but at least they didn't get to the point of needing the "11" card. There's not a huge sample size when it comes to 11-run innings; there have been 45 so far this century, so just over two per year. So it's difficult to say how any team or pitcher or manager will react when it actually happens. But we're pretty sure that if you do blow up for an 11-run inning, you don't expect to actually need all of them.

The Cubs, apparently growing tired of getting blown out by Milwaukee, decided to jet off to Miami for the weekend. All things considered, this may not be the best idea for anyone right now. Besides, they could've given up a bunch of runs by just staying in Chicago.

Unlike the earlier games with Milwaukee, the Cubs did score twice in the 1st when David Bote went yard. This is good. Adbert Alzolay gives one back with a leadoff single, a balk, and a couple of groundouts, but another leadoff walk from Jesús Luzardo leads to two more in the 2nd. So the Cubs have a nice little 4-1 lead early, already as many runs as they scored in the previous two games (while also giving up 27). Mmm, yeah, about that.

Alzolay starts the 2nd with two singles and a walk. And welcome Bryan De La Cruz, the Marlins' #8 batter in his 14th career MLB game, having just hit his first career homer in his previous game on Wednesday. Well, he just doubled that total. And doubled his RBI total. And hit the second grand slam for the Marlins against the Cubs at their current stadium; Justin Bour went deep off Thursday's tough-luck pitcher, Kyle Hendricks, on June 24, 2016. Adbert has already taken 43 pitches to go around the order once, so we should probably get him out of there, especially after another single to leadoff batter Miguel Rojas. Enter Dan Winkler. And be careful what you dream of, because Winkler's now going to get through the order on 34 pitches. Problem is, he's not going to get an out.

Single. Walk. Double by Lewis Brinson. Hit batter. Another hit batter. Alex Jackson, 3-run homer-- with Bryan De La Cruz on deck, depriving him of the chance to join Fernando Tatis (that's Senior) by hitting two grand slams in an inning. Instead we have the first occurrence in Marlins history of a grand slam and a 3-run shot in one frame. There's only one other time that they even had a pair of 3-run's, and it was in their inaugural season. Rick Renteria and Jeff Conine hit them against the Mets on June 29, 1993. As you know because we led with it, this has now generated the second 11-run inning in Marlins history; the other was on June 4, 2019, in Milwaukee. That 11-run 5th was part of a 16-0 shutout. The Marlins had only one 10-run inning at home (either stadium); that was August 12, 2015, against Boston. The only other 11-run inning this season was on June 2 when the Dodgers erupted in the 1st inning against the Cardinals and posted their biggest frame ever in the 60-year history of Chavez Ravine.

We mentioned Winkler didn't get an out; he ends up ceding the mound to Rex Brothers to get out of the inning (although he then surrenders a 2-run homer to Jesús Aguilar in the 3rd). Winkler's the first Cubs pitcher to allow 6 earned runs and not retire a batter since Trevor Megill did it against those pesky Brewers back on June 28. Brian Schlitter and Zac Rosscup, in 2014, are the only other pair of Cubs pitchers to do it in the same season. And combined with Alzolay's 6 earned runs, it's only the second time in Cubs history that two pitchers in the same game have surrendered 6 ER while getting no more than 4 outs. The usually-reliable Carlos Zambrano and Jeff Samardzija had simultaneous meltdowns against the Braves on April 5, 2010.

Remember, the Cubs started this with a 4-1 lead, so they're not fighting all the way back. They get a fifth run when Robinson Chirinos homers in the 5th, then a couple more 2-run homers from Frank Schwindel and Ian Happ. So by the end of this, they've actually made it 14-10 and forced the Marlins to need most of those 11 runs from the 2nd. Friday was not only the first time the Cubs had hit 4 homers in a game in Dade County (either stadium), it was the first time they'd ever hit 4 against the Marlins and lost. However, it was their third time this season scoring 10 runs in any game and losing, their most since 1993. As for Miami, unlike some other teams we've seen, they were done dreaming after their 14-run outburst and just decided to hit Snooze for the rest of the game. They wound up being the first team in the majors this century to score 14+ runs in a game with all of them coming in the first 3 innings.

