2021 MLB Thread

[OB3 3629]

Not really game related but THIS IS BASEBALL MOTHERFUCKERS

[MC Fresh Breath 4074]

nm

Edited May 13, 2021 by MC Fresh Breath

[Helobious 9464]

Damn that was solid. Directly to sleep. 

[Guest Lobo]

He didn't even have his weight set on the proper foot either (kinda hard to do in those narrow aisles).  Man knows how to handle himself.  Wasn't even phased by the eventual onslaught of brawlers.  

I've gotten into a skirmish in front of my dad.  And I've gotten into a skirmish at a ballpark.  But I would not wanna get my ass knocked out in front of my dad at the ballpark.  Bridge too far for my family.  That's like our church.  

Anyway, big respect for the Padres enforcer though.  

Edited May 13, 2021 by Lobo

[Vic Mackey 47101]

What a punch to say the least. About as effective as you can be. Why did that Rockies fan not do anything to someone impeding in his space? Put your hands up or something. You know what's coming. Unless he thought the guy was walking up to jaw with him. And lmao at those dorks trying to jump on him from behind and did absolutely nothing. No doubt that Rockies fan was talking shit all game and both of them going at it verbally. 

[Beau Vine 54339]

1 hour ago, Helobious said:

Damn that was solid. Directly to sleep. 

Easy to get hard hits at Coors Field altitude.  When you park-adjust that, it was just a love tap.

[Guadaloopy 11002]

Slam Diego

[Beau Vine 54339]

Remember when the Royals had the best record in baseball?  Like, a week and a half ago?

[Beau Vine 54339]

Who celebrates better?

 

[henrygandorf 29194]

 

[Helobious 9464]

2 hours ago, Vic Mackey said:

What a punch to say the least. About as effective as you can be. Why did that Rockies fan not do anything to someone impeding in his space? Put your hands up or something. You know what's coming. Unless he thought the guy was walking up to jaw with him. And lmao at those dorks trying to jump on him from behind and did absolutely nothing. No doubt that Rockies fan was talking shit all game and both of them going at it verbally. 

Some people have never been in a fight before and it shows. Anyone gets in your face like that and you have to assume an attack is coming, and work from there. Padres guy got the punch off quick but he did telegraph it beforehand and left himself wide open to any kind of counter. That was a pretty sick sidearm punch though. Rockies guy probably needs a new jaw.

[Helobious 9464]

New angle. Talk about getting the shit punched out of you, jesus.

 

[WBT 20649]

Stark's new one is pretty good

Spoiler

 

Stark: Weird and Wild, the Ohtani is Loose Edition

By Jayson Stark 4h ago 28 

So what did you miss in the latest, greatest week of baseball? Oh, only 13 walks in one (minor-league) inning … and a guy who somehow scored two runs in the middle of a sombrero … and a comeback win that was so unprecedented, we’re calling it impossible.

We’ll get to all that in this week’s edition of the Weird and Wild column. But how could we not begin with…

1. The Greatest Shoh on Earth

Once upon a time, I sat in the seats of Tiger Stadium with a fan I’d just met. He pointed at a patch of grass in right field and said: “See that spot out there? I saw Babe Ruth standing right there.” It gave me goosebumps in the moment. I still have them now, just typing this paragraph. And then …

In the eighth inning Tuesday at Minute Maid Park, I watched another man trot out to right field and felt those same goosebumps.

Granted, I watched this one on TV, and it wasn’t quite the same deal. But when Angels manager Joe Maddon directed Shohei Ohtani toward right field that night – after he’d just pitched seven innings, striking out 10 – I knew exactly what those goosebumps were all about.

This dude is larger than life. That’s what. You watch him and you think: What is happening? He pitches seven … he punches out 10 … and then, ho-hum, he spends the rest of the game in the outfield? And we’re watching this go down in the same world we live in? Really?

“I don’t think anybody knows what this guy’s ultimate limits will be,” the greatest Angels right fielder of them all, Tim Salmon, told the Weird and Wild column Thursday, after watching what we watched. “I mean, that was pretty amazing. He went out and played right field. And it was like, `Right field? What?’”

Yessir. What? If there are three words that sum up the magic of Shohei Ohtani, it feels like those three words should be: He did what? So even though Maddon actually had foreshadowed the whole thing to me and Doug Glanville on this week’s Starkville, this still felt like a whole new chapter for the Ohtani He Did What files.

So now that my pulse rate is back to normal and we’ve had a couple of days to digest this, let’s take a look at Ohtani’s latest Ruthian moment. And what do you say we let Tim Salmon, now part of the Bally Sports West pregame/postgame crew, put it in perspective for us along the way?

THE 10-9 CLUB

Ten strikeouts – then a trip to the “9” portion of your scorecard (right field)? Was that as incredible as it sounds? Correct answer: Of course it was! Because according to our amigos at STATS Perform, only one other man in modern history had ever piled up double digits on the mound and also played right field in the same game.

But what happened that day – Sept. 28, 1952 – had pretty much nothing in common with what happened this day. In that game, Harvey Haddix started for the Cardinals. And walked the leadoff hitter. And then headed for right field – with nobody out in the first inning – so (take a deep breath) Stan Musial could come in and pitch for the only time in his career.

Hold on. What? Right. It was all because Frank Baumholtz was coming up for the Cubs. And Musial was battling Baumholtz for the batting title. So Musial’s manager, Eddie Stanky, thought it would be cool for Stan the Man to battle him literally. We are not making this up.

So Musial pitched to Baumholtz, who got so into the spirit of it, he decided to bat right-handed for the first and last time. Musial threw one pitch. Baumholtz bounced it to third, where third baseman Solly Hemus clanked it for an error. Then back went Musial to the outfield. And Haddix returned to the mound – and struck out 11.

But unlike that sideshow, Ohtani was a pitcher on a mission, emptying the tank for seven innings and then moving to right. So that wasn’t the same thing at all. Got it? Tim Salmon got it.

Weird and Wild: Do you think you could have pitched seven innings then gone out to play right field? 

Salmon: (laughing) I did in high school….

Weird and Wild: Can you imagine yourself striking out 10 hitters in the big leagues, and then going out to play right field?

Salmon: How about striking out one guy in the big leagues. Especially the Houston Astros. This wasn’t just like some bottom-of-the rung-team. This is the Houston Astros – in Houston. Wow.

THE FINISH WHAT YOU START CLUB

But let’s remember now, that this was no Stan Musial one-batter stunt. Shohei Ohtani pitched seven innings in this game – and then didn’t just spend 30 seconds in the outfield. He finished the game in the outfield. Once again, we’ve seen almost nothing like this. Ever.

STATS did find seven other occasions in the live-ball era when a player started a game on the mound and finished it at any other position. But it found only one other man who went at least seven innings on the mound and then completed that game by hanging out at an actual position in the field for an inning or more. Once again, though, what other dude did bore very little resemblance to what Ohtani did.

That’s because that other man was Mark Koenig, of Liz Funk’s 1930 Tigers. And on one hand, he also put up a big 10-spot in his outing on the mound. But on the other, it was a 10-run spot, not a 10-K spot. Nevertheless, the Tigers kept him in the game, where he made two more outs at the plate. So that went well.

As for the rest of that list STATS dug up, only two other players on it even went at least five innings and then stuck around to finish the game elsewhere. You’ve heard of them.

BABE RUTH! Here’s a shocker. Ruth actually wound up as the winning pitcher in this game against the Tigers on June 13, 1921. Spun five sparkling innings on the mound. Spent the last four innings in center. Also hit two homers and reached base four times. #Legend

CATFISH HUNTER! Apparently, this is a Hall of Famer kind of thing, because Cafish went the first 8 2/3 of a win over the Tigers on June 18, 1967. Then his manager, Alvin Dark, pointed him over to first base and brought in a left-handed reliever (Tony Pierce) to whiff Gates Brown for the final out.

But other than a 1920 Ruth game in which the Babe spent four innings on the mound and five in right field, everyone else who started a game on the mound and finished it somewhere else in the field did it as basically a gimmick. Ohtani, on the other hand, is literally changing the world, in a Ruthian kind of way. Which brings us to…

THE BAMBINO CLUB

So how about this cool record Ohtani tied Tuesday (sort of)? He’s now up to 40 strikeouts this season as a pitcher. But he’s also he’s tied for the league lead in homers as a hitter. And who the hell does that?

Well, in the history of baseball, only one man has ever done that (led his league in homers as a hitter, piled up 40+ K’s as a pitcher). Guess who?

Yep. In 1918, that Babe Ruth person tied for the league lead in homers in his part-time hitter job, but also struck out 40 on the mound in his occasional pitcher job. That’s a record that seemed destined never to be broken – until Ohtani caught the Babe in punchouts in Houston. Of course, now Ohtani has to finish the deal by also leading the league in home runs. But why would we bet against that?

So here it comes, the list of every home run champ in history who even struck out as many hitters that season as Ohtani just whiffed in this one game (10):

Most strikeouts, also led league in HR

PLAYER	YEAR	KS
Babe Ruth	1918	40
Babe Ruth	1919	30
Jimmy Ryan	1888	11

Weird and Wild: The only guy in history to lead his league in homers and strike out 40 as a pitcher was the Babe. So what do you think? Can Ohtani do this? 

