Season's Greetings

When we started this escapade like 7 months ago, there was actually discussion about whether a full 162-game season was advisable on the heels of playing only 60 last year. There were rumors about extended spring training or a season of 100 or 120 games for "conditioning" purposes, and many of the minor leagues who didn't play at all in 2020 adopted some of those changes. But looks like we made it. Like 755, .406, or 5714, the number 2430 is just another random one outside of baseball circles. On the inside, however, you may recognize it as the total number of games in a full 162-game season. Looks like we made it.

1 down, 2429 to go (we hope).

— Doug Kern (@dakern74) April 1, 2021

And yes, there's an asterisk because the Braves and Rockies had a game rained out on September 16 and not made up because it didn't matter. So it was really 2429. But still, isn't it a lot more than you thought we'd get back in February or March?

Max Headroom

Even though every team* made it through those 162 games, a few of them started mailing it in toward the end. That allowed the teams who were already really good to appear even better. Which is why you're about to see a lot of Yankees and Dodgers and Giants in this mix. (But not exclusively, hang in there.) Consider it a warmup for the rest of October.

The Dodgers, already having passed 100 wins on the season, would host the typically-mediocre Padres for the final time this week, with San Diego trying just to break .500 in a full season for the first time since 2010. (They failed at this. Again.) On Wednesday came the first of those games that we just knew we'd be writing about. It begins with Max Scherzer on the mound, so it always has potential. It also begins with Ryan Weathers on the hill for San Diego, which means the Dodgers' ledger begins with a double, two singles, and a homer around two fly-ball outs. It was the Dodgers' first 4-run 1st inning in a home game against the Padres since July 8, 2016, against Andrew Cashner. Corey Seager would add another run in the 2nd and chase Weathers from the game after 3 innings and (yikes!) 62 pitches. And he's not going to get a loss because by now you know that if this game had gone smoothly, it wouldn't be here.

As we said, any Max Scherzer game has potential, but it's usually not this kind. He pitched around a pair of singles in the 1st, gave up a 2-run homer to Manny Machado in the 3rd before escaping the inning with a double play, then gave up three more hits in the 4th such that the Padres came back to tie the game 5-5. Scherzer exits in the 6th after giving up a go-ahead triple to Wil Myers, the Padres' first such hit at Dodger Stadium since Eddie Williams off Ismael Valdez on August 3, 1994. That's actually the 11th hit off Scherzer in the game, and he's on the hook for a loss (and the Padres maybe getting back to .500). Brusdar Graterol does not help the cause by facing four batters in the 7th and getting none of them out. It's 9-5 San Diego when he leaves. And then things got interesting.

Emilio Pagán gets the 8th with a 9-6 lead after Mookie Betts homers. Here's how that went: Max Muncy homer to right-center. A.J. Pollock homer to right. Chris Taylor fly ball to the warning track in center. Cody Bellinger homer to right. Justin Turner double down the left-field line. It's 9-9 and you can un-hook Max Scherzer; he's the first Dodgres pitcher to give up 11 hits and 6 runs in a home game and not take a loss since Jeff Weaver did it against the Reds on July 27, 2005. And Pagán just became the fourth pitcher in Padres history to surrender 3 homers while getting only 1 out, after Chad Qualls (2011), Dario Veras (1997), and Doug Bochtler (1996).

So how does this one get settled, you ask? Well, not through those pesky free runners, which we maintain really aren't needed in a slugfest where teams are already scoring at will. Corey Seager comes up later in the 8th and says, we don't need no stinkin' free runners, here's a 2-run bomb for an 11-9 win. That is the twelfth time since the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles in 1958 that they've hit 6 homers in a game, with eight of those twelve coming just in the past four seasons. But in that 5-run 8th, there were 4 homers alone (three off Pagán plus Seager). The last time the Dodgers slugged four taters in an inning was September 5, 2016, against Arizona. But even Wednesday won't go down as their most-famous time hitting 4 homers in an inning. For that you need Vin Scully.

The Heat Is On

Conventional wisdom (and some kind of hydrological science) says that baseballs go farther in warm air because of the air's lower density. So we haven't seen too many home-run eruptions as summer turns to fall. However, you might have heard it stays pretty warm in Los Angeles while the rest of us are still pondering just how cold it can get before we finally "have to" turn the heat on for the night.

So now to Thursday's series finale at Dodger Stadium. After Corey Seager put a bow on Wednesday's proceedings, he's up second against Vince Velasquez to start the next game. And naturally he goes yard again to give the Dodgers another 2-run lead that will eventually hold up for a win. Did we mention Seager didn't hit a 2-run homer? No, because Mookie Betts also took Velasquez deep, the first time the Dodgers have ever started a game against the Padres with back-to-back homers.

Velasquez settles down for a couple innings but then Justin Turner and A.J. Pollock come up with 2 outs in the 4th. And both of them also connect for homers. That's two sets of back-to-back jacks in the same game, and for as unusual as that feels, the Dodgers already did it back in July in that 22-1 jamboree against the Diamondbacks. Although we can recognize Vince Velasquez for being the first Padres pitcher to give up multiple sets of back-to-back homers in a game-- unless you count Craig Stammen surrendering them to four straight batters on June 9, 2019. (Is that three sets of B2B's?)

