Posted in

Yankees-A’s epic game: A team throws 8 hitless innings … and gives up 13 runs

by diarioesporte••0

Did you hear about the team that threw eight hitless innings — and still gave up 13 runs? … Did you see that dude who scored a run without ever touching home plate? … And if you’re willing to believe that a relief pitcher can inherit four runners even though the infield only holds three bases, you’re thinking way more logically than the actual box scores.

Does all that seem weird enough to you — and also wild enough? If it does, you should again be grateful there’s such a thing as the Weird and Wild column. So let’s review another upside-down week, starting with the …

Lucky 13 of the week

It was 5:25 Weird and Wild Daylight Time on Sunday when my phone began to shake. I knew what that meant. It was no longer just another leisurely Sunday afternoon in my world. It was time for the Weird and Wild oddities team to spring into action.

“Can’t wait to see what you come up with on this Yankees 3rd inning,” my friend (and fellow wacky-nugget hunter) Reuben Frank, from NBC Sports Philadelphia, texted me.

Neither of us was anywhere near West Sacramento at that moment. But it was suddenly the only baseball-playing metropolis on Earth that we cared about. Possibly because the Yankees’ line score that day was on the road to looking like this:

0 0 13     0 0 0     0 0 0

It isn’t every day that a team puts up a lucky 13-spot in one inning … and then drops eight zeroes in the other innings. So did we have an official Weird and Wild kind of game/inning on our hands? Did we ever. So let’s investigate!

The Yankees just scored 13 runs in one inning? That. Happened. Then again, it’s not as if it’s never happened.

Heck, the last time the Yankees scored more runs in an inning than that, Babe Ruth was batting cleanup. That was as recently as 106 years ago, on July 6, 1920, when they put up 14 in the fifth against Braggo Roth’s 1920 Washington Nationals. But that isn’t even close to the Weird and Wild part of this game. So let’s keep rolling.

Did it once seem possible they might never make an out? It did. The Yankees actually scored 10 of those runs before they remembered to make an out in that inning. They also had 12 straight hitters reach base before they made an out. Seriously?

How many teams in the expansion era (since 1961) have had more hitters than that reach base to start any of the 98 gazillion innings played over the last 66 seasons? That would be zero, of course. And only Dustin Pedroia’s 2009 Red Sox and Steve Balboni’s 1986 Royals even made it to 12 in a row. Thanks to the Elias Sports Bureau for that knowledge.

But don’t touch that device of yours. This is only going to get weirder (and wilder).

It took 43 minutes for any Yankee to put a ball in play that wasn’t a hit? I am not making this up. Until the 75th and final pitch of that inning, the Yankees were somehow batting 1.000 when they put a ball in play. There were a couple of strikeouts in there, but they went 11 for their first 11 when the ball left the batter’s box.

So how weird (and wild) is that? According to Sportradar, there have been just eight other innings in the last 50 years where a team went 11 for its first 11 (or better) on balls in play. The record is 13-for-13, set by Troy Tulowitzki’s 2010 Rockies, in a madcap July 30 game at (where else?) pitcher-not-friendly Coors Field.

But would you believe we still haven’t even gotten to the Weirdest and Wildest part? That’s right. Onward!

The A’s threw eight hitless innings that day — and still gave up 13 runs? All right. This is where this game finally goes off the Weird and Wild rails.

• Yankees hitters in that third inning: 13 runs, 11 hits, 18 dudes got to hit

• Yankees hitters in all the other innings: zero runs, zero hits and A’s pitchers faced the minimum 24 hitters

Yes. Really. Much like my Athletic colleague — the way-too-curious author of the awesome Windup newsletter, Levi Weaver — we had a pretty standard research blitz going on until it came time to figure out how weird (and wild) something like that was.

A team throws eight hitless innings … and gives up 13 runs? That makes my head hurt. Possibly because that has never, ever happened in any other nine-inning game in history.

I took the extensive research done by other folks — the Elias Sports Bureau, MLB.com research legend Sarah Langs and Levi himself — and then started checking box scores to make sure I had this right. Here we go.