Salmon: I wasn’t around to watch the Babe play. But again, this is mythological, almost. I mean, you might be talking about Zeus. You might as well be talking about these things. Because Babe Ruth is mystical… and you’re putting Otani in that category. Not from a projection standpoint, either. He’s actually doing it. And that’s the craziness about this – is that we’re actually seeing this happen.

MORE SHOH TIME!

Finally, it’s time for our weekly refresher course to remind one and all how un-be-frigging-lievable it is that there’s a real human running around our planet, doing the stuff Ohtani is doing.

He’s averaging 14.0 K’s per 9 innings! That’s more than Shane Bieber, Tyler Glasnow, Gerrit Cole, Trevor Bauer or Max Scherzer.

He’s gotten 21 extra-base hits! That’s more than anyone in the American League. But meanwhile on the mound, he has only allowed two extra-base hits! That’s the fewest of any pitcher in baseball who has pitched as many innings as he has. This is happening. In real life.

He has a 207 ERA+! That’s better than Scherzer, Glasnow or Bauer.

He has a 139 OPS+! That’s better than Mookie Betts, Juan Soto or Nolan Arenado.

He’s slugging .574! Which is higher than Vladdy Guerrero Jr., Giancarlo Stanton or José Ramírez. And it’s almost 400 points higher than the hitters who have to face him. Those poor people are slugging .195. And can we mention again that he’s a real person?

Weird and Wild: So are we sure he’s a real person? Are we sure he’s not some Marvel superhero character, where they just drew him up and he came to life?

Salmon: Well, you know, he does kind of fit that mold. I mean, even his appearance. He kind of looks like someone that Hollywood would design. 

Weird and Wild: OK, one more thing. I’m trying to figure out what he can do next. Here is my scenario. How about: Pitch, throw a no hitter – while hitting four homeruns. Then hosts the postgame show – in two languages. And then maybe saves the planet from climate change or aliens or something? Sound plausible?

Salmon: Well, you’re asking him to do something nobody imagined could be done anyway. So why not? It’s kind of like Christmas. Hey, while I’m putting together my wish list, I might as well go over the top. So yeah. Why not?

2.  The Mazeika Runner

A week into his big-league career, Mets rookie Patrick Mazeika still doesn’t have a hit. Ah, but he does have this.

And also this.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is pretty much the Weirdest and Wildest start to a career ever. If only because…

Two walk-off RBIs before his first hit? You know how hard that is to do? So hard, according to STATS, that only one man has ever done it, since RBIs became an official stat in 1920. And that man is … Patrick Mazeika.

Three RBIs of any kind before his first hit? Mazeika has done that, too. He’s the first to perform this wild trick, STATS reports, since Joe Brovia – for the 1955 Reds (who, we regret to report, then drove in one more run over the rest of his career).

What Patrick Mazeika has done that Mike Piazza never did? Here are five famous Mets (among many) who never found a way to jam two walk-off RBIs of any variety into the same season: Mike Piazza, Darryl Strawberry, Keith Hernandez, Howard Johnson and Ed Kranepool. But Patrick Mazeika already has two … in a week … and didn’t even need to get a hit? You can’t make this stuff up.

What Patrick Mazeika has done that Bonds, Griffey and Pujols never did? The walk-off fielder’s choice – with no outs recorded, by the way – is pretty much the ultimate Weird and Wild way to end any game, don’t you think? Here’s all the proof we need to make that case.

Here, courtesy of STATS, are the five men with the most RBIs over the last 50 years. Check out how many walk-off fielder’s choices they had:

HITTER	CAREER RBI	WALK-OFF FC
Albert Pujols	2,112	0
Alex Rodriguez	2,086	0
Barry Bonds	1,996	0
Eddie Murray	1,917	0
Ken Griffey Jr.	1,836	0
TOTAL	9,947	0
…	…	…
Patrick Mazeika	3	2

Well, you know what this is all about, don’t you?

Baseball!

3. Down at the Funny Farm

I live 20 minutes from a minor-league ballpark. So here was the best sight I laid eyes on all week: The ballpark sign that said: “GAME TONIGHT.”

Woohoo. The minor leagues are back in business. And already, they’ve provided some serious wackiness. How ’bout this!

13 WALKS IN AN INNING! This was an actual thing that happened in a Double A Biloxi-Birmingham game last Friday. This was how the top of the sixth inning went, with Biloxi batting:

• The almost-normal portion of the inning went walk, walk, strikeout, walk, walk, two-run single, sac fly.

• Then the totally off-the-rails portion went walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, hit batter, walk, walk, walk.

Whew! That’s 10 straight hitters reaching base – on nine walks, one hit batter … and zero hits. In fact, in the inning, 15 batters reached base – on one hit!

FUN FACT: In 2013, Clayton Kershaw faced 544 hitters – and issued 11 walks all season. And the Birmingham Barons just issued 13 walks in one inning.

A TEAM SCORED 78 RUNS IN ONE SERIES! And now another thing that happened, in actual life. In what used to be the Florida State League, the Tampa Tarpons and Dunedin Blue Jays opened the season with a six-game series in Tampa. Here come the scores of those games:

Tampa 11, Dunedin 7
Tampa 19, Dunedin 9
Tampa 10, Dunedin 6
Tampa 25, Dunedin 10
Tampa 12, Dunedin 11
Dunedin 4, Tampa 1

 So Dunedin scored 43 runs in the first five games, an average of 8.6 runs a game – and got outscored by 34 – but then scored four times in the sixth game … and won.

And Tampa came to bat in 40 half-innings in those first five games – and scored in 26 of them. There are a million more like this, but let’s get to the …

FUN FACT: Yes, there was a 25-10 game! Featuring 35 runs, 18 walks, eight wild pitches, two balks, a hit batter and zero one-run innings by either team. There was a 25-10 game in the NFL as recently as Week 6, 2007 (Panthers 25, Cardinals 10, with Vinny Testaverde throwing for a score). But there has never been a 25-10 game in Major League Baseball. Closest call: Giants 25, Reds 13, on June 9, 1901. Winning pitcher Bill Phyle twirled an 18-hitter!

4.  This Week in Useless Info

FULL HOUSER – Back on April 27, sweet-swinging Brewers pitcher Adrian Houser unloaded on the Marlins’ Daniel Castano for his first career homer. Then along came last Saturday, and Adrian Houser did this.

So that’s two home runs in a week and a half off the same pitcher – and they don’t even play in the same division? Here’s how Weird and Wild that is.

• The division-play era is now in its 53rd season. How many other pitchers have launched two homers in one season against a pitcher outside their own division? That, says STATS, would be none!

• Bonus Weird and Wild classic: In fact, Houser is the first pitcher to do this twice in his career in over 40 years, since the Phillies’ Larry Christensen went deep twice off the Astros’ Joe Niekro, in 1977 and 1980. Who knew!

WALKING THE WALK(OFF) – Kyle Schwarber’s first home run for the Nationals? A walk-off special April 16 against the Diamondbacks. Kyle Schwarber’s second home run for the Nationals? Another walk-off, against the Marlins, on April 30. But then, last Sunday, Schwarber had to mess up his awesome walk-off streak by doing this.

That blew his quest to become the first man ever to start life with a new team with three walk-off homers. But it did make him the fifth in history to hit two walk-offs before he hit any non-walk-offs. How about this funky list.

 

PLAYER	HR NO. 1	HR NO. 2
Kirby Higbe, PIT	Sept. 11, 1947	Aug. 27, 1948
Daryl Spencer, LA	June 3, 1961	June 10, 1961
Jerome Walton, CIN	June 5, 1994	May 6, 1995
Charlie Culberson, ATL	May 28, 2018	June 3, 2018
Kyle Schwarber, WAS	April 16, 2021	April 30, 2021

(Source: STATS Perform)

 

39 STEPS – Here at Weird and Wild World HQ, we hope Adam Wainwright never retires. Last Sunday, two starts after going nine innings against the Phillies, he went 8 1/3 against the Rockies. Which got us to wondering:

How many 39-year-olds (or older) have had two starts in the same season in which they got at least one out in the ninth? Here’s the whole list from the last 15 seasons:

2013 – Bartolo Colon (the impossible has happened!)
2015 – R.A. Dickey (flutterball king) – 3 times!
2021 – Adam Wainwright (officially ageless!)

THE BIGGIO BANG THEORY – Loved this little entry in the Blue Jays-Astros box score last Saturday:

HR: Biggio (3)

And what did we love about it? First home run by a Biggio in Houston since…Aug. 21, 2007, when Craig (Father of Cavan) Biggio hit a leadoff bomb against Joel Hanrahan.

DON’T STOP RUNNING TILL THEY TAG YOU – You know what’s really hard? Scoring from first base on an infield single! But we just saw Gleyber Torres do exactly that against the Astros. Check it out. It’s amazing.

So how rare is it to score all the way from first on a ground ball that never gets beyond the infielders – and there are no errors, by anybody, on the play? According to the incredible folks at Sports Info Solutions, who track this better than anyone, it’s only the second time in the last 10 years that any runner scored from first on a ground ball that met all those other conditions we just spelled out. This was July 3, 2017, Orlando Arcia against the Orioles. It, too, is a classic!