Fernando Tatis Jr hits his 42nd home run in the 5th to surpass Phil Nevin (2001) for second place on the Padres' single-season list. He still didn't end up topping Greg Vaughn's 50 in 1998, but who will? But this one is ultimately all Dodgers, capped off in the same way it started, with Corey Seager's solo shot in the 7th. Seager joins Yasiel Puig (2013) and Mike Marshall (1994) as the only Dodgers batters with 2 homers and a double in a home game against the Padres. And it's the fifth round-tripper of the game for Los Angeles-- after they hit six yesterday. They've only hit 5 homers in back-to-back games two other times in their history: April 6-7, 2001, against San Francisco; and June 29-30, 1996, at (of course) Coors Field.

Class of 93

Speaking of teams hitting 5 homers, it's always a nice toasty 20° inside Rogers Centre, so you would expect the temperature-based component of the home run numbers to be fairly consistent. That is, until they open the roof. It was a balmly 14° on the final day of September in Toronto, so let it fly. And traditionally when we mention a 5-homer game in Toronto, it means the Jays went and unloaded on somebody. Not this week.

Now, we will give Toronto a shout-out for two homer-related things. On Saturday they broke their single-season record when Danny Jansen hit the team's 258th. That ranked them eighth among teams all-time, and the top four were all recorded two seasons ago when all the pitchers were complaining about MLB changing the balls (remember when that was our biggest problem?). On Sunday they jumped the 2005 Rangers to finish in seventh place with 262.

Also, a combined 93 of those dingers were hit by Vlad Guerrero Jr (48) and Marcus Semien (45), who became the fifth set of teammates in MLB history with 45 each. You can probably name some of the other pairs to do it. We'll spot you Mantle & Maris (1961), plus Ruth & Gehrig (twice). Then throw in A-Rod & Rafael Palmeiro for the 2001 Mariners, and the most recent pair, David Ortiz & Manny Ramirez in 2005.

But back to Thursday. If we said Robbie Ray would be starting for the Jays and there would be a bunch of homers, your first reaction is not, oh, Robbie Ray's going to give up a bunch of homers. Aaron Judge's reaction to the first pitch he sees is to homer. 1-0 Yankees. They get that run back off Corey Kluber in the 2nd, then go ahead when Vladdy and Semien combine for a run in the 5th. And then the Yankees do what they've done all season, wake up in the late innings. Anthony Rizzo homers off Ray in the 6th to tie it back up. Aaron Judge needs three pitches this time before homering again. Giancarlo Stanton works a 7-pitch walk and then Gleyber Torres unloads. In 14 pitches we've gone from 2-1 to 5-2 and knocked Ray out of the game after his fourth homer. He's the first Jays pitcher to surrender four in a home game (any home) since Jason Grilli did it in relief on May 3, 2017.

Brett Gardner adds another solo homer in the 9th, thus creating just the third road game in Yankees history where they hit 5 homers but didn't get to 7 runs. It happened at Fenway Park on the 100th anniversary of its opening, April 20, 2012; and also at Comerica on July 15, 2004. As for Aaron Judge, he also enjoys going yard against Toronto. He did it on September 24, 2017, and again on April 14 of this year, although the Yanks lost both those games. But Thursday makes him the first batter in team history to have three multi-homer games against the Jays. (Did it twice: Robinson Cano, Jason Giambi, Cliff Johnson, Alfonso Soriano, Dave Winfield.)

And if you were keeping score along with us, we noted that Judge put the Yankees up 1-0 in the 1st. As the latter half of the back-to-back in the 6th, he also put the Yankees ahead 3-2. While it's true there's not a lot of late-game heroics there, it's the fifth time in his career that Judge has hit multiple go-ahead homers in the same game. And that's an all-time Yankees record. Their only player to have done it four times... was Mickey Mantle.

Destiny's Child

So the Yankees head into their final series of the year controlling their own destiny when it comes to Wild Card spots. And somewhere there's a meme of a bus going over a cliff. Needing one win to secure home field, they trot out Nestor Cortes, Jordan Montgomery, and Jameson Taillon against their nemesis the Rays. Sounds like a plan.

Cortes gives up two early runs which probably should have been more, except that Francisco Mejia thinks he can go first-to-third on a single to left. And sure, he can go to third, but the ball is going to beat him there by about 20 feet. Then, mysteriously, the Yankees offense gets shut down by the rookie stylings of Shane McClanahan, Louis Head, and Josh Fleming. (Yeah, we had to look them up too.) The Yankees finally advance the tying run to second base in the 9th but Gary Sanchez and Rougned Odor both strike out to end the game. Flash back to Opening Day when Giancarlo Stanton and Gleyber Torres did it. That's twice this year, matching the number of such endings the Yankees had in the previous 10 seasons combined. Friday was also the first time the Yankees had ever collected 10 strikeouts and 0 walks on offense against Tampa Bay, leaving the Angels as the only AL opponent against whom they've never done it.

And look at the bright side, at least there was no frustratingly dramatic ending for the Yankees on Saturday. The 5-homer thread has been woven all through this section, but this time it's getting the twist that Brandon Lowe had three of them. The first two batters of the game reach against Montgomery, and then Lowe deposits one to the famous "short porch" at Yankee Stadium for a 3-0 lead. Let's repeat this exercise to start the 3rd. Mike Zunino follows with a back-to-back to make it 7-1 and put the Rays well on their way to their first-ever 100-win season. Montgomery is the first Yankees starter to give up 7 runs and 3 homers since J.A. Happ did it in June 2019. Happ is, of course, no longer with the Yankees, and didn't do it when the team had a magic number of 1.