Complete list of all games in history in which a team pitched eight hitless innings and still gave up 13 runs:

 A’s vs. Yankees on May 31

End of list.

However …

It turned out that there was one other nine-inning game in history in which a team threw eight shutout (just not hitless) innings but still gave up 13 runs. And I remembered it well — because a Phillies team I spent a lot of time around went to Cincinnati on April 13, 2003, and put up this line:

0 0 0     13 0 0    000

Got it? That’s a 13-run fourth inning, sandwiched around eight zeroes. So I track down the pitcher who started that game for the Reds — friend of this column Ryan Dempster. He immediately called up the box score on his phone.

“Dude, I’m looking at this box score and I’m dying laughing,” he said. “This is so funny.”

Unlike those A’s, Dempster got the first two outs of that fourth inning without major damage. Then, well, stuff happened. Three walks, an intentional walk, a couple of hits. Next thing he knew, he’d been left in to face 11 hitters in that inning — and it was still rolling.

WEIRD AND WILD: “Can you describe what it’s like to be the pitcher when an inning like that is going on?”

DEMPSTER: “The hamster wheel is moving very fast.”

We don’t need to run through all the details of that game. But suffice it to say that when other people started looking at that 13-run Yankees inning, plus all the zeroes around it, and using words like “impossible,” that was not a word that you’d find rolling off Dempster’s tongue.

W&W: “So when that happened to you, when it happened to your team, did you think, ‘Well, we’ll never see a game like that again?’”

DEMPSTER: “I remember Don Gullett, who was my pitching coach at the time, literally chalked it up to something like that. He said: `Don’t worry. That’s not going to happen again.’”

Ha. So guess what did in fact just happen again? Baseball. What else?

W&W: “You know, baseball will happen — except sometimes it happens to you.”

DEMPSTER: “Yeah, it does. That should be a T-shirt.”

I would buy that shirt. He would buy that shirt. This column should actually market that shirt. Because it totally sums up the beauty of …

Baseball!

Special bonus note on that game

A’s starter J.T. Ginn took a no-hitter into the ninth against the Angels on May 18 — and lost. (Katelyn Mulcahy / Getty Images)

Hold on! This just in from loyal reader and Hall of Fame baseball scribe, John Lowe:

Yes, that A’s loss Sunday was one of a kind, all right. Except for one thing. If you look at this astutely enough, you might remember that for the A’s, it was actually two of a kind.

Don’t scoff. These A’s have now played two games, just in the last couple of weeks, in which they threw eight hitless innings in a nine-inning game but still lost. Seems hard, right? But not for them:

There was Sunday — You’re all up to speed on that game.

And there was May 18 — That was the day that A’s starter J.T. Ginn took a no-hitter and a 1-0 lead into the ninth. Whereupon, in a span of just three pitches, the no-hitter disappeared (on an Adam Frazier single) … and then the game disappeared (on a Zach Neto walk-off homer).

So that wasn’t good … except for its contribution to this Weird and Wild column.

Baseball Reference’s amazing Kenny Jackelen dug into this for us. On one hand, the A’s are the ninth team in the Baseball Reference data files to lose two nine-inning games in one season in which eight of each game’s innings featured zero hits allowed. On the other hand …

• They’re the first team to do that in over three decades, since Hipolito Pichardo’s 1993 Royals.

• They’re just the third team to do it in the last 50 years — joining those ’93 Royals and Charlie Hough’s 1986 Rangers.

• They’re the first team to lose two games like that in any calendar month.

• And they’re the first team to do this twice in a mere 13 days. The previous “record” belonged to Earl Yingling’s thirsty 1914 Reds, who lost two bizarre games like that in 22 days. Those losses aren’t worth explaining here, but check out the ninth inning of those Reds’ Oct. 2 loss to the Pirates sometime if you’re curious.

Were those 1914 Reds resourceful enough to throw eight hitless innings and still find a way to cough up 13 runs? Of course not. But they were special enough to get a mention in this column. Apparently. So you’re welcome.