IT’S A TWO-SCORE GAME – And now more useless stuff that certain off-kilter people notice only because they write down the score of every game in a little notebook:

May 10: Reds 14, Pirates 1
April 6: Reds 14, Pirates 1

• Last team to win two 14-1 games against the same team in the same year: Zaza Harvey’s 1901 White Sox, over Jiggs Donahue’s original Milwaukee Brewers.

• All other times in the last 121 seasons the Reds have scored exactly 14 runs twice against the Pirates: That would be none, of course.

• Times in the last 37 seasons the Bengals have scored exactly 14 against the Steelers: Precisely once – in Weeks 7 and 11 of the 2017 season.

OK, we’re done now. Thanks for indulging us. Let’s move on.

BUT SPEAKING OF 14 – We had two different 14-pitch at-bats in Tuesday’s Nationals-Phillies game, in back-to-back innings! Jean Segura took 14 pitches to line out for the Phillies in the sixth inning. Then Trea Turner ground through a 14-pitch walk for the Nats in the seventh.

Last NL game in which two different hitters had a PA that long: Mets-Pirates, on Sept. 17, 2001 – Desi Relaford (19 pitches!) for the Mets in the first, Kevin Young (15 pitches) for the Pirates in the ninth. (Courtesy of our friends at Sportradar.)

But also… we’d be remiss not to mention that in the interim, on April 20, 2002, the Brewers’ Jeffrey Hammonds had two 14-pitch at-bats himself in a game against the Cardinals, in the first and second innings. Because, well …

Baseball!

5. This Week in Strange But Trueness

IT’S NEVER OVER TILL, AW, WHATEVER – The Braves won a game last Saturday that couldn’t be won. Is that a little strong, considering they somehow won it anyway? I don’t think so. Consider all this.

They played baseball against their friends from Philadelphia for 4 hours, 47 minutes, in a game in which 406 pitches were thrown. And they didn’t lead for a single one of those minutes or a single one of those pitches until the winning run crossed the plate in the 287th minute.

They were down two runs with two outs and nobody on in the ninth. They trailed again (by one run) in the 11th. And they found themselves behind again – by three runs – in the 12th … And they won!

The amazing STATS research crew did find two other teams in the modern era that won games in which they trailed by at least two runs in the ninth and at least three runs in the 12th or later. (The White Sox did that in the fabled 25-inning game on May 8, 1984 … and the Yankees dd it in a wacky 12-inning game against the Padres on June 13, 2004.) But …

How many other teams in modern history have ever won a game like that after also trailing in any other extra inning? That answer would be: Not a one.

ALTERNATIVE MATH – But wait. You think we’re done with that game? Heck, no. It’s an all-timer, right down to your losing pitcher, Enyel de los Santos. He did something never before accomplished by any losing pitcher in baseball history!

Runs allowed: 4
Batters faced: 3

That used to be really challenging to do. But now? Repeat after me: Ghost runner!

THE WEIRDEST SOMBRERO EVER – Sorry. There’s still more from that series – because also, you had this bizarre box-score entry last Friday from the Phillies’ Rhys Hoskins:

0-for-4, with 4 strikeouts – and 2 runs scored!

Whaaaat? So how’d that happen? Here we go. Made it to first on a strikeout/passed ball (part of a wild first inning in which Hoskins struck out twice but still scored a run), then came around to score … Walked in the sixth, came around to score again.

All right. So how often have we ever seen that goofy line? Exactly one other time since 1901, according to baseball-reference’s Stathead. And that was way back on…

Sept. 1, 1947 – Frank Baumholtz (yep, his second mention in this column!) did this, too, in a game started by the Cubs’ Ox Miller, in which Baumholtz was responsible for four of the Reds’ seven strikeouts but also two of their seven walks. Unreal.

NO-OUTER/NO-HITTER CLUB – Back in September 2019, Wade (No-Hit) Miley spun off these two train wrecks, in back-to-back starts for the Astros:

Sept. 5: 0 IP, 5 H, 5 R, 5 ER, 1 BB, 0 K
Sept. 10: 1/3 IP, 7 H, 7 R, 7 ER, 1 BB, 0 K 

That’s two starts, 12 runs and a total of one out. And then, 15 starts (and two teams) later, last Friday against the Indians, Wade Miley did this for the mighty Reds:

9 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 8 K

So who does that? Who has back-to-back starts in which he can’t escape the first inning and then turns around and throws a no-hitter? Wade Miley does that. But also …

He’s not alone! Astonishingly enough, we found two other pitchers in the last 70 years who threw a complete-game, Fay Vincent-approved no-hitter but also made back-to-back starts in some other stretch in which they didn’t make it through the first:

PITCHER	NO-HITTER	2 GS < 1P
Rick Wise	June 23, 1971	Sept. 7 and 17, 1964
Dock Ellis	June 12, 1970	Aug. 8 and 13, 1975

(One more Weird and Wild not-quite-the-same-thing footnote that I couldn’t resist: If I were going to count “streaks” that carried over two seasons, I could also add Sandy Koufax to this list. He ran into first-inning KO’s in his last start in 1959 and his first start in 1960 – but we’re not counting that. Sorry, Sandy!)

TRIPLE THREAT – There once was a time when Ken Rosenthal and I were pretty much obsessed with the five-year quest of Orioles legend Sam Horn to hit one stinking triple. It got so out of hand, in fact, that I can still recall Ken calling me as Horn was rounding second on the way to Career Triple No. 1 (and No. Last), on May 5, 1992 – off Nolan Ryan!

So obviously, hitting triples is hard, right? Well, not if you watched the Orioles’ Cedric Mullins do this Monday.

Yessiree, that’s a pop-up to short that became a shift-aided triple. And you don’t see that much. In fact, in the history of reliable public play-by-play data, there have been only seven other pop-up triples to the shortstop, according to baseball-reference.  And the last one was eight years ago – a Jay Bruce trifecta on a pop-up that Pete Kozma forgot to reel in, on May 1, 2013. Where was Pete Kozma when Sam Horn needed him!

WE’RE ALL MIXED UP – Finally, how are we supposed to watch baseball in the opening weeks of any season and conclude that anything makes sense? I want you to think about this:

• The longest winning streak of the year– nine in a row, by the A’s – came from a team that had the worst record in the whole sport when that streak began.

• And now the longest losing streak of the year– 11 in a row (and counting) by the Royals – came from a team that had the best record in the whole sport when that streak began.

Have a good explanation for that? I do:

Baseball!

 

[MC Fresh Breath 4074]

STEALING SIGNS!

 

 

[Guadaloopy 11002]

1 hour ago, WBT said:

Stark's new one is pretty good

  Hide contents

 

Stark: Weird and Wild, the Ohtani is Loose Edition

By Jayson Stark 4h ago 28 

So what did you miss in the latest, greatest week of baseball? Oh, only 13 walks in one (minor-league) inning … and a guy who somehow scored two runs in the middle of a sombrero … and a comeback win that was so unprecedented, we’re calling it impossible.

We’ll get to all that in this week’s edition of the Weird and Wild column. But how could we not begin with…

1. The Greatest Shoh on Earth

Once upon a time, I sat in the seats of Tiger Stadium with a fan I’d just met. He pointed at a patch of grass in right field and said: “See that spot out there? I saw Babe Ruth standing right there.” It gave me goosebumps in the moment. I still have them now, just typing this paragraph. And then …

In the eighth inning Tuesday at Minute Maid Park, I watched another man trot out to right field and felt those same goosebumps.

Granted, I watched this one on TV, and it wasn’t quite the same deal. But when Angels manager Joe Maddon directed Shohei Ohtani toward right field that night – after he’d just pitched seven innings, striking out 10 – I knew exactly what those goosebumps were all about.

This dude is larger than life. That’s what. You watch him and you think: What is happening? He pitches seven … he punches out 10 … and then, ho-hum, he spends the rest of the game in the outfield? And we’re watching this go down in the same world we live in? Really?

“I don’t think anybody knows what this guy’s ultimate limits will be,” the greatest Angels right fielder of them all, Tim Salmon, told the Weird and Wild column Thursday, after watching what we watched. “I mean, that was pretty amazing. He went out and played right field. And it was like, `Right field? What?’”

Yessir. What? If there are three words that sum up the magic of Shohei Ohtani, it feels like those three words should be: He did what? So even though Maddon actually had foreshadowed the whole thing to me and Doug Glanville on this week’s Starkville, this still felt like a whole new chapter for the Ohtani He Did What files.

So now that my pulse rate is back to normal and we’ve had a couple of days to digest this, let’s take a look at Ohtani’s latest Ruthian moment. And what do you say we let Tim Salmon, now part of the Bally Sports West pregame/postgame crew, put it in perspective for us along the way?

THE 10-9 CLUB

Ten strikeouts – then a trip to the “9” portion of your scorecard (right field)? Was that as incredible as it sounds? Correct answer: Of course it was! Because according to our amigos at STATS Perform, only one other man in modern history had ever piled up double digits on the mound and also played right field in the same game.