Yandy Diaz deprives Lowe of the chance at another 3-run homer by striking out to end the 6th. That means the only thing Lowe can do to start the 7th is hit a solo shot to join Carlos Peña (2007) and Ben Zobrist (2011) as the only Rays to have 7 RBI in a game. He's also the sixth in team history with a 3-homer game, and the only one on both lists. Bizarrely, the first four 3-homer games all came at the Trop, and the last two have been at Yankee Stadium. That other list is Johnny Gomes (2005), Evan Longoria (2008 and 2012), B.J. Upton (2012), and Travis d'Arnaud (2019). And as for the combo of 3 HR and 7 RBI happening at Yankee Stadium, well... now it has. Nobody, not even any of the Yankees, had done that at their current building before Brandon Lowe pulled it off on Saturday. The last to do it at the old place across 161 St was Alex Rodriguez on April 26, 2005, in his "historic" 10-RBI game against the Angels.

All Seven And We'll Watch Them Fall

We promised you this would not be all about a bunch of playoff teams. You're going to hear from them for the next few weeks. In the AL it takes 92 wins just to get a Wild Card spot. Over in the "senior circuit" you can win a division with 88 because everyone's racing to the bottom.

We don't know what will become of The New Rules as they relate to 7-inning doubleheaders. Up for grabs in the collective bargaining that will happen in December. But if we've seen the end of them, then it's appropriate that the last one ended on an extra-inning walkoff. You know, in the 9th.

That possibly-last-ever 7-inning twinbill was on Tuesday between the Mets and Marlins in that division where you only need 88 wins. These two combatants began the day with 137. Combined. The Mets made fairly easy work of Game 1, helped by Brandon Nimmo's leadoff triple. The last Mets batter to start a doubleheader with a triple was Mookie Wilson on July 2, 1983, against the Phillies. (If, like us, you see that date and "Phillies doubleheader" and think "4:40 am", that was exactly 10 years later.) It also turns out Nimmo hit a leadoff triple on the previous Friday against the Brewers, and is thus the second batter in Mets history to have two in five days. Jose Reyes did it in back-to-back games at (of course) Coors Field in June 2008.

As for Game 2, it's another 1-1 snoozefest where those free runners come in handy. The Marlins botched a chance in the 4th when Eddy Alvarez was ruled to have made a move toward second and got tagged out on what should have been a bases-loading single. The Mets lose their best scoring chance in the 5th by lining into a double play. And even the first three free runners can't score, so we're into the bottom of the 9th. Or is that the 16th? (We did play a 16 earlier this year, remember?)

Finally Pete Alonso's groundout moves free runner Javier Baez over to third. James McCann hits a little chopper out in front of the plate, Baez senses that he's got a chance, and heck, if he's wrong we just keep playing. Pitcher Bass knows the only play is at home, but his attempt to barehand-scoop the ball fails and Baez slides in with the winning run. We've covered this before, and are quite surprised that it didn't get scored as an infield single, given that they likely didn't have a play on McCann at first either. But here we are with the Mets' third walkoff "FCX" (fielder's choice, no out) of the season. One of the others, by Patrick Mazeika on May 7, was also in extra innings. And the three from 2021 matches the total number of walkoff FCX's that the Mets had in the prior 20 seasons.

Pete Alonso capped a doubleheader with a walkoff homer back on August 12 against Washington; the last season where the Mets walked off in multiple nightcaps was also 1983. Their last extra-inning walkoff against the Marlins was a bases-loaded walk to Nimmo on September 24, 2019. And Anthony Bass of the fumbled flip attempt, well, he gets his own little piece of Marlins history. Because of the scoring, he's the team's first pitcher ever to allow 0 hits, 0 walks, and 0 earned runs (remember, free runner) and take a loss.

And as the Marlins tried to race Washington to the bottom spot in the NL East (they even failed at this), they were helped by a 12-3 thumping in Thursday's finale. Pete Alonso went deep twice for his 11th career multi-homer game; he's one of nine Mets players ever to have that many and halfway to Darryl Strawberry's team record of 22. (David Wright, Dave Kingman, Carlos Beltran, Mike Piazza, you can guess most of them.) But the big blow came from Francisco Lindor's grand slam as part of a 6-run 8th. It was the Mets' first slam that late in a home game since Jose Bautista hit a walkoff against Toronto on July 6, 2018. But Lindor also hit a slam against the Pirates on July 9 of this year (in the 6th). The only other players to hit two slams at Citi Field in the same season are Amed Rosario in 2019 and Fernando Tatis Sr in 2009.

New Moon On Monday

There were only supposed to be two games on Monday. Other than that Thursday after the All-Star Game, when MLB decided to over-hype another Yankees/Red Sox game by making it the only game of the day (and then it got rained out!), it was the most baseball-less day of the season. And then Monday saw 66 runs scored.

No, the Jays didn't bust out for 44 in three games again. It seems that the previous Wednesday happened. On September 22 a large patch of rain parked itself over Ohio and cancelled the home games in Cleveland and Cincinnati and Detroit. Because of the nearly-league-wide off day on Monday, here's our chance to make all those games up and complete our slate of 2430-- er, 2429. So two games actually became five. Even so, 66 runs is still a lot, especially if we tell you the Pirates only had 1.

