So what did you miss in baseball over these last couple of weeks? Oh, only … twins pitching against the Twins. … And the same guy pinch running twice in the same inning (for two different hitters). … And would you believe a man threw 17 pitches under 38 miles per hour in an actual Major League Baseball game?
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Yes, it’s all true. But that’s not where we begin this Weird and Wild week … because we had Vlad Guerrero Jr. to remind us that …
All you need is glove
This is no old-fashioned glove story. You need to know that upfront. Sometimes baseball turns into a crazy little thing called glove. And when it does, it’s important to remember that your glove will not let you down.
There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done, you know. And that’s especially true when an innovator like Vlad Guerrero Jr. comes along, to remind us that, when you need to think outside the box, glove is all you need.
So here’s what happened Wednesday in Toronto, when Christian Yelich sent a groundball hopping toward Vlad that was about to carve its place in blooper-reel history. Glove was in the air, my friends. So when the baseball wedged its way into the webbing of Vlad’s glove and refused to leave, he did what came naturally — for the glove of the game.
Just your ordinary, super casual 3-1 groundout 😅 pic.twitter.com/ZVeDIMwBb6
— Toronto Blue Jays (@BlueJays) June 1, 2023
Here at Weird and Wild World HQ, there’s nothing we love more than a beautiful tale of everlasting glove. And I think we had one here. It will always make us smile. And it will always make us recall the greatest glove stories of all time. So let’s review our three favorites here.
Who says Jon Lester was afraid to throw to first base? In this 2015 classic, Lester heaved his entire glove, with the ball included, to first base.
“And Rizzo drops HIS glove so he can catch Lester’s glove,” said the great Cubs analyst, Jim Deshaies. “That’s the smartest play in the history of baseball.”
Back in glove again. I’m a huge fan of this 2017 Derek Holland ride through the tunnel of glove. It starts with a behind-the-back no-look catch. It ends with glove and baseball both floating through the Chicago sky. How can you top it!
“Barnum AND Bailey at the same time,” quipped Jason Benetti, to his White Sox viewers, encapsulating this entire circus in seven glovely words.
The original — on Mulholland Drive! But with all due respect to Lester, Holland and all the glove tossers who preceded and followed them, we’re ruling that they’re all tied for second place at the Weird and Wild Glove Shack. That’s because it’s just not possible to top the original glove story, the one that started it all — Terry Mulholland to Bob Brenly, on Sept. 3, 1986. That, you see, was glove at first sight.
So on Thursday, we tracked down the man who caught that glove — Bob Brenly. How could we not? After all, any time anybody in baseball gives us another one of these plays in the name of glove, Brenly chuckles and says: Have I got a story for you.
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“We were the pioneers,” the Diamondbacks’ always-entertaining analyst said of himself and Mulholland. “We thought that up in our game planning.”
All right, so maybe not. But let’s move on. Is that a shocking sight, we asked — to be waiting at first base and see a glove coming your way?
“Yeah, it is,” Brenly said. “I mean, I was a catcher by trade. I played a little bit of first base. So anything that was thrown in my direction was a little bit of a surprise — especially a ball wedged in between the fingers of the glove.”
It may be 37 years later now. But that Mulholland-Brenly special still gets almost as much air time as “Bull Durham.” Every year on the anniversary, the Diamondbacks make a point to queue it up and show it again, just for chuckles. If Brenly had 10 bucks for every time he has seen it on a gigantic video-board blooper reel, he could buy his own glove factory.
He just has one regret, he said. And his Giants teammates at the time, led by Mike Krukow, were only too happy to let him know even then about the magical opportunity he missed that day.
“I will forever be regretful,” Brenly said, still laughing, “that I didn’t just turn and throw the glove, the ball and everything around the horn. I really dropped the ball there. I didn’t think quickly enough. I wanted to make sure we got the out. But once we got the out, I should have just turned and fired the ball to Robbie Thompson at second base and let him throw it around the horn. …
“I just wasn’t quite sure what the rule was, you know. I mean, geez, I do have possession of the ball — but it’s in somebody else’s glove.”