But what happened that day – Sept. 28, 1952 – had pretty much nothing in common with what happened this day. In that game, Harvey Haddix started for the Cardinals. And walked the leadoff hitter. And then headed for right field – with nobody out in the first inning – so (take a deep breath) Stan Musial could come in and pitch for the only time in his career.

Hold on. What? Right. It was all because Frank Baumholtz was coming up for the Cubs. And Musial was battling Baumholtz for the batting title. So Musial’s manager, Eddie Stanky, thought it would be cool for Stan the Man to battle him literally. We are not making this up.

So Musial pitched to Baumholtz, who got so into the spirit of it, he decided to bat right-handed for the first and last time. Musial threw one pitch. Baumholtz bounced it to third, where third baseman Solly Hemus clanked it for an error. Then back went Musial to the outfield. And Haddix returned to the mound – and struck out 11.

But unlike that sideshow, Ohtani was a pitcher on a mission, emptying the tank for seven innings and then moving to right. So that wasn’t the same thing at all. Got it? Tim Salmon got it.

Weird and Wild: Do you think you could have pitched seven innings then gone out to play right field? 

Salmon: (laughing) I did in high school….

Weird and Wild: Can you imagine yourself striking out 10 hitters in the big leagues, and then going out to play right field?

Salmon: How about striking out one guy in the big leagues. Especially the Houston Astros. This wasn’t just like some bottom-of-the rung-team. This is the Houston Astros – in Houston. Wow.

THE FINISH WHAT YOU START CLUB

But let’s remember now, that this was no Stan Musial one-batter stunt. Shohei Ohtani pitched seven innings in this game – and then didn’t just spend 30 seconds in the outfield. He finished the game in the outfield. Once again, we’ve seen almost nothing like this. Ever.

STATS did find seven other occasions in the live-ball era when a player started a game on the mound and finished it at any other position. But it found only one other man who went at least seven innings on the mound and then completed that game by hanging out at an actual position in the field for an inning or more. Once again, though, what other dude did bore very little resemblance to what Ohtani did.

That’s because that other man was Mark Koenig, of Liz Funk’s 1930 Tigers. And on one hand, he also put up a big 10-spot in his outing on the mound. But on the other, it was a 10-run spot, not a 10-K spot. Nevertheless, the Tigers kept him in the game, where he made two more outs at the plate. So that went well.

As for the rest of that list STATS dug up, only two other players on it even went at least five innings and then stuck around to finish the game elsewhere. You’ve heard of them.

BABE RUTH! Here’s a shocker. Ruth actually wound up as the winning pitcher in this game against the Tigers on June 13, 1921. Spun five sparkling innings on the mound. Spent the last four innings in center. Also hit two homers and reached base four times. #Legend

CATFISH HUNTER! Apparently, this is a Hall of Famer kind of thing, because Cafish went the first 8 2/3 of a win over the Tigers on June 18, 1967. Then his manager, Alvin Dark, pointed him over to first base and brought in a left-handed reliever (Tony Pierce) to whiff Gates Brown for the final out.

But other than a 1920 Ruth game in which the Babe spent four innings on the mound and five in right field, everyone else who started a game on the mound and finished it somewhere else in the field did it as basically a gimmick. Ohtani, on the other hand, is literally changing the world, in a Ruthian kind of way. Which brings us to…

THE BAMBINO CLUB

So how about this cool record Ohtani tied Tuesday (sort of)? He’s now up to 40 strikeouts this season as a pitcher. But he’s also he’s tied for the league lead in homers as a hitter. And who the hell does that?

Well, in the history of baseball, only one man has ever done that (led his league in homers as a hitter, piled up 40+ K’s as a pitcher). Guess who?

Yep. In 1918, that Babe Ruth person tied for the league lead in homers in his part-time hitter job, but also struck out 40 on the mound in his occasional pitcher job. That’s a record that seemed destined never to be broken – until Ohtani caught the Babe in punchouts in Houston. Of course, now Ohtani has to finish the deal by also leading the league in home runs. But why would we bet against that?

So here it comes, the list of every home run champ in history who even struck out as many hitters that season as Ohtani just whiffed in this one game (10):

Most strikeouts, also led league in HR

PLAYER	YEAR	KS
Babe Ruth	1918	40
Babe Ruth	1919	30
Jimmy Ryan	1888	11

Weird and Wild: The only guy in history to lead his league in homers and strike out 40 as a pitcher was the Babe. So what do you think? Can Ohtani do this? 

Salmon: I wasn’t around to watch the Babe play. But again, this is mythological, almost. I mean, you might be talking about Zeus. You might as well be talking about these things. Because Babe Ruth is mystical… and you’re putting Otani in that category. Not from a projection standpoint, either. He’s actually doing it. And that’s the craziness about this – is that we’re actually seeing this happen.

MORE SHOH TIME!

Finally, it’s time for our weekly refresher course to remind one and all how un-be-frigging-lievable it is that there’s a real human running around our planet, doing the stuff Ohtani is doing.

He’s averaging 14.0 K’s per 9 innings! That’s more than Shane Bieber, Tyler Glasnow, Gerrit Cole, Trevor Bauer or Max Scherzer.

He’s gotten 21 extra-base hits! That’s more than anyone in the American League. But meanwhile on the mound, he has only allowed two extra-base hits! That’s the fewest of any pitcher in baseball who has pitched as many innings as he has. This is happening. In real life.

He has a 207 ERA+! That’s better than Scherzer, Glasnow or Bauer.

He has a 139 OPS+! That’s better than Mookie Betts, Juan Soto or Nolan Arenado.

He’s slugging .574! Which is higher than Vladdy Guerrero Jr., Giancarlo Stanton or José Ramírez. And it’s almost 400 points higher than the hitters who have to face him. Those poor people are slugging .195. And can we mention again that he’s a real person?

Weird and Wild: So are we sure he’s a real person? Are we sure he’s not some Marvel superhero character, where they just drew him up and he came to life?

Salmon: Well, you know, he does kind of fit that mold. I mean, even his appearance. He kind of looks like someone that Hollywood would design. 

Weird and Wild: OK, one more thing. I’m trying to figure out what he can do next. Here is my scenario. How about: Pitch, throw a no hitter – while hitting four homeruns. Then hosts the postgame show – in two languages. And then maybe saves the planet from climate change or aliens or something? Sound plausible?

Salmon: Well, you’re asking him to do something nobody imagined could be done anyway. So why not? It’s kind of like Christmas. Hey, while I’m putting together my wish list, I might as well go over the top. So yeah. Why not?

2.  The Mazeika Runner

A week into his big-league career, Mets rookie Patrick Mazeika still doesn’t have a hit. Ah, but he does have this.

And also this.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is pretty much the Weirdest and Wildest start to a career ever. If only because…

Two walk-off RBIs before his first hit? You know how hard that is to do? So hard, according to STATS, that only one man has ever done it, since RBIs became an official stat in 1920. And that man is … Patrick Mazeika.

Three RBIs of any kind before his first hit? Mazeika has done that, too. He’s the first to perform this wild trick, STATS reports, since Joe Brovia – for the 1955 Reds (who, we regret to report, then drove in one more run over the rest of his career).

What Patrick Mazeika has done that Mike Piazza never did? Here are five famous Mets (among many) who never found a way to jam two walk-off RBIs of any variety into the same season: Mike Piazza, Darryl Strawberry, Keith Hernandez, Howard Johnson and Ed Kranepool. But Patrick Mazeika already has two … in a week … and didn’t even need to get a hit? You can’t make this stuff up.

What Patrick Mazeika has done that Bonds, Griffey and Pujols never did? The walk-off fielder’s choice – with no outs recorded, by the way – is pretty much the ultimate Weird and Wild way to end any game, don’t you think? Here’s all the proof we need to make that case.

Here, courtesy of STATS, are the five men with the most RBIs over the last 50 years. Check out how many walk-off fielder’s choices they had:

HITTER	CAREER RBI	WALK-OFF FC
Albert Pujols	2,112	0
Alex Rodriguez	2,086	0
Barry Bonds	1,996	0
Eddie Murray	1,917	0
Ken Griffey Jr.	1,836	0
TOTAL	9,947	0
…	…	…
Patrick Mazeika	3	2

Well, you know what this is all about, don’t you?

Baseball!

3. Down at the Funny Farm

I live 20 minutes from a minor-league ballpark. So here was the best sight I laid eyes on all week: The ballpark sign that said: “GAME TONIGHT.”

Woohoo. The minor leagues are back in business. And already, they’ve provided some serious wackiness. How ’bout this!

13 WALKS IN AN INNING! This was an actual thing that happened in a Double A Biloxi-Birmingham game last Friday. This was how the top of the sixth inning went, with Biloxi batting:

• The almost-normal portion of the inning went walk, walk, strikeout, walk, walk, two-run single, sac fly.

• Then the totally off-the-rails portion went walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, hit batter, walk, walk, walk.

Whew! That’s 10 straight hitters reaching base – on nine walks, one hit batter … and zero hits. In fact, in the inning, 15 batters reached base – on one hit!

FUN FACT: In 2013, Clayton Kershaw faced 544 hitters – and issued 11 walks all season. And the Birmingham Barons just issued 13 walks in one inning.