So who did have a lot? That would be the Pirates' opponent, the Reds, who knew they would technically still be alive in the playoff race for another day because the Cardinals were off. May as well go down swinging. And swing they did. The first time through the order against Connor Overton, every single Reds batter ended their plate appearance with a swing. And all nine of those PAs were in the 1st inning. Oof, yeah. Single, double, sac fly by Nick Castellanos, Joey Votto 2-run homer. The remaining five batters combine for three more singles, another run, and two (swinging) strikeouts to ensure that they won't face Connor Overton again in the 2nd. Instead they'll get 4 unearned runs off Cody Ponce after an error, another sac fly from Nick Castellanos, and another 2-run homer from Joey Votto. Stop us if you've heard this one. Votto has, by the 4th inning, recorded his 10th career game with 2 homers and 4 RBI, two shy of the team record shared by George Foster, Frank Robinson, and (he seems to come up every week) Johnny Bench.

Meanwhile, the Pirates are dealing with the MLB debut of Reiver Sanmartin, who was part of the Sonny Gray trade with the Yankees in early 2019 and has been hanging out down in Louisville ever since. We talk about this happening in debuts all the time as if film and scouts don't exist, but Anthony Alford is the only Pirates batter who can solve him, getting a single and a double and scoring that lone Pirates run on a wild pitch. Sanmartin gets pulled in the 6th after a couple of hard-hit balls, but ends up being the third Reds pitcher this century to throw 5+ innings in his MLB debut, allow 1 run, and get a win. The others were Amir Garrett in 2017 and Johnny Cueto in 2008.

It's already 8-1 when Nick Castellanos appears again, and this time he's not going to be bothered with another sac fly so that Joey Votto can hog all the glory again. Nope, this time he connects for his own 3-run homer and it's 11-1. (And besides, sac flies are really just multi-run homers that didn't make it.) Turns out Castellanos had homered in all three Reds victories against the Nationals over the weekend (remember, they're racing Miami to the bottom); he's the first Reds batter with a 4-game homer streak at GABP since Aristides Aquino in August 2019. But he's also the first Cincinnati batter since sac flies were split off in 1954 to have two of them plus a homer in the same game.

The 13-1 final ended up being the third time this season that the Reds had defeated the Pirates by a dozen or more. In the previous 100 seasons it happened four times total. It's also the sixth time the Pirates lost a 12-run decision this season, their most since the 1890 "campaign" when many of their best hitters defected to the Players League and they finished an impressive 23-113 (66½ games out).

Sleepless In Seattle

Now, if MLB is only going to schedule two games on a day, can they at least be early? You've gotta dump Seattle on us? Who can't even move their games to 6:30 like many other west-coast teams? (Don't get us wrong, the city is tremendous, but there's some East Coasters who have to go to work tomorrow. Hurry up.) But nope, here we are waiting for a "10:10" start to an AL West game that you just know is going to end with a score of 3-1 and somehow take 3½ hours. Well, it did take 3½ hours. But we certainly didn't count on both teams scoring a 3 and a 1.

For Oakland it was literally a 3 and a 1. The 3 was Seth Brown's homer in the 1st inning, a first for the A's at Safeco/T-Mobile since Matt Olson on July 7, 2019. The 1 would be an RBI single by Khris Davis in the 4th. And that's where their sidewalk ends. Four Seattle relievers come on to throw 1 perfect inning each, the fourth time in team history that's happened in a game. Except two of those others were in extra-inning games, one was in a blowout loss, and none of the others were by four consecutive pitchers. So there's that.

As for the Mariners, they're going to score a 1 and a 3-- next to each other. Like the Reds before them, they piled up 13 runs with a bunch of 3's along the way. There are 3 runs off Cole Irvin in the 3rd. There is a 3-run homer by Mitch Haniger in the 4th. There is-- wait-- another? 3-run homer by Mitch Haniger in the 6th? Yep, more in a moment. And Ty France adds a "wacky" 2-run single in the 7th by clocking a comebacker off Sam Moll's hip and all the way into left field. As mentioned in that clip, France had 4 RBI on the day, plus 4 hits and 3 runs scored. No Mariners batter had done that since Adam Lind, also against the A's, on May 25, 2016. The 13-4 final was the second time the M's had ever dropped a baker's dozen on Oakland; they shut them out at the Coliseum on July 2, 2003.

And back to Haniger, he's the first Mariners batter with multiple 3-run homers in a home game since Daniel Vogelbach against the Angels on July 19, 2019. And he's only the fourth in team history with a 6-RBI game against Oakland. The aforementioned Adam Lind is one of the others, along with Darnell Coles (August 5, 1989) and Gorman Thomas (Apr 11, 1985). All of those games happened to be in Seattle, though that wasn't part of our criteria.

It leaves you to face the fall alone. When you need it most, it stops. You see snippets of this quote from Bart Giamatti every year. But it sure was fun while it lasted. Especially considering the challenges of the last two years. So let's celebrate our seasons in the sun with this cheesy '70s classic. Intermission!

Season On The Brink

For the final regular-season post we decided to recap our favorite quirky stat lines. These are the items that just fill us with joy when we see them in a boxscore, and we tend to touch on them during the season when they happen. But you never get a neat summary at the end of the year. So here we go.

⚾ Rinse Cycle ⚾

The year 2000 did not see an MLB no-hitter. Guess it already had enough zeroes in it. That was the year that the count of cycles in MLB history finally overtook the count of no-hitters. It's still fairly close, 333 to 314. Our fondest (and perhaps only) memory of Brewers catcher George Kottaras is that he finally recorded the first cycle of 2011-- in September. But every year back to 1984 has had one, until that streak was snapped by the shortened season last year.

