We started writing this post on Saturday morning with the premise that it had been a fairly boring week so far. No ridiculous scores, no 3- or 4-homer outbursts, just a small collection of random incidents. It was destined to be a "post about nothing", to borrow a Seinfeld phrase. Then, well, Saturday.
Clark And Add-ison
The "good" news, at least if you were the Rockies or the Pirates or the Red Sox, is that not much happened on Saturday. However, if you were their opponents-- the Tigers, Cubs, and Rays-- many many things ended up happening. Tigers fans, hold that thought; we promise to get back to you in a few minutes.
Although the Cubs have been the Cubs longer than the Bears have been the Bears, there was a football score to be had in Chicago on Saturday. And it wasn't something simple like 7-3 or even 14-10. You may need more fingers for this one.
It starts innocently enough with three straight singles off Zach Thompson in the 1st, with Ian Happ driving in the first run. (1) Then there are four more straight singles off Zach Thompson in the 2nd (4) before Happ sends a double-play ball to short. Then Kevin Newman sends that double-play ball into right field and the gates are open. And not the bullpen gates, because Wrigley doesn't have those. Jonathan Villar gives Newman another chance at the double play, and Newman again airmails it for two more runs. (6) Alfonso Rivas, already the 16th batter of the game, polishes things off with a 3-run homer. (9)
For most teams, you think 9 runs is enough. You can stop now. Turns out the Cubs "led" the majors last year by scoring 9+ and losing five times. That wind off the lake doesn't help matters. But Pirates reliever Michael Yajure will. He issues a walk, hits Jason Heyward, Rivas collects another single (10), then #9 batter Rico Hoerner gets an RBI on a groundout. (11) Like Thompson before him, it's Yajure's second inning that fell apart. Three straight doubles open the bottom of the 5th, (13) and then Heyward, Rivas, and Hoerner all connect for another round of base hits (16) to chase Yajure off the mound. In the live-ball era, only two other sets of Pirates teammates have given up 7+ runs while getting no more than 7 outs in the same game: Charlie Morton and Chris Bootcheck in 2009 (also at Wrigley), and Murry Dickson with Paul Pettit against the Phillies in 1953.
Aaron Fletcher keeps things calm aside from two groundouts and another RBI single by Hoerner in the 7th. (17) With Rivas's 3-run homer, they became the second 8- and 9-hitters in Cubs history to each have 3 hits and 3 RBI in the same game. (Remember, until recently that 9-hole was usually a pitcher.) The other pair was Walker Cooer and Howie Pollet (who was in fact a pitcher), also against the Pirates, on August 31, 1954. Hoerner actually had 4 hits in the game, joining only Javy Baez (2017 when Maddon batted the pitcher 8th) and actual pitcher Lew Burdette (1964) in Cubs history to have 4 hits and 3 RBI out of the 9-hole.
Whether you like the "universal DH" rule or hate it, it seems to be here for at least a little while, and it just makes it even more special when a real position player ends up pitching. That would be Pirates right fielder Diego Castillo, not to be confused with actual pitcher Diego Castillo of the Mariners. This one has been in the majors for all of 2 weeks, and while we don't have a lot of detail on his playing history in Venezuela, he's never pitched in affiliated ball in the States, including the minors and spring training. Let's see how this goes.
Single. Walk. Single by Ian Happ. Single by Patrick Wisdom. (18) Single by Jonathan Villar. (20) And before we could tweet out the note that the Wrigley scoreboard hadn't needed a "20" card since May 5, 2001, they were taking that one down because Jason Heyward grounded into a double play to put Castillo (mostly) out of his misery. (21) The last time the Wrigley scoreboard needed that "21" card in the Runs column was on August 16, 1987, and that was for the other team because the Mets piled up a 23-10 win against them. The Cubs hadn't scored 21+ in any game since that famous 26-7 game on August 18, 1995, that made us all sit up and take notice of Coors Field in its first season.