You’ll notice, incidentally, that nobody else in all these years has fired any gloves around the horn, either. Too bad. That would be the greatest highlight of all time. No wonder Brenly says, “I should do clinics” for all the future glove-catchers out there. Well, if he ever did, we asked, what advice would he give those glove-catchers of tomorrow?
“I always recommend the basket catch,” he said. “Get your hands underneath and trap it against your chest — because the glove is obviously not aerodynamically designed, and it could knuckle on you as it comes over there to first base. So I would recommend the basket catch.”
Good plan. And what about future glove-throwers? What sage life advice would he impart to them?
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“I think it’s probably something that they should work on in spring training,” Brenly suggested, “since it seems to be happening with more regularity. That might be a fundamental drill that you work into your spring training routine.”
Totally. Let’s round up those pitchers and first basemen next spring and send them out to a back field some morning — ideally, before the sun comes up — and start firing those gloves around. I’d pay to watch that drill.
“And don’t turn the lights on,” said Bob Brenly, glove counselor extraordinaire. “That makes it even more fun.”
Thanks, Bob. Baseball, how can you not glove it? (Joe Camporeale / USA Today)Stuff I loved this week
TWIN PEAKS — I know we’re twisted around here, but the Weird and Wild column has been waiting for the historic moment in brotherly baseball history that finally arrived last week. We guarantee it had to be the highlight of this or any season for Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, Ronde and Tiki Barber, and Jose and Ozzie Canseco.
Ready? Here it comes, from last week’s Giants-Twins series at the palatial home of the Twins, Target Field:
May 22 — Tyler Rogers throws scoreless outing versus Twins
May 24 — Taylor Rogers throws scoreless outing versus Twins
So what’s so historic about that, you ask? Whaddaya think! It’s the first time in big-league history that twins pitched against the Twins in the same series!
The Minnesota Twins were seeing double. (Mark J. Rebilas / USA Today)ALL IN THE FAMILY — I’m getting the impression that Aaron Boone and David Bell aren’t morning people. On May 21, their teams, the Yankees and Reds, played one of those 11:30 a.m. (ET) Peacock games. And it went pretty smoothly, other than the part where both managers got ejected from the same game.
Yankees' Aaron Boone, Reds' David Bell both ejected
#AaronBoone #CincinnatiReds #NewYorkYankeeshttps://t.co/svQGBMFGde
— ZoRo (@ZoroLitt) May 23, 2023
So that sent me down a Retrosheet rabbit hole that took up way too much time. But the question I had to answer was too good: Was it possible that their fathers, who also managed — Bob Boone for the Royals and Reds, Buddy Bell for the Tigers, Rockies and Royals — might have matched those dueling ejections one day, when they were locked up in the same game?
Sadly, despite years of managing and playing against each other, those two never did get tossed from the same game. But …
On April 28, 2001, Boone’s Reds visited Bell’s Rockies at Coors Field and this Boone family Ejection-Palooza broke out.
PINCH ME TWICE! So there I was, minding my own business on May 18, when people began hitting me up with this momentous tweet from your favorite team and mine, the Staten Island FerryHawks, of the relentlessly experimental Atlantic League.
DID WE JUST MAKE HISTORY? 🤯
In the ninth inning of today’s win, manager Homer Bush used Justin Twine to pinch run TWICE in the same inning! Twine entered first as the designated pinch runner and then again to pinch run and officially sub into the game.