Trea Turner returned us to the normal cycle of things in spectacular fashion. The hits themselves weren't any more spectacular, but it's notable for quite a few reasons, not the least of which is that Turner got traded a month later. It was June 30 when the Nationals recorded a 15-6 win over the Rays. June 30 is Trea Turner's birthday. Nobody's ever hit for the cycle on their birthday before. And even though he's now 28, we'll give Turner a tri-cycle for his birthday. Because he also did it in 2017 and 2019 (not on his birthday); only four other players in MLB history have a total of three cycles. They are Bob Meusel (1921-28), Adrian Beltre (2008-15), Babe Herman (1931-33), and John Reilly (1883-90).

Jake Cronenworth fired off the second cycle of the season against Washington on July 16, the first time the Nats/Expos franchise has ever hit one and allowed one in the same season. Freddie Freeman did it in his first four at-bats on August 18, and then Eddie Rosario had a 4-for-4 game with a cycle on September 19. That's the first time in Braves history (all the way back to 1876 in Boston) that they've had two cycles in the same season.

⚾ Short Cycle ⚾

Just as there are still some people who insist on doing the wave, there are still those who get excited because such-and-such is "a triple shy of the cycle". Yeah, they all are. There were 253 of those this season, down from recent highs, but still it's been over 200 in every full season since 1993, which oh yeah, was the first season with 28 teams. Stop it. Just for kicks, though, we will mention that the 2021 lead in that category was shared by Byron Buxton, Vlad Junior, Bryce Harper, Anthony Santander, and Jesse Winker with 4 each.

No, it's much more fun to miss the cycle by something else. The homer is easy to not hit. You can go out to beer-league softball and manage to not homer. Twenty-two big leaguers pulled that off this year, going single-double-triple but not getting the four-bagger. Amed Rosario was the only one to do it twice.

The double had a mere 16 misses, and nobody did that twice. But amazingly, there are four players who appear on the previous two lists. I.e., they had a game where they missed the homer and a game where they missed the double. They are Bryan Reynolds (who just had one of his on Saturday), Jesús Sanchez, Jonathan Villar, and Nolan Arenado.

And then there are the rarest group. Those six individuals who managed to homer, triple, and double, but could never be bothered to stop at first base. Those lucky winners are Daulton Varsho, Jose Abreu, Marcus Semien, Max Schrock, Shohei Ohtani, and Taylor Jones. Semien actually did the same thing with Oakland back in 2019; the previous player to do it for multiple teams was Yoenis Cespedes. And by also having three games where he was "a triple shy", Semien joins that logjam above for the 2021 shared title of most "near-cycles".

⚾ Immaculata ⚾

No, not the university outside Philadelphia. Like the "addenda" or the "errata" in a reference book, our "immaculata" is the plural form of an immaculate inning. These actually don't show up in a boxscore, so they're easy to miss. Happily Twitter likes to alert us when one happens.

An immaculate inning, as it's known, is when a pitcher strikes out three batters on nine pitched balls. Thanks to the pitch clocks and the automatic ball and strike rules, it's now theoretically possible to strike out batters on less than three pitches, but fortunately that hasn't happened yet. (Can something be "more immaculate"?) So we'll have to do with the list of five pitchers who pulled this stunt in 2021.

Kyle Finnegan of the Nationals had the first one of the year, fanning Austin Riley, Dansby Swanson, and William Contreras on May 5. That was the 100th known immaculate inning in MLB history, making it one-third as common as a no-hitter. However, since you can't discern it just by looking at a boxscore in a newspaper, it's very possible that some have been lost to history. Another Nationals pitcher, Max Scherzer, would-- oh hang on. He got traded just like Trea Turner. So when Scherzer threw his on September 12, it was the first for the Dodgers since Zac Rosscup on August 19, 2018. All is not lost, however, Nats fans: Scherzer did throw two of these while with the Nationals. The only other pitchers to do it for multiple teams over the course of a career are Kevin Gausman, Randy Johnson, and Nolan Ryan.

As you can see, that gives Scherzer three such innings in his career. That puts him on a very short list that previously contained only Sandy Koufax. Until Chris Sale jumped the line 17 days before Scherzer. On August 26, he also threw one for the Red Sox, the third of his career after doing it twice in a month in 2019. Since Scherzer's were with different teams, Sale and Koufax are the only ones to have three with the same team.

The remaining two came seemingly out of nowhere, if by "nowhere" you mean the Yankees bullpen carousel. Michael King, when they tried to (had to?) use him as a starter for a few games in June, tossed one against the Red Sox, the first time Boston's ever been on both sides of one in the same season. And then, because weird things must happen in baseball on July 4, Chad Green comes along and throws another one against the Mets. The Yankees had never before thrown two in a season. The Mets have been on the wrong end of four of them, two against the Yankees (Ivan Nova in 2013) and one against the aforementioned Sandy Koufax.

⚾ I'm Just Gonna Keep On Counting ⚾

There's another way to quickly get three outs in an inning, and the 2021 Yankees seemed to have mastered that one also. On May 21 they turned the traditional 5-4-3 triple play when Andrew Vaughn of the White Sox drilled one right at Gio Urshela near the third-base bag. On June 20 Sean Murphy of the A's did the exact same thing. And in the meantime, Vlad Guerrero Jr hit into this interesting little number which, if you are doing numbers at home, goes ((1-3)-6-2-5)-6. According to SABR, it's the first triple play of its kind in MLB history, and we should mention that it's started by the same Michael King who threw one of those immaculate innings earlier in the month. (He's the first known pitcher to throw an "II" and also start a triple play in the same season.)