Now, for all those Cubs runs, notice what we didn't mention? Yeah, that would be any Pirates runs. At all. Nada. Kyle Hendricks held them to just 2 hits over 7 innings. The last time the Pirates were shut out on a total of 3 hits at Wrigley was "only" 4 years ago (June 9, 2018, by Jon Lester), but that was only a 2-0 game. We can bring you the list of all 21-0 finals in MLB history, because it's only four games long. And until Saturday, it hadn't changed in over 80 years. The previous such game was the Yankees over the A's at Shibe Park on August 13, 1939. Before that it was the fledgling American League, famous for putting up big numbers in its 1901 inaugural season, where the Tigers defeated the Cleveland Blues (now on about their fifth nickname since then) on September 15 of that year. And the other harkens back to the American Association: The St Louis Browns, who eventually became the Cardinals after joining the NL in 1892, defeated the Columbus (Ohio) Solons in the latter franchise's 16th-ever game on May 7, 1889.
Your Rays Has Been Denied
Meanwhile, the Rays are one of three active franchises who have not yet scored 21+ runs in a game, along with two of their newer classmates, Arizona and Colorado. But on Saturday they could have used just one run, not twenty-one. That's because the Red Sox were visiting Tropicana Field, and maybe it was hard to tell because there's a pitching change every few batters, but a parade of Rays openers and successors and random middle-relief people succeeded in not allowing a hit. J.P. Feyereisen, six up and six down. Javy Guerra walked a batter. Jeffrey Springs walked two, but both with two outs. Jason Adam issued a pair of walks as well but got out of his inning. Ryan Thompson threw a perfect 7th. Andrew Kittredge came close to giving up a hit on a comebacker in the 8th but got a glove on it and recovered for the out. There were a couple of Sawx who dropped balls just foul down the lines in the late innings, plus two more who actually made outs in foul territory. While all this is going on, however, know how many hits the Rays have? One. A leadoff double by Brandon Lowe in the 4th. Brett Phillips singles in the 8th but gets stranded. Kittredge gets Boston in order in the 9th. So here we are on the verge of a no-hitter that is not a no-hitter... because neither team has scored yet. If you're having flashbacks to The Henderson Alvarez Game, don't worry, we did too. Especially when Lowe draws a leadoff walk in the bottom of the 9th.
Since we had the list ready by this point, that Alvarez game was the fourth no-hitter in MLB history that was only a no-hitter because of a walkoff win. The Pirates had the 10-inning combined one in 1997 where Francisco Cordova went 9, Ricardo Rincon threw the 10th, and then Mark Smith hit a pinch-hit homer for Rincon to walk it off. The other such games were by Virgil Trucks of the Tigers in 1952 (Vic Wertz homer) and Dick Fowler of the A's in 1945 (Irv Hall single).
Instead Randy Arozarena rolls a perfect 6-4-3 double-play ball to Xander Bogaerts and we have a 9-inning non-no-hitter. And now the baseball purists get to make some noise, because there's about to be a free runner at second base. What if this guy scores but the Rays still don't give up a hit? How many asterisks is that going to fetch? Well, fortunately none, because Matt Wisler takes the hill for the 10th and Bobby Dalbec sends his third pitch into the right-field corner for a triple. It was the 15th time in MLB history that a team had a no-hitter through 9 innings and had it broken up in extras, and the first of those 15 where the breakup was on a triple. The previous instance, you probably remember this one too, was The Rich Hill Game in 2017. The Red Sox hadn't hit any RBI triple in extra innings of a road game since Kevin Millar did it at Veterans Stadium on June 21, 2003.
A sac fly brings home Dalbec and the Sawx have a 2-0 lead on just 1 (later 2) hits. But we still have to play the bottom of the 10th. And the Rays get a free runner also. Are they deflated by losing the no-hitter, what would have been their second one ever (Matt Garza in 2010)? Two quick strikeouts would say maybe. Is Trevor Story about to hand them the game with a 2-out throwing error? Our sources say yes. Story's E4 scores the free runner and then Kevin Kiermaier does this.