— SI FerryHawks (@FerryHawks) May 18, 2023
Wait. What? If ever there was a rule made for the Weird and Wild column, it was the Atlantic League’s latest extravaganza, the “Designated Pinch Runner” rule, which busted out this year — and then boiled over in this game. So here’s to FerryHawks manager/innovator Homer Bush for leaning into it this way:
Ninth inning. Designated PR Justin Twine pinch runs for Christian Santana and comes around to score. … then returns to his previous life as a regular bench dude … just not for long … because exactly two batters later, Kevin Krause hits a game-tying single and … guess who trots out to pinch run again for Krause? Yup, that same Justin Twine. Which made him …
The first player in professional baseball history to pinch run twice in the same inning … for two different batters. Just one more thing that used to be impossible, but now it’s merely …
Baseball! (In 2023!)
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Weirdest (and Wildest) Games of Recent Weeks
Yep, Vladdy. It was one of those games. (Kim Klement / USA Today)THE 20-TO-1 GAME! We welcome you to baseball’s wackiest pinball parlor, Tropicana Field, for a game that’s still almost impossible to believe: Blue Jays 20, Rays 1, on May 23.
The .700 Club ain’t what it used to be! The Rays came into this game at 35-14 for the season. That’s a .714 winning percentage. And then they lost by 19 runs. I asked the great Katie Sharp of Baseball Reference to look into how weird (and wild) that was. She didn’t disappoint. Only three other teams in history have ever lost a game by that many runs after starting that game with a winning percentage higher than the Rays:
• Rocky Coppinger’s 1996 Orioles — lost a 26-7 game to Texas on April 19. They were 11-3 (.786) when it started.
• Hanson Horsey’s 1912 Reds — lost a 23-4 game to the Pirates on April 27. They were 8-2 (.800) at the time.
• And Dickey Pearce’s 1871 New York Mutuals, of the late and not so great National Association, let a 37-16 game get away from them on July 3, against the Troy Haymakers. Before getting whomped with that haymaker, the Mutuals were 9-3 (.750).
But obviously, none of those teams had a record as good as Tampa Bay’s this deep into their seasons. So the Rays ascend to No. 1 on this list among all teams that had played at least 15 games. Is that good?
Time sure flies when you’re scoring 20! Was the big story of this game those 20 runs? Or was it the shocking development that the game zipped along in a tidy 2 hours, 31 minutes! Did you know that there has been only one shorter game in the entire expansion era (1961-now) in which a team scored at least 20 runs?
That was Yankees 21, Kansas City A’s 7, on Aug. 17, 1962. That one took 2:27. Mickey Mantle’s line that day: 3-for-4, homer, double, 7 RBIs, 2 SB … and he left three innings early!
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Nine in the ninth! This game wasn’t quite the nail-biter of the year for the first eight innings. But it turned into a bad sitcom in the ninth, when the Blue Jays piled up nine more runs … against Luke Raley and Christian Bethancourt … neither of whom carry that helpful job description of “pitcher.”
If you’re thinking that you don’t recall the last time any team scored nine runs (or more) in an inning — every one of them off position players — it isn’t your memory. It’s the first time that’s ever happened, Sharp reports.
Are you Vlad to see me — or not so much? But here come the two moments that made this game an all-timer.
Eighth inning: Luke Raley arrived on the mound after spending his day at first base. And who was the second hitter he faced? That fearsome Vladdy Guerrero Jr. Who promptly, somehow or other, did this …
Luke Raley strikes out Vlad Guerrero Jr.! pic.twitter.com/d856XYH5tW
— Bally Sports Sun: Rays (@BallyRays) May 24, 2023
So what were the odds of the lineup then turning and turning and turning some more … so that here came Vladdy to bat again the next inning … only to find that same Luke Raley still pitching with the bases loaded. But incredibly, that happened … and then so did this!
I don’t know what you were thinking when that grand slam disappeared. But here’s what I was thinking: Was Vlad the first player ever to strike out and hit a slam against the same position player in the same game? Luckily, Sharp had that answer, too. Which was … of course he was!
THE 11-10 GAME — Was this the nuttiest week of the year at the Trop? Let’s vote yes — because five days after that 20-1 game, the Rays and Dodgers got mixed up in another madcap classic.