The Shoh goes on

The incomparable Ohtani: Are you not entertained? (Christian Petersen / Getty Images)

I honestly don’t mean to flood this column with Shohei Ohtani wonderment every week. But here’s my problem. It never stops. So I can’t stop. Feel free to skip ahead if you’re over this, but I’ll never be over it, because …

Those creatures from the mysterious Planet Ohtanus are different from us!

So on Wednesday … Ohtani had an evening in Arizona where he did all this:

• Scored a run as a hitter and gave up none as a pitcher.

• Got three hits as a hitter and gave up two as a pitcher.

• Walked twice as a hitter and gave up one as a pitcher.

• Reached base five times as a hitter, but only three men reached base against him as a pitcher.

Who does that? Nobody does that. Only him. At least here in this lifetime. So I asked Sportradar to look back through the last 110 seasons. To find the only other starting pitcher in all that time who worked at least six innings and did what Ohtani did Wednesday, they had to travel back in time more than a century.

The only other starting pitcher they found was Dolf Luque — of the 1920 Reds. In a Sept. 3 game against the Cardinals, he spun six one-hit, no-run, no-walk innings on the mound. But he got two hits, walked once and scored three times as a hitter. So that was cool. But that was the whole list. Impressed yet? Excellent. But one more thing …

Also on Wednesday … Ohtani the hitter rejoined the .300/.400/.500 club. That’s because his slash line after that game soared all the way up to .301/.420/.521.

Meanwhile, Ohtani the pitcher is rocking a ridiculous 0.74 ERA — and he’s only a couple of innings short of qualifying for the ERA title. That seems good.

It’s time once again to remind you: He’s a real person.

So I got to wondering: Has any “pitcher” ever won an ERA title but also had a .300/.400/.500 season as a “hitter?” Fun question.

To make it more fun, I didn’t require them to do that in the same season — and I obviously didn’t require any of those pitchers to get 500 plate appearances. (I drew the line at 50.) Here’s what I found:

• The only pitcher who ever did that? Nobody special … only Walter Johnson. Won the ERA title in 1924. Went .300/.400/.500 the next year.

• The last pitcher to have a .300/.400/.500 season? At this point, I’ve dropped the whole “ERA title” thing. This was just a search for any pitcher who did what Ohtani is doing at the plate (with at least 50 plate appearances). And that answer was … Carl Scheib, of the 1951 Philadelphia A’s. Check out his wacky season:

As a batter — .396/.418/.623
As a pitcher — 1-12, 4.47 ERA

So why do the Ohtani nuggets just keep on coming in this Weird and Wild column. Because, as Carl Scheib becomes the latest to remind us, we’ve never seen anything like this.

This Week in Useless Info

Jacob deGrom won his 100th career game this week. (Dilip Vishwanat / Getty Images)

CENTURY CITY — The always-fascinating Jacob deGrom did a very cool thing this week. He became a 100-game winner — less than three weeks before his 38th birthday.

Now 100 wins at any age is a great feat, no matter how meaningful or meaningless you may think “the win” may be. But since we’re someday going to debate, Is Jacob deGrom a Hall of Famer? we’re not going to be able to avoid mentioning his wins total, right?

So here’s some totally useless info for you. It’s the age, at the time of their 100th win, of the last six Hall of Fame starters elected by the baseball writers.

PITCHER AGE

CC Sabathia  

27

Roy Halladay   

30

Mike Mussina

28

Randy Johnson

32

Pedro Martinez

27

John Smoltz 

29

You’ll notice there are no “37’s” in there!

JUAN PIERRE NEVER HAD A WEEK LIKE THIS — The Braves have been waiting all season for Ronald Acuña Jr. to have One of Those Weeks. Well, that finally happened.