The only other time the Rays hit a walkoff homer against Boston while trailing in extra innings was Nate Lowe off Josh Smith on September 21, 2019. They'd also only had one other extra-inning game in team history where they had only 3 hits and won; that was May 26 of last year against the Royals. Meanwhile, the Red Sox finished with only those 2 hits in the 10th, their first extra-inning road game with that low an output since May 24, 1970, in Baltimore.
And remember those 14 (now 15) teams who had a no-hitter through 9 but lost it in extras? The Rays are the first of those teams to then come back and win the game in walkoff fashion.
Tax-a-chusetts
Speaking of the Red Sox, it seems that this year, and again next year, the fine people of Massachusetts get an extra day to file their taxes because the third Monday in April is always the "Patriots' Day" holiday, marking the battles of Lexington and Concord that started the whole thing. (Maine, being a spinoff of Massachusetts, has the same quirk, but we don't see MLB expanding there anytime soon. Although a team named the Caribou Caribou would be tremendous.)
Enrique Hernandez was disappointed on not-quite-tax-day to find out that he owed. As in, "owe"-for-5 out of the leadoff spot in Boston's 8-3 loss to the Twins. He was the first leadoff hitter to draw that collar on Patriots' Day since Johnny Damon in 2003. And while Boston may have been dumping tea into the harbor, Minnesota was busy dumping garlic into the Green Monster. That would be Kyle Garlick, whose 1st-inning homer was the first such shot by a visiting player on Patriots' Day since Orlando Cabrera of the Angels in 2007.
Although Jorge Polanco struck out to start the game, he followed that up with a 2-run homer and a bases-loaded single in the 8th, the first Twins leadoff hitter to have a 4-RBI game at Fenway (anytime, not just Patriots' Day) since Larry Hisle on May 25, 1977. That single marked the end of the night-- er, afternoon-- for Kutter Crawford, who faced 13 Twins batters and retired 5 of them. And while one of them was intentional, he became the first reliever in Sawx history to issue 5 walks and hit a batter while recording no more than 5 outs.
He Told Me To Walk This Way
Someone say intentional walk? Last week all the buzz was about Corey Seager drawing the four-finger salute from Joe Maddon with the bases loaded in the 4th inning. This week a chorus of boos rang through Comerica Park when Yankees manager Aaron Boone issued a free pass to Miguel Cabrera in the 8th on Thursday. In a vacuum the move made perfect sense and we wouldn't be talking about it; it's a 1-0 game with runners on second and third, so why let Miggy drive in two more runs with a hit?
Well, it's not a vacuum. Because that hit-- if Miggy had gotten it-- would have been number 3000. That's what all those boos were about, from 21,000 people who wanted to witness history. After all, only 32 others in baseball history have reached that milestone. Now, because of discrepancies in official records, especially for Cap Anson and Ty Cobb, we threw out anything before intentional walks became official in 1954. But Miggy is the only player ever to receive an IBB at any point while sitting on 2999 career hits. Dave Winfield and Hank Aaron both got one later in the game after connecting for #3000.
The Tiger faithful would have to wait yet another day for Miggy to become the 33rd on the list, because it rained on Friday. He wasted no time when play resumed on Saturday, dropping a 1st-inning single to right. The previous inductee into the club was Albert Pujols back on May 4, 2018. And the only others to get their 3000th career hits while playing for the Tigers are Ty Cobb and Al Kaline.
Saturday The 13th
So Miggy gets that 3000th hit in the 1st inning, and it's a fairly boring uneventful game after that, right? Right? Mmm, yeah, no. We told you we'd get back to you about Saturday, Tigers fans. Because Miggy came around to score when Spencer Torkelson, who may be his heir apparent at first base, hit a 3-run homer. Antonio Senzatela lasted 5 innings for the Rockies but gave up 5 runs and 10 hits, joining Tyler Matzek (2014) and Jeff Francis (2008) as the only Rockies pitchers to do that in Detroit. And then the bullpen got involved.
Ty Blach takes over for the 6th and allows five straight Tigers batters to reach with 2 outs-- including Miggy's 3001st career hit. Suddenly it's 9-0. Lucas Gilbreath gets to take one for the team in the 7th, and he also allows five straight Tigers to reach with 2 outs. And when Jonathan Schoop completes the "batting around" cycle with an RBI single, this thing has ballooned to 13-0. Veteran Jhoulys Chacin takes over and gets Detroit in order in the 8th, but this has now become a historic game for more than one reason. The Rockies had never been shut out by 13 runs or more in any road game in their history. It was also one shy of the Tigers' record for an interleague game, behind a 14-0 at Shea on June 30, 1997.
The combo of Black and Gilbreath was the third set of Rockies pitchers to give up 4+ runs while getting no more than 3 outs in the same road game. Josh Newman and Matt Herges did it in Philadelphia on May 26, 2008, while household names Bryan Rekar and Curt Leskanic did it in St Louis on September 1, 1996. And oh by the way, did we mention (yes we did) that because it rained on Friday, this 13-0 was the first game of a day/night doubleheader. The Tigers hadn't won the opener of any twinbill by 13 runs since defeating Cleveland on August 7, 1986.
The second game was not nearly as interesting, other than Connor Joe becoming the first player in Rockies history to hit a leadoff homer in Detroit (at either stadium). He was also the first player in the modern era to lead off the second game of a DH with a homer, after his team got shut out by 13 or more in the first game. And when you tack on that 21-0 Cubs score, Saturday was the first day with multiple shutouts of 13-0 or worse since April 7, 2013, by Boston and Cleveland.
Does it seem like it's always April in San Diego? No matter what the actual calendar says, they have no seasons and the weather always screams mid-April. Tommy Pham of the Reds sent a baseball screaming out of Petco Park in the 1st inning on Monday (that's April 18) for a quick 1-0 lead. Then Manny Machado answered it with a 2-run dinger in the bottom half. The only other Padres homer that flipped a lead in the 1st inning against the Reds (so, must be a home game where they're already losing) was by Fred Lynn on September 22, 1990.
Stop us if you've heard this one, but on Tuesday (April 19), Tommy Pham hit yet another 1st-inning homer. The only other Reds batters to hit two in the same season in San Diego are Dave Parker in 1985 and George Foster in 1977, and theirs were weeks apart in two different series.
So at some point, Manny Machado must have said, c'mon, you mean I gotta do this again? And he did. From the Padres' side, the only other batter to hit two lead-flipping homers in the 1st inning in the same season was Ryan Klesko in 2001, and he did it against different opponents. According to Baseball Reference, there's only been one other instance of the same players "trading" homers in the same inning in back-to-back games. It was July 24 and 25, 2000, when Tim Salmon of the Angels matched 4th-inning shots with Gabe Kapler of the Rangers. Those, however, did not also share the asterisk that all four homers took the lead.
And care to know the last (only other) time the Reds hit 1st-inning homers in back-to-back games at Petco? Those came off the bats of Joey Votto and Eugenio Suarez in 2019-- on April 18 and 19.
For his part, Eugenio Suarez was off hitting a 3-run homer for the Mariners in the 1st inning on Tuesday as they toppled the Rangers. Seattle hadn't collected 3 homers and a triple in a home game against Texas since September 25, 1998, in their final full season at the Kingdome.
April Showers
San Diego excepted, it tends to rain a lot in most parts of the country in April. That was especially true in the mid-Atlantic this week where Monday's slate of 12 games got reduced to nine. The newly-minted Cleveland Guardians did not have a big enough umbrella to guard against back-to-back rainouts on Monday and Tuesday. But the Mets and Nationals both made up for the weather with Tuesday doubleheaders, and it was only the second time ever that both teams swept a twinbill on the same day. The other came in the first year of the Nats/Expos franchise, and on a day when MLB always loved to intentionally schedule doubleheaders-- July 4, 1969.
At Citi Field, Francisco Lindor would figure prominently in both games, dropping a 1-out double in the 3rd that would end up leading to all 3 Mets runs. Meanwhile, since we mentioned the Nationals, the pitcher in the day game Tuesday was none other than Max Scherzer, who held the Giants to just 1 hit in 7 innings. Scherzer struck out at least 6 batters and got a win in each of his first three appearances with the Mets, joining Pedro Astacio (2002) as the only ones in team history to do that. The Giants' final total of 2 hits matched their lowest ever at Citi Field, the other such game being May 9, 2017, against Zack Wheeler.
In the night game, the teams battled to a 4-4 tie before Lindor's walkoff single in the 10th scored free runner Brandon Nimmo. The Mets hadn't walked off in extras against the Giants since May 8, 2010, when Henry Blanco hit a solo homer in the 11th. Lindor also became the first batter in Mets history to have a single, a double, a stolen base, and a walkoff RBI (any kind) in the same game. The Mets' last doubleheader sweep of the Giants? That was at Shea... on July 13, 1979.
Hit The Ground Running
If you thought the Mets might get through the week without doing something Mets-ian, Saturday gave us that little gift as well. They have by now moved on to playing the Diamondbacks, and losing a generally-unnotable 5-2 contest. The notable part is that Saturday's game gave us one of our favorite quirky plays not once, but twice. We've actually been asked by fans at live games, wait, how do you score that? (Do you know?) See if you can spot it.
Here's one. Hey Pavin, don't you know it's a party foul to knock over your Beer?
The Mets had not gotten mixed up in one of these since May 30, 2017, when Curtis Granderson plunked Lucas Duda. The last time the D'backs had it happen was May 2, 2015, at Dodger Stadium, and oh yeah, all that one did was end the game.
But we've tracked this little quirky occurrence all the way back to 2000 (we could go further, we just haven't yet), and Saturday was the first game in this century where it happened twice-- either to the same team or once for each.
(Rule: Dead ball, runners advance if forced. Scoring: Infield single for batter, putout goes to the closest fielder, we note it "HBB" (hit by batted ball).)
Texas Three-Step
There are a lot of quirky rules and scoring plays in this great game of ours. There are rules about "apparent fourth outs" and pitches lodging in the catcher's mask and the lights going out in the middle of play. But the old "HBB" play from above got us thinking. Has there ever been an HBB as part of a triple play?
The answer is no, and by rule, this can't happen, because the HBB only applies if the ball has not already been touched by a fielder. If the plunked runner is the first out then the ball is dead immediately, and no TP. If the ball has already been fielded to get the first or second out of the TP, then "ball hitting runner" does not apply, live ball, play on.
We mention all this because, and you might have missed it because it involves the AL West, the Rangers turned the first TP of 2022 on Wednesday night in Seattle. It happened in the 1st inning and was one of your "standard" triple play setups, runners on first and second and a line drive right at an infielder. Nate Lowe caught that, then went to Corey Seager at second, then back to Lowe to double off both runners.
In their history the Rangers/Senators have actually turned 10 triple plays, among the leaders in the Expansion Era (the Twins have 15, including, famously, the only instance of two in one game). Their last was in 2018 against the Angels. One of those others was also against the Mariners, on April 14, 2002, when Ruben Sierra got himself in a rundown. And while a triple play cannot involve a runner getting hit by a batted ball, it can be started by a strikeout. The Mariners found that out the last time they "hit" into one, Kc+CS26+OA62 (?!), on September 2, 2006.
Speaking of quirky scoring plays, Friend Of Kernels Jen Underwood threw us this nugget. Although it is becoming a bit tainted in recent years, there is still a rule about "catcher's interference", and it's something weird that we've tracked for years. The intent of the rule is to prevent catchers from reaching forward and interfering with the batter's swing, usually to get a split-second jump on throwing out a runner trying to steal. The reward is that the batter is given first base despite not actually hitting the ball, and so a few hitters in this age of dynamic oversized backswings, plus standing so far back in the batter's box, have been able to take advantage of this rule, even when there is no runner on base. It also trips up plenty of folks when balancing a boxscore (it's an E2 but no at-bat) and/or figuring out earned runs.
Anyway, the Nationals received a whopping three catcher's interference awards in the course of 6 days, two of them to Josh Bell-- one last Saturday against his former team, the Pirates, and again on Thursday with the bases loaded to score a run. In between, Nelson Cruz got one in that Tuesday doubleheader. In their previous 17 seasons as the Nationals, the Washington team had been gifted a total of four CI awards, and two of those were last year. They also had four total in their last eight years in Montréal. But as for 3 CI's in 6 days, that's happened only five other times in the past 50 years (and before the mid-1960s the leagues did not report it as an official statistic). The same franchise-- as the Expos-- is one of the others; Andre Thornton and Wayne Garrelts teamed up to garner three of them in July 1976. The Yankees are also two of them, doing so in August 1992 (Roberto Kelly, the king of CIs) and July 2016 (Jacoby Ellsbury, who replaced Kelly as king). The Brewers (April 2019) and Astros (April 2017) round out the list.
And since we're here, one more Nationals note. The Giants-- after getting dumped on by the Mets earlier in the week-- rounded out their weekend with a 12-3 beatdown against Washington, in which half of their runs came in the top of the 9th as Sam Clay and Steve Cishek became the first teammates in Nats/Expos history to each give up 3 earned runs and hit a batter while getting no more than 1 out. And the last time the Giants scored 12+ runs in a game in Washington? Well, that was "only" on April 27, 1898. New York beat the old NL Senators by a count of 20-5 in a "parody" of the game that was played "in a blizzard" and called after 7 innings.
Eleventh Heaven
Not only did it rain in Washington and New York early in the week, it rained even more in Cleveland. The Guardians had to cancel two games before playing a doubleheader with the White Sox on Wednesday. And the team from Chicago would have been more than happy to wait through another rainout.
Dallas Keuchel took the mound in the opener and almost got through the Cleveland lineup twice. (In 2022, he's expressly forbidden from ever facing a hitter for a third time, because Unwritten Rules.) So there were 17 Guardians batters to match up with Keuchel. He got three of them out. Pro tip: That's not good. The first two batters he faced both reached on errors, so not entirely his fault, but it was the 2nd inning when the wheels came off. Yet another error to start the inning and make most of this unearned. Four straight singles before a grand slam by Jose Ramirez. The last grand slam hit by Cleveland in a home game against the White Sox was Jason Kipnis's walkoff on September 19, 2018. But rather than stop the bleeding now, Keuchel got to stay out there for five more batters-- four singles and another reached-on-error. Altogether he faced 11 batters in the 2nd inning and didn't get any of them out.
If you've perused enough boxscores, you know that there is a special notation for when a pitcher starts an inning but doesn't retire a batter. In our personal scoresheets we just record the innings pitched as "1+". But in this one you will see the added line Keuchel pitched to 11 batters in the 2nd. Eleven. Which prompted some Friends Of Kernels to ask, has that ever happened before? And we're pretty sure the answer is no.
In the era of complete play-by-play on Baseball Reference, which dates to 1974, the highest number to appear on such a line is 9, by David Price in 2014 and Rick Rhoden in 1982. We found a game in 2006 where Luke Hudson of the Royals allowed 10 batters to reach to start the inning, but the 11th one made an out and thus deleted the special line.
And special line or not, how many White Sox pitchers have given up 10+ runs in a game while getting only 3 outs? That would be two-- Keuchel on Wednesday and Milt Gaston against the Senators on June 13, 1934.
The second game of that Wednesday doubleheader was a 2-1 affair, marking the first time Cleveland won the opener of a twinbill by 10+ runs, but the nightcap by only 1, since August 15, 1984, against Toronto.
Bottom Of The Bag
⚾ Jazz Chisholm, Saturday: First player in Marlins history to have 4 hits, 3 runs scored, 3 RBI, and 2 stolen bases in a game. Last for any team was Cavan Biggio of Toronto on September 17, 2019.
⚾ Christian Yelich, Monday: Third grand slam at The Park Formerly Known As Miller. Only other batter to hit three there (as home or visitor) is Ryan Braun.