As for the Yankees, they matched the major-league record with 3 TPs in a season. The 2016 White Sox are the only other team in the past 40 years to appear on the list, but it gets longer as you go further back. And while we also didn't have any TPs after the All-Star break, the Reds and Twins both turned them in the first half of the season as well. It's the first season to see five of them before the end of June since 1979, which is the year that holds the modern-day record of 11 TPs total.

⚾ Grand Scheme Of Things ⚾

The year 2000 may not have had any no-hitters, but it did have a record number of "4-run homers" as we occasionally refer to them. There were 176 grand slams hit that season. The second-most? That's going to be held by 2021 when there were 159. Granted, 2018 will forever be the year of the walkoff slam with nine of them, but this season had six of them, the most dramatic being Daniel Vogelbach's game-winner for the Brewers on September 5 when they were down by 3 runs.

As grand slams go, however, you can't beat the story of Daniel Camarena. The Padres had plenty of strange pitching events this year, but Camarena famously launched a grand slam for his first major-league hit back on July 8. Did we mention he's a reliever? They never bat for themselves. The only other Padres pitcher ever to hit a slam had been Mike Corkins in 1970. And it turns out both grand slams hit by pitchers this year came against the Nationals. Huascar Ynoa of the Braves had the other one back on May 4. The last team to give up two pitcher slams in a season was the 2008 Mets, against whom Felix Hernandez and Jason Marquis both hit one.

As for total slams, Trea Turner brought the Dodgers into a tie for that title by hitting one in Sunday's season finale. The Dodgers and Rockies each had 11, and of course, one of those teams plays most of its game at sea level. The Braves ended up with 10. Among those record-setting 262 homers for Toronto were four slams by Lourdes Gurriel to take the individual title. Jose Altuve, C.J. Cron, and Brett Phillips each had three. In so doing, Gurriel also became the first batter in Jays history to hit four slams in one season.

And the most-useless slam of the season? It's close, but we're giving this one to Phillips. He got on that list above by cranking one on August 11 at Fenway Park in the 9th inning... when the Rays were trailing by 17 runs. Ooooh, so they lose 20-8 instead of 20-3. Goal differential isn't a tiebreaker here. The Rays hadn't ever hit a slam when trailing by more than seven prior to that.

⚾ Saved By Zero ⚾

Even in a perfect game, everybody gets to bat three times. Or at least every spot gets to bat three times. Four and five plate appearances are very common. So it takes some effort to play an entire game and not have an at-bat. Every one of those four or five PAs has to fall into one of the handful of things that don't count as an AB against the batter. If you've ever balanced a boxscore, you know this list: Walk, hit-by-pitch, sac fly, sac bunt, interference or obstruction. So when we see 0-for-0 in a boxscore, we get entirely too excited.

Of course, there are plenty of occasions where someone will get hit by a pitch in their first PA and have to leave the game because of it. Those don't count. We're talking start the game, finish the game, don't get an AB. Sometimes someone will be taken out in the 9th for defensive reasons and shatter our dreams. But this season someone shattered our record book.

With more of those defensive replacements happening, and going back to double-switches because pitchers are batting again, 2021 turned out to be a slow year for this. Only four players pulled off a complete-game 0-for-0 this season; in the 60-game season last year there were even three. Before that the 20-year average was exactly 6.5. So would you believe that three of those four players... were Yasmani Grandal! And they all happened in the same month!

Back in May, before it was obvious that the White Sox would run away with the AL Central, the rest of the division wanted nothing to do with Grandal. It's not that he was a gigantic threat; he started the month batting .127. But so he was plopped down there in the 6th or 7th spot, usually with a couple of "easy outs" behind him, so let's not have today be the day he gets hot. Or maybe they had him watch some cheesy video about "plate discipline" on a bus ride. Who knows. But it worked.

May 1 against Cleveland, Grandal sees 20 pitches. He swings at two of them, fouling both. He ends the game with 4 walks in 4 PA. Ever seen a 4-walk game by a guy hitting a buck-27? Not that deep into a season you haven't. At least not in the 20 years of data we could access quickly. We found one in May 2009 where A-Rod was at .136.

A week later at Kauffman Stadium, Grandal sends a drive to deep center that has a shot at being a 3-run homer. It doesn't get there. You know what we call that: A sacrifice fly. That was part of an 8-run 1st inning for the White Sox, so after that, the Royals don't need any more Chicago batters hitting anything. For the remainder of the game Grandal sees 18 pitches and doesn't swing at any of them. One ends up as what we like to call the "3-0 mercy strike". And he ends up with another 4-walk game and another 0-for-0.

May 17, we're in Minnesota. This one is a 16-4 Sox blowout. Once again Grandal pops a sac fly to cap a 3-run 1st inning. After that, 22 pitches and one swing (and it's on 3-0!). Four more walks. [Chanting] Four more walks. In two weeks, partly because he's got no at-bats to add, Grandal has "raised" his average to .132. And yet mysteriously he has become the third player in the modern era to have three complete-game 0-for-0's in the same season.

We're going to be nice and spot you Wally Schang of the 1915 Athletics. Schang got hit by a pitch in two of his games, and actually scored at least 1 run in all of them. You can ruminate on the other (it's kinda obvious) while we tell you that the fourth and final player with a complete-game 0-for-0 this year was Michael Conforto of the Mets-- and that was in one of those pesky 7-inning doubleheaders on July 10 against Pittsburgh. So while it was the Mets' first one in over 6 years (Eric Campbell, June 28, 2015), much like MadBum's no-hitter, does it really count?