Dyer Straits

The lyrics to "Money For Nothing" are about a couple of workers in an appliance store seeing music videos on the big display of TVs in their store and dreaming about being rock stars instead of, well, installing microwave ovens. So we'll make the leap from Dire Straits to Diresv-- er, Dyersville, Iowa. Raise your hand if you'd actually heard of it before this week. Keep it up if you could point to it on a map. (Now raise your hand if you still can't find it even after this week.)

We found it, back in 2010. Too early in the year for corn, though.

We'll spare you the montages of corn and ghosts and So Much Kevin Costner because you've seen it already. Heck, the ratings would say you likely watched it live. Thursday's throwback trailer for a movie that's 32 years old drew the highest ratings for any regular-season MLB game since October 1, 2005, when the Yankees and the defending-champion Red Sox entered the next-to-last game of the season in an exact tie atop the AL East, with the Sawx holding the tiebreaker. The Yankees won that game to prevent the clinch, but Boston won the finale the next day and thus the division.

With a whole lot of Thursday's telecast already pre-scripted, there are plenty of doubters who would say the game was also. Just like Derek Jeter's 3000th hit, or Cal Ripken's homer in his last All-Star Game (okay, that one we'll actually take a flyer on). Jose Abreu got the honor of hitting the first MLB home run in the state of Iowa, which by our count leaves 22 states without one. Previously the closest one came was when the Royals played in Omaha two years ago and Nicky Lopez sent one into the right-field bullpen. Even with that, Iowa is the other direction; Lopez would have had to fire one down the left-field line instead (oh yeah, and have it go about a half-mile and land in the Missouri River which forms the state line). Aaron Judge answered Abreu in the 3rd, but before long the White Sox had piled up 7 runs against Andrew Heaney, acquired two weeks ago in possibly the least-noticed deadline trade the Yankees made. Heaney is also now the first pitcher to give up at least 4 runs in each of his first three starts with the Yanks since Sergio Mitre in 2009. And no Yankees pitcher had allowed 3 homers to the White Sox since Javier Vazquez on May 1, 2010.

But you know better by now. Always assume the Yankees are going to do something ridiculous in the last inning or two, especially when there are ghosts and corn and Kevin Costner roaming around. Judge hits another homer off Liam Hendriks in the 9th to make it 7-6. Joey Gallo draws a walk, and then Giancarlo Stanton is just like a retired ballplayer in a movie, belting one into the stalks to flip the lead to 8-7. It was the first lead-flipping homer by the Yankees against the White Sox in the 9th or later since Chris Chambliss hit a walkoff on August 16, 1977. And if you'd like a connection to ghosts wandering around the middle of Iowa, that date is the same day Elvis Presley died.

But we're still kinda stuck in this movie script. So let's see which alternate ending we get. Maybe it's the one where Zack Britton nails this down and Judge and Stanton are the grand marshals of the corn parade. Or maybe... yeah, that one. Britton issues a 1-out walk to Seby Zavala, bringing up Tim Anderson. And by now you know what he did. We're going to bury the lead for a second to mention that Thursday was the first time the Yankees hit 4 homers against the White Sox and lost since May 21, 1960. Hendriks, who got bailed out on the walkoff, is the first Sox pitcher in the "save era" to give up 4 runs, 2 homers, blow a save, and stay in the game to get a win. And the Yankees scored 4 in the 9th to take the lead but still ended up getting walked off; they hadn't done that since July 17, 1996, at Fenway.

And Anderson? Well, yes, he hit the first walkoff homer for the Sox against the Yankees since Adam Dunn took David Robertson deep on May 23, 2014. But it's the fifteenth walkoff homer that the White Sox have ever hit against the Yankees. Magglio Ordoñez hit one. After his long Phillies career, Dick Allen hit one. Roy Sievers hit one in between playing for both Washington Senators clubs. Harold Baines hit two. But the first of those 15 walkoffs for the White Sox against the Yankees was hit on July 20, 1919... by none other than Shoeless Joe Jackson. You can't dream this up. Or maybe you can.

Don't Dream It's Over

The Yankees would go back to their more predictable, non-corn-centric style on Saturday when the teams returned to Chicago. After the teams exchanged 3 runs in the first 3 innings, including a double and a sac fly by Aaron Judge, we got stuck in a bunch of nothing from the 4th through the 7th. The teams combined for 11 baserunners against 8 different pitchers, and the closest anyone got to scoring was when Eloy Jimenez was retired on a force play at home. Leave it to good old Aaron Judge again, who opened the 8th with a solo homer to put the Yankees up 4-3. And this time it's not Jose Abreu hitting the first homer in Iowa, it's Jose Abreu hitting the last possible homer into the warehouses on 35th Street. With 2 outs in the 9th, Abreu launches his third career tying or go-ahead homer when down to the team's final out. In the past 70 years the only other White Sox batter to hit three such homers is Robin Ventura.

But that sends us off to free-runner land again, and thus all it takes is a quick single to put the Yankees back in front. Your leadoff batter... Aaron Judge again. He became the first player in Yankees history to have four separate go-ahead plate appearances in the same game, and don't forget those two homers he left in the cornfields of Dyersville. He's the first Yankees batter with consecutive 4-RBI games against the White Sox since someone named Mickey Mantle on June 3 and 4, 1953. (Never heard of him.) Joey Gallo would follow with a 2-run homer to put things out of reach, the second multi-run shot the Yanks have hit in extra innings at the current Sox stadium. Stanton was the other, off Tyler Danish on August 7, 2018. And who was the unlucky Sox pitcher to give up those 3 extra-inning runs? Why that's Liam Hendriks again. After Friday's off-day they ran him out there again, putting his name in a list alongside Ronald Belisario. On August 2 and 3, 2014, Belisario was the last Sox pitcher to appear in back-to-back team games and give up 3 runs while pitching an inning or less in both of them.

Land Of Hope And Dreams

If you couldn't find Dyersville, Iowa, on a map, we'll give you another chance. The suburbs of Phoenix have exploded in recent years, and you've probably heard of a few of them, especially if you watch spring-training games in March. Scottsdale. Peoria. Goodyear. Tempe, home of Arizona State. Stuck off to the southeast, however, is a 'burb called Gilbert, Arizona, whose population is quickly approaching a quarter-million despite it once being known as the hay-shipping capital of the world. So there were certainly a few folks from Gilbert, Arizona, watching what Gilbert did in Arizona on Saturday night.

That, of course, is Tyler Gilbert, a 6th-round pick of the Phillies way back in 2015. He stalled out at triple-A before being traded to the Dodgers two winters ago in exchange for outfielder Kyle Garlick, who played exactly 12 games for the Phillies before being waived. Meanwhile, the Dodgers didn't have a spot for Gilbert in 2020 with the minor-league season being cancelled, so he spent the summer helping his father with his electrical business. The Diamondbacks, however, had kept an eye on him throughout his career, and after 5 years in the minors, Gilbert was eligible to be snapped up in the Rule V draft last winter. After half a season at triple-A Reno, Gilbert finally made his major-league debut two weeks ago as a setup pitcher. He threw a total of 4 innings and 70 pitches in three relief appearances before Saturday. But he had been a starter when he first came up with Philadelphia, and Reno had been working on converting him back, so what the heck. The D'backs are 38½ games out, let's let him start a game, what's the worst that could--.