⚾ Twins, Thursday: First time winning a 1-0 game on a sacrifice fly since August 14, 1974, in Cleveland (Glenn Borgmann hit the SF in the 7th).
⚾ Orioles, Wednesday: First 1-0 win over Oakland since June 10, 1978, on a 9th-inning double by Lee May.
⚾ Byron Buxton, Sunday: Second batter in Twins history to hit 2 homers but also strike out 3 times in the same game. Chili Davis did it against the Yankees on June 13, 1991.
⚾ Seiya Suzuki, Tuesday: Fifth Cubs batter in modern era to have a 3-walk game within his first 8 MLB appearances. Others: Kris Bryant (2015), Damon Berryhill (1987), Steve Swisher (1974), Toby Atwell (1952).
⚾ Mookie Betts, Friday: First Dodgers leadoff batter with 2 homers and 2 walks in a game since Davey Lopes at St Louis on June 1, 1979.
⚾ Freddie Freeman, Monday: First Dodgers batter to hit a 2-run homer as team's second batter of a game against the Braves since Franklin Stubbs, June 24, 1984.
⚾ Austin Nola, Saturday: Second-ever "sac-fly-off" for Padres against the Dodgres. Other was by Gary Sheffield on April 11, 1992.
⚾ Cesar Hernandez, Tuesday: First Nationals batter with a double and at least 1 RBI in both games of a doubleheader since Cristian Guzman vs Philadelphia, May 16, 2009.
⚾ George Springer, Wednesday: Second leadoff batter in Jays history to have a base hit, a sac fly, and a hit-by-pitch in the same game. Shannon Stewart did it against Seattle on August 11, 1998.
⚾ George Springer, Saturday: First Jays batter ever to hit a leadoff homer IN Houston. Had been the last remaining AL park in which Toronto had never hit one.
⚾ Yoshi Tsutsugo, Thursday: Pirates' first lead-flipping double in the 5th or later at Wrigley since Bobby Bonilla off Jamie Moyer on September 7, 1987.
⚾ Michael Kopech, Friday: First White Sox starter to allow 0 runs and strike out 7+ against Minnesota, but NOT get the win, since Wilbur Wood on September 1, 1971.
⚾ Jo Adell, Sunday: Angels' first 1st-inning grand slam since C.J. Cron hit one at Citi Field on May 21, 2017.
⚾ Roansy Contreras, Tuesday: Became second Pirates pitcher in live-ball era to allow 1 hit and strike out at least 5 in consecutive outings. Roy Face did it in 1960. (Contreras promptly got optioned to Indianapolis later in the week.)
⚾ Ty France, Saturday: Second player in Mariners history with 5 hits, 5 RBI, and 3 runs scored in a game. Mickey Brantley did it against Cleveland on September 14, 1987.
⚾ Angels, Wednesday: First game where they scored 6+ runs with all of them coming in the 1st inning since a 7-0 win in Milwaukee on June 19, 1977.
⚾ Michael King, Friday: First Yankees pitcher to record 8+ strikeouts in a relief appearance since... Michael King on July 3 of last year. First to do it twice for the Bronx Bombers since Joe Page in 1947.
⚾ Anthony Rizzo, Tuesday: First Yankees batter to have 3 walks and a stolen base in Detroit since Chad Curtis on July 6, 1999.
⚾ Anthony Rizzo, Wednesday: First Yankees batter to have a homer, a double, and a stolen base in Detroit since Paul O'Neill on July 15, 1998.
⚾ Bryce Elder, Sunday: First Braves pitcher to issue 5+ walks and get a loss in back-to-back games since Tom Glavine in April 1994.
⚾ Pablo Lopez, Thursday: Second Marlins pitcher ever to allow 0 runs and strike out 9+ against the Cardinals. Charlie Hough did it at the previous Busch Stadium on June 14, 1994.
⚾ Mariners, Sunday: First walkoff win against the Royals since August 28, 2004, when Randy Winn hit a 2-run homer in the 12th. Point of personal privilege, we were at this game.
At least one of the current Texas franchise's triple plays came in their Senators days, unassisted by Ron Hansen.
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