You got the answer, right? Think intentional walks. Think the guy who was intentionally walked with the bases loaded so he'd only drive home 1 run instead of 4. Yeah, it's Barry Bonds in the year he absolutely annihilated his own IBB record, 2004.

⚾ Tri As We Might ⚾

We have something here that we affectionately call the "Kernels trifecta". Pitchers can do a lot of weird stuff. They can lose their grip and hurl one to the backstop. They can fall off the mound. They can hiccup and get called for a balk. They can stick pine tar to their neck and get ejected. They can charge Don Zimmer. At least they can't do that fake third-to-first pickoff move anymore because that was stupid and never worked anyway. But it's when they do some combination of all these things that our Spidey Sense lights up.

A "Kernels trifecta", for the uninitiated, is when a pitcher hits a batter, throws a wild pitch, and commits a balk, all in the same game. These are generally the three "extra" pitching stats that are listed in running text at the bottom of your boxscore, so when they all show up together, we take notice. It doesn't happen often. But we had five of them this season, the most in a decade, and sadly all of them were before the All-Star break.

Zack Godley and Adrian Houser of the Brewers were our first two lucky winners, doing it on April 28 and May 14 respectively. For extra fun, both of them walked 5 batters, so clearly there were some "control problems". It's the first time a team has had two pitchers nail the trifecta since MadBum and Jeremy Affeldt for the 2014 Giants. Out of curiosity, we added the 5 walks to create a superfecta, and no other team in the modern era has pulled that off twice.

Vladimir Guttierez of the Reds was our third trifecta of the year, doing so on June 9 against Milwaukee. The Brewers are first team to be on both sides of one of these since the 2008 Tigers. And two days later, it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. Two-way phenom Shohei Ohtani hit the trifecta and, as he usually does, took it up another notch by committing two balks. That was the first one to include a second balk since Stephen Strasburg on September 8, 2013. Our list concludes with Travis Lakins of the Orioles on June 29, Baltimore's first one since Daniel Cabrera on April 28, 2008.

⚾ C'ing I Dog ⚾

We can't help ourselves, we love that quirky call known as catcher's interference. The possessive, and the fact that it's charged as an E2, connotes that it should be called when the catcher gets antsy (say, trying to prevent a stolen base) and gets in the way of the batter's swing. However, in these "modern" times of hitters buying a split-second by standing way back in the box, and of humongous home-run hitters taking huge cuts with huge backswings, it's actually become a strategic element for the offense. There are players like Jacoby Ellsbury and Paul Goldschmidt who can seemingly get this call at will by just clipping the catcher's glove in the normal course of a backswing, even if the catcher is still in his little box and not even trying to make a play. (Sidebar: Add some kind of "intent" rule and make it reviewable.)

Until that happens, however, we'll just continue making history. The 2021 season finished with 62 CI calls, one more than the existing record from two seasons ago. And Murphy's Law, the record-setting one happened last Tuesday in some Murphy-on-Murphy violence. Tom Murphy of the Mariners had the bat and Sean Murphy of the A's had the glove. (We always point out here that CI's were not regularly reported in league statistics until the 1960s because they were so rare. So there are some lost to history, but even 15 years ago there were less than 30 a year. The times, they are a-changing.)

He's not going to quite match Jacoby Ellsbury's record, but Jorge Soler of the Cubs is this year's master of the backswing. He's been awarded first base on a CI eight times, the most since Ellsbury's record-setting season in 2016 (12x). And on the other side of the ledger, we have a three-way tie for the catchers who got called for the infraction most often. James McCann of the Mets, Austin Barnes of the Dodgers, and our old friend Yasmani Grandal for Chicago, share the award for "committing" 4 CI's this season.

⚾ Hit 'Em Up Style ⚾

We can't leave 2021 without mentioning all those darnedable no-hitters. Well, we could, but it wouldn't really be fair.

You probably already know that there were a record nine no-hitters in 2021, breaking a mark that had stood since 1884 when there were three leagues and the mound was 55 feet away. Don't forget the two "unofficial" no-hitters, one by Madison Bumgarner and the other by the Rays, that mysteriously don't count because MLB decided to make the games 7 innings long. (Maybe if they've got one through 7, they just let them keep playing to see if they can finish 9. Shades of spring training.) The only season in the modern era that even comes close to having 11 no-hitters is 1990, which had 9 of them and also included some "unofficial" ones like Andy Hawkins' 4-unearned-run loss. That was part of the reason for Fay Vincent's "committee" in the following year that revoked a lot of previous no-hitters with asterisks.

The Indians became the first team in MLB history to get no-hit either three times officially or four times unofficially (they were on the other end of that Rays 7-inning one). Joe Musgrove threw the first one in Padres history after a 52-year drought. But beyond the sheer number of NH's, there was the number of scares we had. Did you eventually have to turn off the MLB notifications when one got through the 5th? According to Friend Of Kernels Dirk Lammers (aka @NoNoHitters), whose website is actually now first on that initial Google screen of "frequently used", there were 50 games this season that got into the 7th inning with a no-hitter intact. One of them-- Corbin Burnes and Jose Berrios back in April-- was a double! That's way more than any other season we know about. And if you break down those 51 starts, you'll find that 27 of the 30 teams had one. The three who didn't were literally the last three-- Texas, Toronto, and Washington.