Let’s roll back the clock to Thursday, May 28, and recap the daily Acuña Show:

Last Thursday — hits a slam
Friday — hits leadoff homer
Saturday — hits two more homers
Sunday — hits another leadoff homer

So I asked the great Katie Sharp of Baseball Reference to dig into this. Just to make it easier, I tossed out the Sunday game and asked: Has anyone else ever gone slam/leadoff bomb/two-homer game in three games in a row? She went back to 1898. And that answer is …

Of course not!

ARENADO’S “SIX”-PACK — It was the grand slam of the year. And the only reason it took so long to appear in this column is that sometimes, research is hard.

So let’s roll back our imaginary video reel to May 18, when Nolan Arenado stepped to the plate in the first inning of a Diamondbacks-Giants game and whacked the weirdest, wildest grand slam of the year.

OK, what’s so weird and wild about that, you ask? Here’s what: It was hit on only the sixth pitch thrown by Robbie Ray in that game.

Does that even seem possible? Well, it’s possible, all right. Ketel Marte singled on the second pitch of the game. The next two hitters reached on the first pitch. Arenado took ball one. And then … kaboom.

Many, many, many of you loyal readers wanted to know if this was some kind of record. Hey, me, too. Just keep in mind that the pitch-counting era goes back only to 1988 — and even then, we’re missing a few games. So we had some false results in our earlier searches. But now, here we go. Of all the games we know of, that answer is …

Yes! Arenado just hit the quickest slam in documented history. The previous record, according to Katie Sharp and the Baseball Reference files: Pitch No. 8, by Jermaine Dye (April 26, 2000) and Carlos Delgado (July 24, 1997).

WELCOME TO MEMORY LANE — One of my favorite things in baseball is the stuff that happens that makes you think of other stuff that once happened. And by that, I mean stuff like this …

Julio Rodríguez hit 10 home runs last month! What’s so cool about that? How ’bout this. It’s the first 10-homer calendar month by any Mariners center fielder since … yep … a man named Griffey (who had nine of those double-digit months).

Pete Alonso had a ninth-inning game-winner Saturday! The Orioles entered the ninth inning Saturday trailing the Blue Jays by four runs. One action-packed rally later, this happened.

So what’s the big deal about that? It’s Alonso’s first ninth-inning hit to give his team a lead since … yep … this.

Edmundo Sosa had a moment in L.A.! Finally, it was the eighth inning last Saturday at Dodger Stadium. The Phillies trailed the Dodgers, 3-2. Then Sosa, who hadn’t even started this game, had a swing of the bat he’ll always remember.

So how’d that long ball wind up in this column? Oh, just because it’s the first time the Phillies had entered the eighth inning trailing at Dodger Stadium, only to have a guy who didn’t start the game whomp a go-ahead homer, since … yessir … Matt Stairs did the most Matt Stairs thing ever, in Game 4 of the 2008 NLCS.

GIMME FIVE (AGAIN) – The old piggyback is clearly more beloved by your 2-year-old kid than by the Mariners’ pitching staff. But that’s not important now. What’s important is that we just witnessed a box score we haven’t seen in more than 40 years.

That’s the two “starting” pitchers the Mariners are piggybacking into the same rotation spot — Bryce Miller and Luis Castillo — dividing up a 10-inning win in two exactly equal chunks, of five innings apiece, in a 3-2 win over Arizona on Sunday.

I don’t know what you thought, but I thought: I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen that before.

That’s possibly because we haven’t seen any team win a 10-inning game like that — with just two pitchers working exactly five innings apiece — since April 16, 1982, a mere 44 years ago. Back then, Dave Schmidt and Danny Darwin did the honors for the Rangers.

More proof of a better life through piggybacks!

THE NAME OF THE GAME — I don’t know why stuff like this amuses me. But this note was born when my equally off-kilter Starkville co-host, Doug Glanville, sent me a photo this week from a Mets-Mariners game in Seattle.

So this was a series that brought us Young (Jared) and Young (Cole) hanging out at first base … and Emerson (Hancock) joining (Colt) Emerson in the same Seattle lineup … not to mention two different games in which Brooks Raley pitched and Luke Raley hit (just never against one another).