A TEAM SCORED 78 RUNS IN ONE SERIES! And now another thing that happened, in actual life. In what used to be the Florida State League, the Tampa Tarpons and Dunedin Blue Jays opened the season with a six-game series in Tampa. Here come the scores of those games:

Tampa 11, Dunedin 7
Tampa 19, Dunedin 9
Tampa 10, Dunedin 6
Tampa 25, Dunedin 10
Tampa 12, Dunedin 11
Dunedin 4, Tampa 1

 So Dunedin scored 43 runs in the first five games, an average of 8.6 runs a game – and got outscored by 34 – but then scored four times in the sixth game … and won.

And Tampa came to bat in 40 half-innings in those first five games – and scored in 26 of them. There are a million more like this, but let’s get to the …

FUN FACT: Yes, there was a 25-10 game! Featuring 35 runs, 18 walks, eight wild pitches, two balks, a hit batter and zero one-run innings by either team. There was a 25-10 game in the NFL as recently as Week 6, 2007 (Panthers 25, Cardinals 10, with Vinny Testaverde throwing for a score). But there has never been a 25-10 game in Major League Baseball. Closest call: Giants 25, Reds 13, on June 9, 1901. Winning pitcher Bill Phyle twirled an 18-hitter!

4.  This Week in Useless Info

FULL HOUSER – Back on April 27, sweet-swinging Brewers pitcher Adrian Houser unloaded on the Marlins’ Daniel Castano for his first career homer. Then along came last Saturday, and Adrian Houser did this.

So that’s two home runs in a week and a half off the same pitcher – and they don’t even play in the same division? Here’s how Weird and Wild that is.

• The division-play era is now in its 53rd season. How many other pitchers have launched two homers in one season against a pitcher outside their own division? That, says STATS, would be none!

• Bonus Weird and Wild classic: In fact, Houser is the first pitcher to do this twice in his career in over 40 years, since the Phillies’ Larry Christensen went deep twice off the Astros’ Joe Niekro, in 1977 and 1980. Who knew!

WALKING THE WALK(OFF) – Kyle Schwarber’s first home run for the Nationals? A walk-off special April 16 against the Diamondbacks. Kyle Schwarber’s second home run for the Nationals? Another walk-off, against the Marlins, on April 30. But then, last Sunday, Schwarber had to mess up his awesome walk-off streak by doing this.

That blew his quest to become the first man ever to start life with a new team with three walk-off homers. But it did make him the fifth in history to hit two walk-offs before he hit any non-walk-offs. How about this funky list.

 

PLAYER	HR NO. 1	HR NO. 2
Kirby Higbe, PIT	Sept. 11, 1947	Aug. 27, 1948
Daryl Spencer, LA	June 3, 1961	June 10, 1961
Jerome Walton, CIN	June 5, 1994	May 6, 1995
Charlie Culberson, ATL	May 28, 2018	June 3, 2018
Kyle Schwarber, WAS	April 16, 2021	April 30, 2021

(Source: STATS Perform)

 

39 STEPS – Here at Weird and Wild World HQ, we hope Adam Wainwright never retires. Last Sunday, two starts after going nine innings against the Phillies, he went 8 1/3 against the Rockies. Which got us to wondering:

How many 39-year-olds (or older) have had two starts in the same season in which they got at least one out in the ninth? Here’s the whole list from the last 15 seasons:

2013 – Bartolo Colon (the impossible has happened!)
2015 – R.A. Dickey (flutterball king) – 3 times!
2021 – Adam Wainwright (officially ageless!)

THE BIGGIO BANG THEORY – Loved this little entry in the Blue Jays-Astros box score last Saturday:

HR: Biggio (3)

And what did we love about it? First home run by a Biggio in Houston since…Aug. 21, 2007, when Craig (Father of Cavan) Biggio hit a leadoff bomb against Joel Hanrahan.

DON’T STOP RUNNING TILL THEY TAG YOU – You know what’s really hard? Scoring from first base on an infield single! But we just saw Gleyber Torres do exactly that against the Astros. Check it out. It’s amazing.

So how rare is it to score all the way from first on a ground ball that never gets beyond the infielders – and there are no errors, by anybody, on the play? According to the incredible folks at Sports Info Solutions, who track this better than anyone, it’s only the second time in the last 10 years that any runner scored from first on a ground ball that met all those other conditions we just spelled out. This was July 3, 2017, Orlando Arcia against the Orioles. It, too, is a classic!

IT’S A TWO-SCORE GAME – And now more useless stuff that certain off-kilter people notice only because they write down the score of every game in a little notebook:

May 10: Reds 14, Pirates 1
April 6: Reds 14, Pirates 1

• Last team to win two 14-1 games against the same team in the same year: Zaza Harvey’s 1901 White Sox, over Jiggs Donahue’s original Milwaukee Brewers.

• All other times in the last 121 seasons the Reds have scored exactly 14 runs twice against the Pirates: That would be none, of course.

• Times in the last 37 seasons the Bengals have scored exactly 14 against the Steelers: Precisely once – in Weeks 7 and 11 of the 2017 season.

OK, we’re done now. Thanks for indulging us. Let’s move on.

BUT SPEAKING OF 14 – We had two different 14-pitch at-bats in Tuesday’s Nationals-Phillies game, in back-to-back innings! Jean Segura took 14 pitches to line out for the Phillies in the sixth inning. Then Trea Turner ground through a 14-pitch walk for the Nats in the seventh.

Last NL game in which two different hitters had a PA that long: Mets-Pirates, on Sept. 17, 2001 – Desi Relaford (19 pitches!) for the Mets in the first, Kevin Young (15 pitches) for the Pirates in the ninth. (Courtesy of our friends at Sportradar.)

But also… we’d be remiss not to mention that in the interim, on April 20, 2002, the Brewers’ Jeffrey Hammonds had two 14-pitch at-bats himself in a game against the Cardinals, in the first and second innings. Because, well …

Baseball!

5. This Week in Strange But Trueness

IT’S NEVER OVER TILL, AW, WHATEVER – The Braves won a game last Saturday that couldn’t be won. Is that a little strong, considering they somehow won it anyway? I don’t think so. Consider all this.

They played baseball against their friends from Philadelphia for 4 hours, 47 minutes, in a game in which 406 pitches were thrown. And they didn’t lead for a single one of those minutes or a single one of those pitches until the winning run crossed the plate in the 287th minute.

They were down two runs with two outs and nobody on in the ninth. They trailed again (by one run) in the 11th. And they found themselves behind again – by three runs – in the 12th … And they won!

The amazing STATS research crew did find two other teams in the modern era that won games in which they trailed by at least two runs in the ninth and at least three runs in the 12th or later. (The White Sox did that in the fabled 25-inning game on May 8, 1984 … and the Yankees dd it in a wacky 12-inning game against the Padres on June 13, 2004.) But …

How many other teams in modern history have ever won a game like that after also trailing in any other extra inning? That answer would be: Not a one.

ALTERNATIVE MATH – But wait. You think we’re done with that game? Heck, no. It’s an all-timer, right down to your losing pitcher, Enyel de los Santos. He did something never before accomplished by any losing pitcher in baseball history!

Runs allowed: 4
Batters faced: 3

That used to be really challenging to do. But now? Repeat after me: Ghost runner!

THE WEIRDEST SOMBRERO EVER – Sorry. There’s still more from that series – because also, you had this bizarre box-score entry last Friday from the Phillies’ Rhys Hoskins:

0-for-4, with 4 strikeouts – and 2 runs scored!

Whaaaat? So how’d that happen? Here we go. Made it to first on a strikeout/passed ball (part of a wild first inning in which Hoskins struck out twice but still scored a run), then came around to score … Walked in the sixth, came around to score again.

All right. So how often have we ever seen that goofy line? Exactly one other time since 1901, according to baseball-reference’s Stathead. And that was way back on…

Sept. 1, 1947 – Frank Baumholtz (yep, his second mention in this column!) did this, too, in a game started by the Cubs’ Ox Miller, in which Baumholtz was responsible for four of the Reds’ seven strikeouts but also two of their seven walks. Unreal.

NO-OUTER/NO-HITTER CLUB – Back in September 2019, Wade (No-Hit) Miley spun off these two train wrecks, in back-to-back starts for the Astros:

Sept. 5: 0 IP, 5 H, 5 R, 5 ER, 1 BB, 0 K
Sept. 10: 1/3 IP, 7 H, 7 R, 7 ER, 1 BB, 0 K 

That’s two starts, 12 runs and a total of one out. And then, 15 starts (and two teams) later, last Friday against the Indians, Wade Miley did this for the mighty Reds:

9 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 8 K

So who does that? Who has back-to-back starts in which he can’t escape the first inning and then turns around and throws a no-hitter? Wade Miley does that. But also …

He’s not alone! Astonishingly enough, we found two other pitchers in the last 70 years who threw a complete-game, Fay Vincent-approved no-hitter but also made back-to-back starts in some other stretch in which they didn’t make it through the first:

PITCHER	NO-HITTER	2 GS < 1P
Rick Wise	June 23, 1971	Sept. 7 and 17, 1964
Dock Ellis	June 12, 1970	Aug. 8 and 13, 1975

(One more Weird and Wild not-quite-the-same-thing footnote that I couldn’t resist: If I were going to count “streaks” that carried over two seasons, I could also add Sandy Koufax to this list. He ran into first-inning KO’s in his last start in 1959 and his first start in 1960 – but we’re not counting that. Sorry, Sandy!)