We do not say this enough during the season, but we owe lots of gratitude to several sources for the ability to mine this material. The vast majority of our notes come from Baseball Reference and its subsite Stathead, which is worth the subscription if you've ever wanted to look up stuff like this yourself. Retrosheet is an invaluable resource, especially for info on 19th-century teams and players. Baseball Almanac has lots of good lists of historical info such as cycles and immaculate innings. The Society for American Baseball Research (you know it as SABR) gives us a lot of historical context around games and players and also maintains a few databases on things like triple plays. SportsDatabase and its SDQL query provide a lot of our info on scoring by innings, and it's sad to think it might be going away this winter. Other notes, or ideas for them, come from the Elias Sports Bureau, Stats By Stats, Rogers Sportsnet, and [in PBS voiceover] from viewers like you. Thank you.

Bottom Of The Bag

⚾ Austin Slater, Saturday: 18th pinch-hit homer of the season for the Giants, setting a new MLB record for any team for a single season.

⚾ Cardinals, Wednesday: Second team ever to have a winning streak of 17 games or longer snapped in St Louis. The 1935 Cubs are the other.

⚾ Paul Goldschmidt, Friday: With Yadier Molina on July 21, first time the Cardinals have had two walkoff singles against the Cubs in the same season since 1972.

⚾ Logan Webb, Sunday: First Giants pitcher to score 3 runs in a game since Russ Ortiz at San Diego, September 13, 2002.

⚾ Byron Buxton, Thursday: Second leadoff batter in Twins/Sens history to have 3 extra-base hits and score 3 runs in a loss. Brian Dozier did it against the Royals on September 5, 2016.

⚾ Mike Wright, Monday: Second pitcher in White Sox history to face 3 batters in a game; give up a hit, a walk, and a hit-by-pitch; and have all of them score. Terry Forster did it against the Yankees on July 18, 1971.

⚾ Pirates, Fri-Sat: First time posting a 6-run inning in consecutive home games since July 20-21, 2010, against Milwaukee.

⚾ Aaron Judge, Tuesday: Second player in Yankees history with 2 hits, a homer, a sac fly, and 2 walks in the same game. Rickey Henderson did it in a loss at Tiger Stadium on June 20, 1985.

⚾ Christian Walker, Saturday: Second cleanup batter in D'backs history with 3 doubles in a game. The other was Greg Colbrunn, 20 years earlier to the day.

⚾ Bobby Bradley, Friday: First Clevelander with a homer and 4 strikeouts in the same game since Travis Hafner at Chicago, August 16, 2011.

⚾ Bryan Reynolds, Wednesday: First Pirates batter with a multi-triple game since Josh Harrison against Toronto on May 4, 2014. Braves are the only team to go longer without someone doing it.

⚾ Rafael Ortega, Thursday: Second Cubs batter in modern era to hit a leadoff homer and go on to steal 2 bases later in the game. Jerome Walton pulled it off against the Cardinals on April 11, 1989.

⚾ Yankees, Sunday: Second time ever winning their regular-season finale 1-0 on a walkoff. Wid Conroy scored on a wild pitch against Boston on October 10, 1904.

⚾ Jorge Polanco, Wednesday: Hit 3-run homer as Twins' third batter of game. Also did that August 16, 2018, against Detroit. Only others in franchise history to do it multiple times are Larry Hisle, Tony Oliva, and Kirby Puckett.

⚾ Hunter Renfroe & Bobby Dalbec, Friday: First Red Sox batters to hit back-to-back homers in Washington since Reggie Smith & Rico Petrocelli, September 17, 1971.

⚾ Christian Vazquez, Saturday: First go-ahead triple in the 9th later for the Red Sox in Washington since Dom DiMaggio, July 6, 1940.

⚾ Rafael Devers, Sunday: First Red Sox batter with a multi-homer game in Washington since George Scott on September 27, 1970.

⚾ Jason Castro, Tuesday: Third pinch hitter in Astros history to "eat shrimp" (i.e., draw a game-winning walk). Others were Dave Magadan in 1995 and Ken Oberkfell in 1991.

⚾ Jason Castro, Friday: Second #9 batter in Astros history with 3 hits and 3 RBI in a loss. Milt Thompson did it against Pittsburgh on June 30, 1995.

⚾ Matt Duffy, Sunday: First Cubs batter with multiple go-ahead singles in the same game in St Louis since Bobby Thomson (yep, the same one) on May 11, 1958.

⚾ Angel Zerpa, Thursday: First pitcher to make his MLB debut with the Royals, allow 0 earned runs, and still eat a loss.

⚾ Amed Rosario, Monday: Became first Cleveland batter to have six 4-hit games in a single season since Joe Carter in 1986.

⚾ Tigers, Sunday: Second game in team history with 2+ doubles, 2+ triples, 2+ sac flies, and 2+ stolen bases. Other was a 9-1 win on April 23, 1982, at Yankee Stadium.

⚾ Shohei Ohtani, Wednesday: First Angels DH to bat leadoff, have 2 hits, and steal 2 bases, since David Eckstein vs Boston, August 22, 2001.

⚾ Paul Sewald, Saturday: Second pitcher in Mariners history to allow 3 runs and blow a save, but then strike out 3 and get a win. Bob Wells did it against the Yankees on May 31, 1999.

⚾ Luis Robert, Tuesday: First White Sox batter ever to have a multi-homer game against the Reds (home or road, including postseason).

⚾ Trea Turner, Fri & Sun: First Dodgers batter to hit two grand slams in three days since Mike Piazza, April 9 & 10, 1998.

Programming note: Our posts continue through the postseason but will not necessarily be on Sunday nights. Look for one at the conclusion of each round, or possibly the day after same.