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It ended Rays 11, Dodgers 10. But there were a few momentum swings along the way … from 1-0 (L.A.) to 3-1 (Rays) … to 7-3 (Rays) to 7-7 (all by the third inning!) … to 10-7 (Rays) to 10-10 (by the top of the sixth) … to 11-10. Phew! I’m exhausted just typing that. But hang on. There’s more.
Box-score line of the day: The Rays’ starting pitcher, Josh Fleming, had one of those days that make baseball the mysteriously addictive sport it is. He gave up 12 hits, 10 runs and five homers, had to chew up six innings to save the bullpen … and his team won!
According to Baseball Reference/Stathead, only one other pitcher in the modern era ever got knocked around for that many runs, hits and homers in a game his team won. And that was the legendary Ralph Branca, for Brooklyn, who went all nine innings to win an attractive 17-10 game in Pittsburgh on June 25, 1949.
That’s 21 runs on the brunch buffet! But my other favorite thing about this game was that it started at 8:30 in the frigging morning, L.A. time — and ended at 11:28 a.m. PT. Which gave the Dodgers a chance to give up 11 runs before lunch back home.
So you don’t see that much! According to Chase Weight of STATS Perform, only one team since 1987 has given up that many runs in any game that ended before noon in the town they play in. That was Jake Peavy’s 2005 Padres, who lost a 12-0 noon game at Shea Stadium on July 21.
Hey, am I allowed to point out that if it weren’t for those two games, the Rays would be leading the major leagues in ERA? I blame Luke Raley!
This week in useless info
THE NAME OF THE GAME — Some things in life, and baseball, you just need to know. For instance …
• Seth Brown hit a home run … off Hunter Brown.
• The Phillies brought in reliever Yunior Marte … to face Ketel Marte.
• The Bryce was right May 19 in Atlanta … when the Mariners’ Bryce Miller dueled the Braves’ Bryce Elder … in the first Bryce-versus-Bryce starting pitching matchup in baseball history … not sponsored by … Bryce-line.
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• What’s so exciting about this Austin Hays long ball against the Rangers last Saturday?
It was Austin homering against Texas. What else? Would you believe no players named Houston have ever homered against Texas? But Dallas McPherson once hit three off them. Hey, you’re welcome!
• Finally, perhaps you’re wondering why this Riley Greene home run robbery of Jake Burger on Sunday wound up in this Name of the Game section.
Riley Greene robbed Jake Burger of a home run on National Burger Day. pic.twitter.com/CoCBohOE1r
— Jason Beck (@beckjason) May 28, 2023
C’mon. It’s easy. Because as NBC Sports Chicago’s Chris Kamka reminds us, it denied us a shot at a Burger to go on National Burger Day!
GOT CHANGE FOR A CINCO? Now that May is over, we can report that the only hitter to go 5 for 5 in any game in May was Bo Bichette. Unfortunately, it was on May 1 … which means the Cinco de Mayo Streak continues!
We’ve now gone 21 consecutive years since Omar Vizquel unfurled the last 5-for-5 game on Cinco de Mayo. The best we could do this year: Angels pitcher Tyler Anderson’s Cinco de Mayo pitching line: 5 innings, 5 hits, 5 walks. No bueno!
WHAT WOULD WE DO WITHOUT STATCAST? It’s mostly awesome to live in a world in which we get to instantly know the speed of every single pitch thrown in the major leagues night after night after high-speed night. But here at the Weird and Wild column, we’re not just on the lookout for Jhoan Duran firing those flameballs up there at 104 mph.
Heck, no. We get just as excited by … Ryan McKenna … because … this!
Ryan McKenna, 37mph Slow Ball (home plate view) pic.twitter.com/BDLiZ6De0C
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) May 27, 2023
Yes, if you overlook Luke Raley, McKenna’s pitching exhibition for the Orioles last weekend was the position-player pitching event of the year, if only because …
• He threw 17 pitches under 38 miles per hour.