I hope Bo Bichette was thinking: Too bad the Mariners forgot to sign Bo Jackson!

NORTH SIDE STORY — Nearly 100 years ago, Jimmie Foxx homered for the A’s in Games 1 and 2 of the 1929 World Series at a ballpark that’s still standing. That, naturally, would be Wrigley Field.

It took a while, but the A’s are finally up to two regular-season home runs at Wrigley by first basemen not named Jimmie Foxx.

There was Tyler Soderstrom on Sept. 18, 2024. And then, on Tuesday, Nick Kurtz did this.

SPECIAL KKKKKKKKKK — You know what Kyle Harrison did this week? Pile up 10 strikeouts in the first four innings of his start against the Giants. You know who else is in the 10-4 K Club this season? That would be Harrison’s fellow rotation monster, Jacob Misiorowski. Shocker!

You know what I found myself wondering? How many teams have had two starters do that in the same season before? OK, then. Here are the six dominant duos who have pulled that off in the same year in the Statcast era (since 2015):

2026 Brewers — Miz and Harrison
2024 Giants — Blake Snell/Hayden Birdsong
2023 Tigers — Reese Olson/Sawyer Gipson-Long
2022 Astros — Framber Valdez/Cristian Javier
2018 Red Sox — Chris Sale/Eduardo Rodriguez
2017 Angels — Kelvim Escobar/Ervin Santana

 (Source: Sportradar)

HEY SIRI — The center fielder for the Angels is not one of those Siris who can tell you whether it’s going to rain tomorrow. But hey, there’s stuff that Jose Siri can do that the other Siri can’t. For instance …

Last Sunday in Tampa Bay … the Angels’ Siri did this.

That’s one grand slam, rescued from splattering somebody’s nacho dip. But then, for his next trick …

Monday back in Anaheim … Siri pulled off another fun grand-slam feat.

So how many guys have ever robbed a grand slam and then hit a grand slam in back-to-back games? According to Sports Info Solutions, which has tracked home run robberies since 2004, that would be precisely none … except for the Don’t Say Hey Kid, Jose Siri.

This Week in Strange But Trueness

The Giants exploded for 19 runs to win big on Sunday, then lost big on Monday. (Dustin Bradford / Getty Images)

PUTTIN’ ON THE HITS — You know what team had scored the fewest runs in MLB heading into Sunday? That would be Buster Posey’s San Francisco Giants.

You know what happened Sunday? Those same Giants fired up their grill and cooked up 19 runs in one game (at Coors Field, but whatever). And that’s somehow more runs than any team has scored in any game all season.

You know what that means? It means the team that has scored the most runs (in one game) is also the team that had scored the fewest runs (before that game). And that seemed kinda strange to me (but also 100 percent true).

So Baseball Reference’s Kenny Jackelen did that deep dive for us. He looked only at teams that had played at least 40 games in the season before their big run-scoring feast. And he reports this was as rare as we suspected it was.

Let’s play the what-if game. If those 19 runs turn out to be the most that any team scores in a game all year, then the Giants would become just the second NL/AL team since 1898 to pull off that cool trick after entering their big game with the fewest runs in baseball. The other team to do it: Virgil Stallcup’s 1949 Reds, with a 23-spot.

Other than that, just four other teams have ever even done what the Giants did — and put up the most runs in any game at the time. Those were Terrmel Sledge’s 2004 Expos, Pancho Herrera’s 1961 Phillies, Rabbit Warstler’s 1936 Braves and Frenchy Bordagaray’s 1936 Dodgers.

Is that a list any team would love to join, or what? But in a related development …

HELLO TOMORROW — There’s a funny thing I’ve noticed about baseball. No matter how many runs you score one game, you’re always required by the proper authorities to keep playing out the schedule. So here’s how that went for the 2026 Giants:

Sunday — beat the Rockies, 19-6
Monday — lose to the Brewers, 16-2

I could tell you that the 49ers never won one game by 13+ and lost the next game by 14+ all last season. But that’s the wrong sport. So what about in baseball?