Um, yeah. We say this about rookie pitchers and MLB debuts all the time, that they are sometimes the scariest outings when it comes to threatening us with no-hitters, only because the other team has never seen them before. Video (and getting paid millions of dollars to hit the ball) can apparently only do so much. Still, though, it's unusual for a pitcher fresh off the minor-league wagon to go beyond 5 or 6 innings, so this problem usually resolves itself. Especially when Gilbert's thrown 4 innings total in his first 3 appearances. We fully expected him to be done after 5 at the latest.

Instead, after 5, Gilbert was done with only 15 batters on just 63 pitches. There were two walks mixed in there, both to Padres leadoff batter Tommy Pham, but Adam Frazier behind him grounded into double plays both times. Wil Myers and Jake Marisnick both hit deep fly balls in the 6th, but not deep enough. It took eight pitches for Tommy Pham to work a leadoff walk in the 7th, his third of the game. He also had a 3-walk game on May 22 against Seattle, and is the first Padres leadoff batter to do it twice in a season since Brian Giles in 2007. Frazier only made one out this time, eventually stranding Pham and taking the "faced minimum" out of play. But the turning point is easily the top of the 8th when Austin Nola, Eric Hosmer, and Wil Myers all make outs-- all on the first pitch. Torey Lovullo, who freely admitted after the game that he was more nervous than Gilbert was, suddenly had the decision made. Gilbert had gotten through 8 innings on 91 pitches and it was time for one bright moment in a season that saw the D'backs break the all-time record for consecutive road losses. (And, oh yeah, they're still 38½ games out.)

Trent Grisham, called out on strikes. Ha-Seong Kim, called out on strikes. Tommy Pham, in search of either his fourth walk or his first hit, lines the first pitch into center where Ketel Marte squeezes it for the eighth official no-hitter of the 2021 season. That ties the major-league record, set in 1884 when the mound was still at 55 feet and the short-lived Union Association added another 12 teams to the baseball landscape. That figure also doesn't include the two 7-inning no-hitters thrown in doubleheaders under our New Rules.

Appropriately enough when he has a suburb named for him, Gilbert is the first Arizona pitcher to throw a no-hitter in Arizona. Randy Johnson threw his perfect game in 2004, and Edwin Jackson's NH in 2010 came at Tropicana Field. Remember that 3-pitch 8th inning? That was the first one to occur in a no-hitter since Al Leiter, then of the Marlins, also did it in the top of the 8th on May 11, 1996.

Those three walks to Tommy Pham gave Gilbert another place in no-hitter history: He's the first pitcher in the modern era to issue 3 or more walks in a no-hitter and have all of them go to the same batter. And let us not forget who was on the other side of this 7-0 Padres loss. That's Joe Musgrove, who of course threw not just the first no-hitter of the eight this year, but also the first one in Padres history. The last time the losing pitcher in a no-hitter was someone who had previously thrown a no-hitter in the same season was on June 26, 1962, when Earl Wilson of Boston no-hit the Angels. Anaheim's losing pitcher was Bo Belinsky, who had thrown the first no-hitter in that team's history just 8 weeks earlier.

If you alphabetize all 313 no-hitters in history, Gilbert comes right after Bob Gibson. The weird coincidence there? They both threw theirs on August 14-- and exactly 50 years apart. Only three other NH's have been thrown on the 50th anniversary of a previous NH: James Paxton in 2018 (Catfish Hunter), Scott Erickson in 1994 (Jim Tobin), and Hoyt Wilhelm in 1958 (Frank Smith).

And of course the elephant in the room. Recall that Gilbert made just three relief appearances-- 70 total pitches-- before living the dream on Saturday night. Only four pitchers have ever thrown a no-hitter in their first big-league start, and a lot of sources are discounting two of them. Ted Breitenstein of the St Louis Browns (that's the American Association team, not related to today's Orioles) did it in 1891; he is also famous for being part of a two-no-hitters-in-one-day pairing later in his career. "Bumpus" Jones, a kid who worked in a lime kiln in Ohio, caught the attention of Charles Comiskey, then manager of the Reds, who invited him to join the team for their season finale against Pittsburgh. Jones hopped on the train and proceeded to pitch a no-hitter. The origins of the "Bumpus" nickname are disputed, from a corruption of country "bumpkin" to a reference to the "bumps" he took in his baseball career. Either way, he threw the final no-hitter at the 55-foot distance since the mound was moved the following year. So the only other one in the modern era to throw a no-hitter in his first start is Bobo Holloman, who also did it for the Browns (the modern Browns, in their last season in St Louis) on May 6, 1953.

After the game, Gilbert had a little fun with his dad, saying that he'd rather be throwing no-hitters than pulling electrical wires to make ends meet like he was last summer.

And it all happened just the way they dreamed it up. Just like it always does.

Bottom Of The Bag

⚾ Adam Wainwright, Wednesday: First Cardinals pitcher to throw a 9-inning shutout on 88 pitches since Bob Tewksbury did it in 79 on August 17, 1990 (Franklin Stubbs broke up his perfect game in the 8th).

⚾ Yohel Pozo, Friday: Second player in MLB history to make his debut as a designated hitter and hit a 3-run homer. The other is Kevin Kouzmanoff who famously hit a grand slam on the first pitch he saw (September 2, 2006).

⚾ Tigers, Tuesday: First time collecting multiple RBI triples and multiple RBI doubles in the same game since an 18-2 win over the Rays on May 18, 2001.

⚾ Jonathan India, Sunday: Reds' first leadoff homer to start a game in Philadelphia since Kal Daniels on April 28, 1989.

⚾ Lourdes Gurriel & Teoscar Hernandez, Wed-Thu: Second set of Jays teammates to homer in the same set of back-to-back games in Anaheim. John Olerud and Ed Sprague did it on May 31 and June 1, 1993.

⚾ Luis Castillo, Monday: Third game this season where he gave up 8+ runs and didn't finish the 4th inning. First Reds pitcher in modern era to have three such starts in a season.

⚾ Twins, Wednesday: First game where they had exactly 4 hits and they comprised a team cycle since June 23, 1986, at Chicago.

⚾ Dansby Swanson, Saturday: Second 6-RBI game of year (also July 31 vs Milwaukee). Fifth player in Braves history with two in a season, after Javy Lopez (2003), Dale Murphy (1989), Eddie Mathews (1965), and Earl Torgeson (1951).

⚾ Brandon Nimmo, Thursday: First Mets leadoff batter to have 4 RBI and account for all the team's runs in a win. Wayne Garrett did it in Montreal on May 21, 1976.

⚾ Jarred Kelenic, Friday: First Mariners batter to draw a game-winning walk ("shrimp") on only four pitches since Ichiro Suzuki against Texas, September 16, 2002.

⚾ Beau Burrows, Monday: First Twins starter to give up 7 runs and 3 homers while getting no more than 6 outs since Eric Milton at Cleveland, September 13, 2002.

⚾ Jake Meyers, Saturday: Third #9 batter in Astros history (remember, they used to be pitchers) with a 2-HR, 5-RBI game. Others are Jake Marisnick in 2017 and Hank Conger in 2015.

⚾ Wil Myers, Tuesday: Fourth game of his Padres career where he had 2 hits, 2 walks, and a stolen base. Ties Tony Gwynn Sr for the most such games in team history.

⚾ Reds, Thursday: First time hitting for a team home-run cycle (solo, 2-run, 3-run, slam) in a road game since September 15, 1987, also in Atlanta.

⚾ Joey Votto, Wednesday: First Reds batter to have a multi-homer game in Atlanta since Barry Larkin at (!) Fulton County, May 13, 1995.

⚾ Bo Bichette, Sunday: Third batter in Jays history to have 5 strikeouts in a 9-inning game. The others are both named Alex Rios; he did it in July 2006 at Oakland and again in June 2009 against the Angels.

⚾ Will Smith, Friday: Second multi-run homer ever hit by Dodgers in extra innings in Queens. Ron Cey off Skip Lockwood at Shea, May 15, 1977.