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• And 15 pitches under 37 mph.
• And eight pitches under 36 mph.
• And three pitches under 35 mph.
And we have never seen anything quite like it since Statcast has been keeping track of vital stuff like this. FYI, only one real pitcher in the Statcast era (since 2015) has ever thrown any pitch under 38 mph. And that was … Max Scherzer? … who allegedly eephused one up there at 37 mph on Aug. 20, 2015. But I’d like a recount on that!
MEMORY LANE — You know how you always hear, before some of these exotic interleague matchups, that they’re a “World Series rematch” from, say, 1963? Well, for those of you who say, Pshaw, to stuff like that, how about this:
Royals 7, Cardinals 0 (Monday). So what’s up with that? It was the Royals’ largest shutout win over the Cardinals since … yep, that one … 11-0 in Game 7 of the 1985 World Series.
Reds 5, Red Sox 4 (Wednesday). So what’s up with that? According to friend of the program Joel Luckhaupt, brilliant Reds statistical mastermind, it was the Reds’ fifth comeback win in history against the Red Sox. Except the other four were … all four Reds wins in the 1975 World Series.
WEIRDEST/WILDEST INNING OF THE WEEK — It’s always fun when these Weird and Wild items reveal themselves in ballparks I’m actually sitting in. So on May 19, I was at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, watching the Phillies’ Ranger Suárez pitch against the Cubs, when this happened in the second inning:
First six hitters — all reach base.
Last three hitters — all strike out.
I then turned to the man sitting behind me — a former Phillie and Cub named Larry Bowa — and asked: Have you ever seen an inning like that? Bowa shook his head. Nope, he said.
So I asked my friends from STATS: Has that ever happened to any other pitcher? At least six hitters reaching base to start an inning (without an error) and then the last three all striking out?
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Turns out it’s actually happened four other times in the last 50 seasons: July 1, 2018 (Reds vs. Freddy Peralta) … Sept. 17, 2008 (Orioles vs. the Blue Jays’ David Purcey) … April 20, 1996 (Marlins vs. the Dodgers’ Hideo Nomo) and Aug. 24, 1980 (Red Sox vs. the Mariners’ Rick Honeycutt). Who knew!
CHICAGO FIRE — I feel like Michael Kopech’s two-start blitz of sheer unhittability for the White Sox went whooshing by us way too fast. So hold on one minute. This was amazing.
May 19 — eight innings, one hit, no runs, 10 strikeouts against the Royals.
May 24 — seven innings, two hits, no runs, nine whiffs against the Guardians.
So what’s up with that? Only four pitchers in the history of the American League have ever spun off back-to-back scoreless starts of seven innings or more, two hits allowed or one, and nine strikeouts or more. Maybe you’ve heard of them:
Pedro Martinez (2002)
Randy Johnson (1997)
Nolan Ryan (twice, in 1976 and ’78)
Cy Young (1905).
Whoever they are!
This week in Strange But Trueness
Trayce Thompson broke out of his slump in style. (Kim Klement / USA Today)WITHOUT A TRAYCE — There are slumps … and then there’s Trayce Thompson … who went an incredible 40 days between hits (and also 0 for 39) for the Dodgers until this week. And then …
Went 3 for 3 Sunday against the Rays, with a walk and a homer.
OK, got all that? From 39 straight at-bats without a hit to four trips in one game without making an out? You don’t see that a whole lot!
Baseball Reference’s brilliant Kenny Jackelen dug into every game in the Baseball Reference database, which is complete for the last 50 years, mostly complete back to 1950 and has thousands of other games back to 1914. He found just three other players who went through an 0-for-39 funk (or worse) and ended it with a three-hit game (or better).