TRIPLE THREAT – There once was a time when Ken Rosenthal and I were pretty much obsessed with the five-year quest of Orioles legend Sam Horn to hit one stinking triple. It got so out of hand, in fact, that I can still recall Ken calling me as Horn was rounding second on the way to Career Triple No. 1 (and No. Last), on May 5, 1992 – off Nolan Ryan!

So obviously, hitting triples is hard, right? Well, not if you watched the Orioles’ Cedric Mullins do this Monday.

Yessiree, that’s a pop-up to short that became a shift-aided triple. And you don’t see that much. In fact, in the history of reliable public play-by-play data, there have been only seven other pop-up triples to the shortstop, according to baseball-reference.  And the last one was eight years ago – a Jay Bruce trifecta on a pop-up that Pete Kozma forgot to reel in, on May 1, 2013. Where was Pete Kozma when Sam Horn needed him!

WE’RE ALL MIXED UP – Finally, how are we supposed to watch baseball in the opening weeks of any season and conclude that anything makes sense? I want you to think about this:

• The longest winning streak of the year– nine in a row, by the A’s – came from a team that had the worst record in the whole sport when that streak began.

• And now the longest losing streak of the year– 11 in a row (and counting) by the Royals – came from a team that had the best record in the whole sport when that streak began.

Have a good explanation for that? I do:

Baseball!

 

That Mazeika stat is mind blowing. 

[Beau Vine 54339]

 

[MC Fresh Breath 4074]

3 hours ago, WBT said:

Stark's new one is pretty good

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Stark: Weird and Wild, the Ohtani is Loose Edition

By Jayson Stark 4h ago 28 

So what did you miss in the latest, greatest week of baseball? Oh, only 13 walks in one (minor-league) inning … and a guy who somehow scored two runs in the middle of a sombrero … and a comeback win that was so unprecedented, we’re calling it impossible.

We’ll get to all that in this week’s edition of the Weird and Wild column. But how could we not begin with…

1. The Greatest Shoh on Earth

Once upon a time, I sat in the seats of Tiger Stadium with a fan I’d just met. He pointed at a patch of grass in right field and said: “See that spot out there? I saw Babe Ruth standing right there.” It gave me goosebumps in the moment. I still have them now, just typing this paragraph. And then …

In the eighth inning Tuesday at Minute Maid Park, I watched another man trot out to right field and felt those same goosebumps.

Granted, I watched this one on TV, and it wasn’t quite the same deal. But when Angels manager Joe Maddon directed Shohei Ohtani toward right field that night – after he’d just pitched seven innings, striking out 10 – I knew exactly what those goosebumps were all about.

This dude is larger than life. That’s what. You watch him and you think: What is happening? He pitches seven … he punches out 10 … and then, ho-hum, he spends the rest of the game in the outfield? And we’re watching this go down in the same world we live in? Really?

“I don’t think anybody knows what this guy’s ultimate limits will be,” the greatest Angels right fielder of them all, Tim Salmon, told the Weird and Wild column Thursday, after watching what we watched. “I mean, that was pretty amazing. He went out and played right field. And it was like, `Right field? What?’”

Yessir. What? If there are three words that sum up the magic of Shohei Ohtani, it feels like those three words should be: He did what? So even though Maddon actually had foreshadowed the whole thing to me and Doug Glanville on this week’s Starkville, this still felt like a whole new chapter for the Ohtani He Did What files.

So now that my pulse rate is back to normal and we’ve had a couple of days to digest this, let’s take a look at Ohtani’s latest Ruthian moment. And what do you say we let Tim Salmon, now part of the Bally Sports West pregame/postgame crew, put it in perspective for us along the way?

THE 10-9 CLUB

Ten strikeouts – then a trip to the “9” portion of your scorecard (right field)? Was that as incredible as it sounds? Correct answer: Of course it was! Because according to our amigos at STATS Perform, only one other man in modern history had ever piled up double digits on the mound and also played right field in the same game.

But what happened that day – Sept. 28, 1952 – had pretty much nothing in common with what happened this day. In that game, Harvey Haddix started for the Cardinals. And walked the leadoff hitter. And then headed for right field – with nobody out in the first inning – so (take a deep breath) Stan Musial could come in and pitch for the only time in his career.

Hold on. What? Right. It was all because Frank Baumholtz was coming up for the Cubs. And Musial was battling Baumholtz for the batting title. So Musial’s manager, Eddie Stanky, thought it would be cool for Stan the Man to battle him literally. We are not making this up.

So Musial pitched to Baumholtz, who got so into the spirit of it, he decided to bat right-handed for the first and last time. Musial threw one pitch. Baumholtz bounced it to third, where third baseman Solly Hemus clanked it for an error. Then back went Musial to the outfield. And Haddix returned to the mound – and struck out 11.

But unlike that sideshow, Ohtani was a pitcher on a mission, emptying the tank for seven innings and then moving to right. So that wasn’t the same thing at all. Got it? Tim Salmon got it.

Weird and Wild: Do you think you could have pitched seven innings then gone out to play right field? 

Salmon: (laughing) I did in high school….

Weird and Wild: Can you imagine yourself striking out 10 hitters in the big leagues, and then going out to play right field?

Salmon: How about striking out one guy in the big leagues. Especially the Houston Astros. This wasn’t just like some bottom-of-the rung-team. This is the Houston Astros – in Houston. Wow.

THE FINISH WHAT YOU START CLUB

But let’s remember now, that this was no Stan Musial one-batter stunt. Shohei Ohtani pitched seven innings in this game – and then didn’t just spend 30 seconds in the outfield. He finished the game in the outfield. Once again, we’ve seen almost nothing like this. Ever.

STATS did find seven other occasions in the live-ball era when a player started a game on the mound and finished it at any other position. But it found only one other man who went at least seven innings on the mound and then completed that game by hanging out at an actual position in the field for an inning or more. Once again, though, what other dude did bore very little resemblance to what Ohtani did.

That’s because that other man was Mark Koenig, of Liz Funk’s 1930 Tigers. And on one hand, he also put up a big 10-spot in his outing on the mound. But on the other, it was a 10-run spot, not a 10-K spot. Nevertheless, the Tigers kept him in the game, where he made two more outs at the plate. So that went well.

As for the rest of that list STATS dug up, only two other players on it even went at least five innings and then stuck around to finish the game elsewhere. You’ve heard of them.

BABE RUTH! Here’s a shocker. Ruth actually wound up as the winning pitcher in this game against the Tigers on June 13, 1921. Spun five sparkling innings on the mound. Spent the last four innings in center. Also hit two homers and reached base four times. #Legend

CATFISH HUNTER! Apparently, this is a Hall of Famer kind of thing, because Cafish went the first 8 2/3 of a win over the Tigers on June 18, 1967. Then his manager, Alvin Dark, pointed him over to first base and brought in a left-handed reliever (Tony Pierce) to whiff Gates Brown for the final out.

But other than a 1920 Ruth game in which the Babe spent four innings on the mound and five in right field, everyone else who started a game on the mound and finished it somewhere else in the field did it as basically a gimmick. Ohtani, on the other hand, is literally changing the world, in a Ruthian kind of way. Which brings us to…

THE BAMBINO CLUB

So how about this cool record Ohtani tied Tuesday (sort of)? He’s now up to 40 strikeouts this season as a pitcher. But he’s also he’s tied for the league lead in homers as a hitter. And who the hell does that?

Well, in the history of baseball, only one man has ever done that (led his league in homers as a hitter, piled up 40+ K’s as a pitcher). Guess who?

Yep. In 1918, that Babe Ruth person tied for the league lead in homers in his part-time hitter job, but also struck out 40 on the mound in his occasional pitcher job. That’s a record that seemed destined never to be broken – until Ohtani caught the Babe in punchouts in Houston. Of course, now Ohtani has to finish the deal by also leading the league in home runs. But why would we bet against that?

So here it comes, the list of every home run champ in history who even struck out as many hitters that season as Ohtani just whiffed in this one game (10):

Most strikeouts, also led league in HR

PLAYER	YEAR	KS
Babe Ruth	1918	40
Babe Ruth	1919	30
Jimmy Ryan	1888	11

Weird and Wild: The only guy in history to lead his league in homers and strike out 40 as a pitcher was the Babe. So what do you think? Can Ohtani do this? 

Salmon: I wasn’t around to watch the Babe play. But again, this is mythological, almost. I mean, you might be talking about Zeus. You might as well be talking about these things. Because Babe Ruth is mystical… and you’re putting Otani in that category. Not from a projection standpoint, either. He’s actually doing it. And that’s the craziness about this – is that we’re actually seeing this happen.

MORE SHOH TIME!

Finally, it’s time for our weekly refresher course to remind one and all how un-be-frigging-lievable it is that there’s a real human running around our planet, doing the stuff Ohtani is doing.

He’s averaging 14.0 K’s per 9 innings! That’s more than Shane Bieber, Tyler Glasnow, Gerrit Cole, Trevor Bauer or Max Scherzer.

He’s gotten 21 extra-base hits! That’s more than anyone in the American League. But meanwhile on the mound, he has only allowed two extra-base hits! That’s the fewest of any pitcher in baseball who has pitched as many innings as he has. This is happening. In real life.

He has a 207 ERA+! That’s better than Scherzer, Glasnow or Bauer.

He has a 139 OPS+! That’s better than Mookie Betts, Juan Soto or Nolan Arenado.

He’s slugging .574! Which is higher than Vladdy Guerrero Jr., Giancarlo Stanton or José Ramírez. And it’s almost 400 points higher than the hitters who have to face him. Those poor people are slugging .195. And can we mention again that he’s a real person?

Weird and Wild: So are we sure he’s a real person? Are we sure he’s not some Marvel superhero character, where they just drew him up and he came to life?

Salmon: Well, you know, he does kind of fit that mold. I mean, even his appearance. He kind of looks like someone that Hollywood would design. 

Weird and Wild: OK, one more thing. I’m trying to figure out what he can do next. Here is my scenario. How about: Pitch, throw a no hitter – while hitting four homeruns. Then hosts the postgame show – in two languages. And then maybe saves the planet from climate change or aliens or something? Sound plausible?

Salmon: Well, you’re asking him to do something nobody imagined could be done anyway. So why not? It’s kind of like Christmas. Hey, while I’m putting together my wish list, I might as well go over the top. So yeah. Why not?

2.  The Mazeika Runner

A week into his big-league career, Mets rookie Patrick Mazeika still doesn’t have a hit. Ah, but he does have this.

And also this.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is pretty much the Weirdest and Wildest start to a career ever. If only because…

Two walk-off RBIs before his first hit? You know how hard that is to do? So hard, according to STATS, that only one man has ever done it, since RBIs became an official stat in 1920. And that man is … Patrick Mazeika.

Three RBIs of any kind before his first hit? Mazeika has done that, too. He’s the first to perform this wild trick, STATS reports, since Joe Brovia – for the 1955 Reds (who, we regret to report, then drove in one more run over the rest of his career).

What Patrick Mazeika has done that Mike Piazza never did? Here are five famous Mets (among many) who never found a way to jam two walk-off RBIs of any variety into the same season: Mike Piazza, Darryl Strawberry, Keith Hernandez, Howard Johnson and Ed Kranepool. But Patrick Mazeika already has two … in a week … and didn’t even need to get a hit? You can’t make this stuff up.

What Patrick Mazeika has done that Bonds, Griffey and Pujols never did? The walk-off fielder’s choice – with no outs recorded, by the way – is pretty much the ultimate Weird and Wild way to end any game, don’t you think? Here’s all the proof we need to make that case.

Here, courtesy of STATS, are the five men with the most RBIs over the last 50 years. Check out how many walk-off fielder’s choices they had:

HITTER	CAREER RBI	WALK-OFF FC
Albert Pujols	2,112	0
Alex Rodriguez	2,086	0
Barry Bonds	1,996	0
Eddie Murray	1,917	0
Ken Griffey Jr.	1,836	0
TOTAL	9,947	0
…	…	…
Patrick Mazeika	3	2

Well, you know what this is all about, don’t you?

Baseball!

3. Down at the Funny Farm

I live 20 minutes from a minor-league ballpark. So here was the best sight I laid eyes on all week: The ballpark sign that said: “GAME TONIGHT.”

Woohoo. The minor leagues are back in business. And already, they’ve provided some serious wackiness. How ’bout this!

13 WALKS IN AN INNING! This was an actual thing that happened in a Double A Biloxi-Birmingham game last Friday. This was how the top of the sixth inning went, with Biloxi batting:

• The almost-normal portion of the inning went walk, walk, strikeout, walk, walk, two-run single, sac fly.

• Then the totally off-the-rails portion went walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, hit batter, walk, walk, walk.

Whew! That’s 10 straight hitters reaching base – on nine walks, one hit batter … and zero hits. In fact, in the inning, 15 batters reached base – on one hit!

FUN FACT: In 2013, Clayton Kershaw faced 544 hitters – and issued 11 walks all season. And the Birmingham Barons just issued 13 walks in one inning.

A TEAM SCORED 78 RUNS IN ONE SERIES! And now another thing that happened, in actual life. In what used to be the Florida State League, the Tampa Tarpons and Dunedin Blue Jays opened the season with a six-game series in Tampa. Here come the scores of those games:

Tampa 11, Dunedin 7
Tampa 19, Dunedin 9
Tampa 10, Dunedin 6
Tampa 25, Dunedin 10
Tampa 12, Dunedin 11
Dunedin 4, Tampa 1

 So Dunedin scored 43 runs in the first five games, an average of 8.6 runs a game – and got outscored by 34 – but then scored four times in the sixth game … and won.

And Tampa came to bat in 40 half-innings in those first five games – and scored in 26 of them. There are a million more like this, but let’s get to the …

FUN FACT: Yes, there was a 25-10 game! Featuring 35 runs, 18 walks, eight wild pitches, two balks, a hit batter and zero one-run innings by either team. There was a 25-10 game in the NFL as recently as Week 6, 2007 (Panthers 25, Cardinals 10, with Vinny Testaverde throwing for a score). But there has never been a 25-10 game in Major League Baseball. Closest call: Giants 25, Reds 13, on June 9, 1901. Winning pitcher Bill Phyle twirled an 18-hitter!

4.  This Week in Useless Info

FULL HOUSER – Back on April 27, sweet-swinging Brewers pitcher Adrian Houser unloaded on the Marlins’ Daniel Castano for his first career homer. Then along came last Saturday, and Adrian Houser did this.

So that’s two home runs in a week and a half off the same pitcher – and they don’t even play in the same division? Here’s how Weird and Wild that is.

• The division-play era is now in its 53rd season. How many other pitchers have launched two homers in one season against a pitcher outside their own division? That, says STATS, would be none!

• Bonus Weird and Wild classic: In fact, Houser is the first pitcher to do this twice in his career in over 40 years, since the Phillies’ Larry Christensen went deep twice off the Astros’ Joe Niekro, in 1977 and 1980. Who knew!

WALKING THE WALK(OFF) – Kyle Schwarber’s first home run for the Nationals? A walk-off special April 16 against the Diamondbacks. Kyle Schwarber’s second home run for the Nationals? Another walk-off, against the Marlins, on April 30. But then, last Sunday, Schwarber had to mess up his awesome walk-off streak by doing this.

That blew his quest to become the first man ever to start life with a new team with three walk-off homers. But it did make him the fifth in history to hit two walk-offs before he hit any non-walk-offs. How about this funky list.

 

PLAYER	HR NO. 1	HR NO. 2
Kirby Higbe, PIT	Sept. 11, 1947	Aug. 27, 1948
Daryl Spencer, LA	June 3, 1961	June 10, 1961
Jerome Walton, CIN	June 5, 1994	May 6, 1995
Charlie Culberson, ATL	May 28, 2018	June 3, 2018
Kyle Schwarber, WAS	April 16, 2021	April 30, 2021

(Source: STATS Perform)

 

39 STEPS – Here at Weird and Wild World HQ, we hope Adam Wainwright never retires. Last Sunday, two starts after going nine innings against the Phillies, he went 8 1/3 against the Rockies. Which got us to wondering:

How many 39-year-olds (or older) have had two starts in the same season in which they got at least one out in the ninth? Here’s the whole list from the last 15 seasons:

2013 – Bartolo Colon (the impossible has happened!)
2015 – R.A. Dickey (flutterball king) – 3 times!
2021 – Adam Wainwright (officially ageless!)

THE BIGGIO BANG THEORY – Loved this little entry in the Blue Jays-Astros box score last Saturday:

HR: Biggio (3)

And what did we love about it? First home run by a Biggio in Houston since…Aug. 21, 2007, when Craig (Father of Cavan) Biggio hit a leadoff bomb against Joel Hanrahan.

DON’T STOP RUNNING TILL THEY TAG YOU – You know what’s really hard? Scoring from first base on an infield single! But we just saw Gleyber Torres do exactly that against the Astros. Check it out. It’s amazing.

So how rare is it to score all the way from first on a ground ball that never gets beyond the infielders – and there are no errors, by anybody, on the play? According to the incredible folks at Sports Info Solutions, who track this better than anyone, it’s only the second time in the last 10 years that any runner scored from first on a ground ball that met all those other conditions we just spelled out. This was July 3, 2017, Orlando Arcia against the Orioles. It, too, is a classic!

IT’S A TWO-SCORE GAME – And now more useless stuff that certain off-kilter people notice only because they write down the score of every game in a little notebook:

May 10: Reds 14, Pirates 1
April 6: Reds 14, Pirates 1

• Last team to win two 14-1 games against the same team in the same year: Zaza Harvey’s 1901 White Sox, over Jiggs Donahue’s original Milwaukee Brewers.

• All other times in the last 121 seasons the Reds have scored exactly 14 runs twice against the Pirates: That would be none, of course.

• Times in the last 37 seasons the Bengals have scored exactly 14 against the Steelers: Precisely once – in Weeks 7 and 11 of the 2017 season.

OK, we’re done now. Thanks for indulging us. Let’s move on.

BUT SPEAKING OF 14 – We had two different 14-pitch at-bats in Tuesday’s Nationals-Phillies game, in back-to-back innings! Jean Segura took 14 pitches to line out for the Phillies in the sixth inning. Then Trea Turner ground through a 14-pitch walk for the Nats in the seventh.

Last NL game in which two different hitters had a PA that long: Mets-Pirates, on Sept. 17, 2001 – Desi Relaford (19 pitches!) for the Mets in the first, Kevin Young (15 pitches) for the Pirates in the ninth. (Courtesy of our friends at Sportradar.)

But also… we’d be remiss not to mention that in the interim, on April 20, 2002, the Brewers’ Jeffrey Hammonds had two 14-pitch at-bats himself in a game against the Cardinals, in the first and second innings. Because, well …

Baseball!

5. This Week in Strange But Trueness

IT’S NEVER OVER TILL, AW, WHATEVER – The Braves won a game last Saturday that couldn’t be won. Is that a little strong, considering they somehow won it anyway? I don’t think so. Consider all this.

They played baseball against their friends from Philadelphia for 4 hours, 47 minutes, in a game in which 406 pitches were thrown. And they didn’t lead for a single one of those minutes or a single one of those pitches until the winning run crossed the plate in the 287th minute.

They were down two runs with two outs and nobody on in the ninth. They trailed again (by one run) in the 11th. And they found themselves behind again – by three runs – in the 12th … And they won!

The amazing STATS research crew did find two other teams in the modern era that won games in which they trailed by at least two runs in the ninth and at least three runs in the 12th or later. (The White Sox did that in the fabled 25-inning game on May 8, 1984 … and the Yankees dd it in a wacky 12-inning game against the Padres on June 13, 2004.) But …

How many other teams in modern history have ever won a game like that after also trailing in any other extra inning? That answer would be: Not a one.

ALTERNATIVE MATH – But wait. You think we’re done with that game? Heck, no. It’s an all-timer, right down to your losing pitcher, Enyel de los Santos. He did something never before accomplished by any losing pitcher in baseball history!

Runs allowed: 4
Batters faced: 3

That used to be really challenging to do. But now? Repeat after me: Ghost runner!

THE WEIRDEST SOMBRERO EVER – Sorry. There’s still more from that series – because also, you had this bizarre box-score entry last Friday from the Phillies’ Rhys Hoskins:

0-for-4, with 4 strikeouts – and 2 runs scored!

Whaaaat? So how’d that happen? Here we go. Made it to first on a strikeout/passed ball (part of a wild first inning in which Hoskins struck out twice but still scored a run), then came around to score … Walked in the sixth, came around to score again.

All right. So how often have we ever seen that goofy line? Exactly one other time since 1901, according to baseball-reference’s Stathead. And that was way back on…

Sept. 1, 1947 – Frank Baumholtz (yep, his second mention in this column!) did this, too, in a game started by the Cubs’ Ox Miller, in which Baumholtz was responsible for four of the Reds’ seven strikeouts but also two of their seven walks. Unreal.

NO-OUTER/NO-HITTER CLUB – Back in September 2019, Wade (No-Hit) Miley spun off these two train wrecks, in back-to-back starts for the Astros:

Sept. 5: 0 IP, 5 H, 5 R, 5 ER, 1 BB, 0 K
Sept. 10: 1/3 IP, 7 H, 7 R, 7 ER, 1 BB, 0 K 

That’s two starts, 12 runs and a total of one out. And then, 15 starts (and two teams) later, last Friday against the Indians, Wade Miley did this for the mighty Reds:

9 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 8 K

So who does that? Who has back-to-back starts in which he can’t escape the first inning and then turns around and throws a no-hitter? Wade Miley does that. But also …

He’s not alone! Astonishingly enough, we found two other pitchers in the last 70 years who threw a complete-game, Fay Vincent-approved no-hitter but also made back-to-back starts in some other stretch in which they didn’t make it through the first:

PITCHER	NO-HITTER	2 GS < 1P
Rick Wise	June 23, 1971	Sept. 7 and 17, 1964
Dock Ellis	June 12, 1970	Aug. 8 and 13, 1975

(One more Weird and Wild not-quite-the-same-thing footnote that I couldn’t resist: If I were going to count “streaks” that carried over two seasons, I could also add Sandy Koufax to this list. He ran into first-inning KO’s in his last start in 1959 and his first start in 1960 – but we’re not counting that. Sorry, Sandy!)

TRIPLE THREAT – There once was a time when Ken Rosenthal and I were pretty much obsessed with the five-year quest of Orioles legend Sam Horn to hit one stinking triple. It got so out of hand, in fact, that I can still recall Ken calling me as Horn was rounding second on the way to Career Triple No. 1 (and No. Last), on May 5, 1992 – off Nolan Ryan!

So obviously, hitting triples is hard, right? Well, not if you watched the Orioles’ Cedric Mullins do this Monday.

Yessiree, that’s a pop-up to short that became a shift-aided triple. And you don’t see that much. In fact, in the history of reliable public play-by-play data, there have been only seven other pop-up triples to the shortstop, according to baseball-reference.  And the last one was eight years ago – a Jay Bruce trifecta on a pop-up that Pete Kozma forgot to reel in, on May 1, 2013. Where was Pete Kozma when Sam Horn needed him!

WE’RE ALL MIXED UP – Finally, how are we supposed to watch baseball in the opening weeks of any season and conclude that anything makes sense? I want you to think about this:

• The longest winning streak of the year– nine in a row, by the A’s – came from a team that had the worst record in the whole sport when that streak began.

• And now the longest losing streak of the year– 11 in a row (and counting) by the Royals – came from a team that had the best record in the whole sport when that streak began.

Have a good explanation for that? I do:

Baseball!

 

As alluded to in the comments, Ohtani is like a video game character set to cheat mode.  

Edited May 14, 2021 by MC Fresh Breath

[shadow_operative2.0 16013]

Damn, one of the stranger collisions you’ll ever see in KC/CWS. It will be on Twitter shortly. 

[shadow_operative2.0 16013]

 

 

[TonyTexas 10520]

100% Dozier’s fault. 

[Scraps 13570]

Lol

[MC Fresh Breath 4074]

yikes

[WBT 20649]

4 hours ago, TonyTexas said:

100% Dozier’s fault. 

well yeah

[Vic Mackey 47101]

...

[shadow_operative2.0 16013]

3 IP, 11 H, 8 ER, 3 BB for Miley in his next start after the no-no. 

[Guest]

21 hours ago, MC Fresh Breath said:

STEALING SIGNS!

 

 

That's a Miggy move...   very noice.

[clapclapclap 9000]

Bull Dozier to the 7-day IL.

[Beau Vine 54339]

Interesting...

[shadow_operative 15932]

is that good?

[WBT 20649]

It's worth smiling about.

Edited May 15, 2021 by WBT

[Helobious 9464]

3 hours ago, Beau Vine said:

Interesting...

He’s done that before actually. If that doesn’t tell you some advanced metrics are a joke I don’t know what will. 

3 hours ago, WBT said:

It's worth smiling about.

Member when people made fun of Yankees fans for living in the past so much? I member.

[shadow_operative2.0 16013]

Well. 

 

[pops 7006]

9 minutes ago, shadow_operative2.0 said:

Well. 

 

I can support this. 

[CBT 1282]

Anytime a NL team has a chance to add a DH who can’t hit, they should definitely take it.

[Beau Vine 54339]

5 minutes ago, CBT said:

Anytime a NL team has a chance to add a DH who can’t hit, they should definitely take it.

Don't forget his speed. 

Imma let y'all guess which one is Pujols.

[clapclapclap 9000]

7 hours ago, shadow_operative said:

is that good?

Well it is a negative, ghostwriter....

[Beau Vine 54339]

5 hours ago, Helobious said:

He’s done that before actually. If that doesn’t tell you some advanced metrics are a joke I don’t know what will. 

Or, a reasonable person with basic understanding of statistics would conclude that it's more evidence that statistics aren't reliable in small samples. 

[shadow_operative2.0 16013]

Matt Carpenter is pitching in the 7th. 

[pops 7006]

16 minutes ago, shadow_operative2.0 said:

Matt Carpenter is pitching in the 7th. 

His era is lower than his batting average. 

[Helobious 9464]

3 hours ago, Beau Vine said:

Or, a reasonable person with basic understanding of statistics would conclude that it's more evidence that statistics aren't reliable in small samples. 

[CBT 1282]

[Beau Vine 54339]

Matt V being Matt V:

 

[WBT 20649]

I guess he forgot about that new high LF wall in Boston

[shadow_operative2.0 16013]

Seager broke his hand, he gone for awhile. 

[Beau Vine 54339]

23 minutes ago, shadow_operative2.0 said:

Seager broke his hand, he gone for awhile. 

Pujols to SS.

[Beau Vine 54339]

 

[shadow_operative2.0 16013]

Anyone watching this KC/CWS game? KC throws the winning run out at the plate for second out in 9th, then Abreu scores on a WP with a sick fucking slide to end it. 

[Scraps 13570]

Joe Girardi seems like a dumbass

[shadow_operative2.0 16013]

Magellan does not approve of Tyler O’Neill’s route there. 

[Beau Vine 54339]