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.
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.)
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!
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.
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!
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.
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'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.
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.
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.
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