There was the Orioles’ Chris Davis, who stopped his infamous 0-for-54 death spiral in 2019 with a 3-for-5 day. … There was Marlins outfielder Justin Ruggiano, who interrupted an 0-for-42 skid in 2013 with a 3-for-4 game. But …
There was only one other player in all those years who ended his slump the way Thompson ended his — with three hits but no outs. And that man was … a pitcher – the Cubs’ Matt Clement … who went 10 months without a hit and then wiped out a messy little 0-for-44 with … the only 3-for-3 game of his career.
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WACKY BOX-SCORE THEATER — You never know what you’ll run across in those box scores if you look closely enough. Heck, you might see stuff like this:
Beware the Caballero! There was Mariners rookie José Caballero, on May 21 in Atlanta: 1 for 1, with a home run, a hit-by-pitch and three stolen bases.
So what’s up with that? Mariners media relations whiz Alex Mayer reports that Caballero just became the first player to cram a homer, an HBP and three stolen bases into the same box score, while reaching base in all his plate appearances, since … Ty Cobb, on July 4, 1912! Oh, and where did Caballero do all this? In a game played in … Cobb County!
At Witt’s end! Then there was Royals fireball Bobby Witt Jr., last Friday against the Nationals: 4 for 5, with two home runs, five RBIs and a stolen base.
So what’s up with that? Here’s what. Witt was the 48th player in the live-ball era to have at least four hits, two homers, five RBIs and a steal in the same game.
There was only one slight distinction between him and all those other guys who did it. Their teams went 47-0 in those games. His team lost to the Nats, 12-10. Hey, it wasn’t his fault!
FIRST AND LAST — Last Saturday in Minnesota, a funny thing happened. The then-last-place Blue Jays played a game against the first-place Twins. But that, obviously, was not the Strange But True part.
The Strange But True part was … the team in last place had a better record (27-25) than the team in first place (26-25). Is that Strange But True enough for you?
Last time that happened this late in the season in any league: Aug. 11, 2005: First-place Padres (57-56) play last-place Mets (58-55) in San Diego … and win, 2-1, with Woody Williams outdueling Tom Glavine … in a game that includes a pinch triple by Padres backup catcher David Ross.
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IT STARTS AT THE TOP (OR NOT NECESSARILY) — Thanks to loyal reader Logan Dobson for posing this Strange But True question last weekend, after the Giants’ 15-1 thrashing of the Brewers:
@jaysonst has a team ever scored 15 runs while their 1 & 2 hitters went 0-12? Giants managed it last night
— Logan Dobson (@LoganDobson) May 27, 2023
Hmmm, excellent question. And that answer is: Not even close.
Katie Sharp reports that’s four more runs than any team has scored since 1901 when its first two hitters went 0 for 12 or worse. The previous “record” was set by Jimmy Rollins’ and Placido Polanco’s 2004 Phillies, who scored 11 runs in an extra-inning game against the Mets on Sept. 11, even though Rollins and Polanco went 0 for 13.
But the record for a nine-inning game? That was only 10 runs, by the 1942 Brooklyn Dodgers, in an April 26 game in Philadelphia in which Pee Wee Reese and Sweet Lew Riggs went 0 for 12.
WHAT COMES AFTER THE NO. 7? IT’S NOT THE NO. 8! All right, how Strange But True is this:
May 18 — Cardinals hit seven home runs against the Dodgers.
May 19 — Cardinals get shut out by the Dodgers.
May 26 — Pirates hit seven home runs in Seattle.
May 27 — Pirates get shut out in Seattle!
Look, it’s weird (and also wild) enough for any team to get shut out the day after bopping seven homers. But to have it happen twice in eight days? That’s why this Strange But True department has come to exist.
So was it really as Strange But True as it looked? Of course it was. According to Sharp, five other teams since 1901 have hit seven homers (or more) in one game and gotten shut out the next. Except they were a little different, since none of them did it in the same decade, let alone the same season.
And then the Cardinals and Pirates did it twice in a week. Because …
Baseball!
(Top photo of Vladimir Guerrero Jr.: Cole Burston / Getty Images)
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