Katie Sharp combed through the Baseball Reference/Retrosheet files and reports: Only one other team had done that (in that order) in the last 87 years.

That team was Josh Reddick’s 2019 Astros who, on the way to the World Series, actually had an even wilder swing of three games in September that went: 21-1 win, 15-0 win, 21-7 loss.

Before that, you’d have to go all the way back to Pinky Higgins’ 1939 Tigers: Won a 14-1 game against Cleveland and then lost a 22-2 game to the Yankees.

Beyond them, only three other teams since 1900 have done what those Giants did this week. So apparently, it’s harder to do than they made it look.

THE THIN RED LINE — There are lots of ways to win a baseball game. We don’t recommend trying to do it the way the Reds did in their nutty 4-3 triumph over Kansas City on Tuesday.

They got one hit over the first seven innings. But then … they scored in the eighth, ninth and 10th to win. Does that seem hard? Let’s go with yes.

According to Katie Sharp, only four other teams in the Baseball Reference/Retrosheet play-by-play database (mostly complete back to 1910) have won a game in which they got no more than one hit over the first seven innings, but then scored in the eighth, ninth and 10th.

• Last to do it: Juan Uribe’s White Sox on June 15, 2005.

• Last NL team to do it: Dave Kingman’s 1983 Mets (against the Reds) on May 6 at Shea Stadium.

But as our trusty Reds correspondent, C. Trent Rosecrans, reminds us, this particular win was even more unlikely than that — if only because the Reds had no actual base runners until after they’d already tied the game in the bottom of the ninth. (Their only hits before that were three solo homers.)

And they never had a hit that actually landed in the field of play until the final swing of the game, which turned into Blake Dunn’s walk-off single in the 10th. Baseball. You can’t make this stuff up.

SEVEN-UP, SEVEN-DOWN — Check out this line score from the Dodgers’ 9-1 win over the Phillies on Sunday. See if you notice what I noticed.

How often do you see a game in which a team gives up a run in seven straight innings but scores a run in none of those innings? I wanted to know exactly how often. So I asked my friends at Baseball Reference.

And the answer is, there had been only six other games like that in the previous 84 years. And if you want to travel even further back, into the 1930s, you’ll run across a game in which Lonny Frey’s 1935 Brooklyn Dodgers gave up a run to Pep Young’s ’35 Pirates in every inning while scoring in none of them.

Is it too bad the Pirates never got a chance to bat in the ninth since they were the home team? I’m pretty sure those Dodgers didn’t think so.

STUFF I CAN’T BELIEVE HAPPENED THIS WEEK — Baseball must be a beautiful game if all this stuff really happened:

The White Sox pulled off the old 3-6-3-6 trick! You’d have to journey back to 1972 to find another instance, before this White Sox magic trick Monday, of a team turning a 3-6-3-6 Not A Double Play! You should definitely watch this, no matter how many times you’ve seen it.

That’s two outs, both involving the first baseman firing to the shortstop and both at the same base (second). But when are two outs on the same play not a double play? When there’s a wild throw in the middle of it. Send your messages of complaint to Abner Doubleday!

A guy scored a run who never touched the plate! Ready for another video daily double? Watch the Dodgers’ Andy Pages slide home on this play. I think he was missing something.

Has he touched the plate yet? Not that we’ve noticed. But the rules of baseball don’t care about that — all because the Phillies challenged whether he was tagged before they could get around to the touched-home-plate part. Baseball is so goofy sometimes.

Buddy Kennedy got to throw 39 pitches! It was 12-2 in the eighth inning Monday night when the Giants waved for their 22nd pitcher of this season. So what’s so Strange But True about that? It was that the dude they waved for was this guy.

That’s Buddy Kennedy, friends. It’s his 10th professional season. He’d never thrown a pitch in any of them. It was his first game ever for the Giants. So that means he’s a position player who got to throw a pitch — wait, make that 39 pitches — for the Giants before he ever saw a pitch, in his actual line of work, at home plate.

Baseball (in 2026)! It’s the best.



Source link

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *