2+ HR & 2+ SH In The Same Game
Posted by Steve Lombardi on April 20, 2011
Since 1919, how many players had at least 2 homeruns and at least 2 sac-bunts in the same game?
| Rk | Player | Date | Tm | Opp | Rslt | PA | AB | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | BB | SO | HBP | SH | SF | SB | CS | WPA | RE24 | BOP | Pos. Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Jim Davenport | 1960-04-22 | SFG | CHC | W 10-8 | 6 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.186 | 1.778 | 2 | 3B |
| 2 | Bill Lee | 1941-05-07 | CHC | PHI | W 11-2 | 5 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.000 | 0.000 | 9 | P |
| 3 | Hack Wilson | 1930-08-30 | CHC | STL | W 16-4 | 5 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.000 | 0.000 | 4 | CF |
.
So, this Friday will be the 51st anniversary of the last time it happened. Wonder how long it will be before we ever see "this" again? It's never happened in my lifetime. And, it's never happened, since 1919, in the American League.
April 20th, 2011 at 8:07 am
...and it's never happened without the Cubs involved.
April 20th, 2011 at 8:14 am
... and not surprisingly, done once by a pitcher. I wonder how many multiple home run games have ever been achieved by pitchers. I know we know about famous ones like Rick Wise's no-hitter, but there must be some that have faded through time.
April 20th, 2011 at 8:36 am
Any time your 191 RBI guy has the opportunity to lay down a bunt twice in one game, you have to do it.
Perhaps this has something to do with the Cubs not winning any championships.
April 20th, 2011 at 8:41 am
SH & SF were often counted in the same column in the 20'-30's.
April 20th, 2011 at 9:49 am
Duke is onto something. The Cubs were up 8-0 after 2 innings, and I doubt Hack would have been ordered to bunt later in the game. He also had 18 SH on the season (to go with his 56 HR and 191) RBI.
Gotta be fly ball Sacs and not bunts.
April 20th, 2011 at 9:52 am
Good catch guys. Maybe Wilson shouldn't count here?
April 20th, 2011 at 10:27 am
I am not 100% sure but I believe that in 1930 and for a few years before that a fly ball that advanced a runner form first to second or from second to third also counted as a SF.
April 20th, 2011 at 10:29 am
As Dave notes, it's the Cubs. It doesn't make any difference what the rules were; it's the Cubs.
April 20th, 2011 at 10:46 am
@2 - Since 1919 there has been one game in which a pitcher homered 3 times (Jim Tobin in 1942) and 64 games in which a pitcher homered 2 times. Well, kind of 64. Babe Ruth started a game as P for the Yankees in 1921 (and he was batting 3rd - when's the last time a pitcher was penciled in the original lineup card hitting 3rd?) and then shifted to CF. So it's possible he homered twice as a pitcher, but he may have homered once as a P and once as a CF. Given that the Babe pitched 5 innings, and how the Yankee scoring breaks down, it's unlikely he hit two as a CFer (but he might have hit one as a CF and one as a P).
The last pitcher to homer twice in a game was Micah Owings in 2007.
Derek Lilliquist was the only pitcher to homer twice in a game in the 1990s; Jim Gott and Walt Terrell were the only ones to homer twice in a game in the 1980s.
Dick Donovan, Jack Harshman, Lew Burdette, Pedro Ramos, Red Ruffing, Rick Wise and Tony Cloninger did it twice. From that group, Donovan, Harshman, Wise, and Cloninger had their 2 homerun games in the same year.
Don Newcombe homered twice in a game 3 times. Wes Ferrell did it 5 times.
April 20th, 2011 at 10:51 am
Richard Chester @7 is correct -- from 1925-30, a fly out that advanced any runner was scored as a sacrifice hit.
B-R bullpen has a chronology of the scoring rules for sacrifices:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Sacrifice_hit
The chronology says that, in 1920, the distinction between sac flies and sac bunts was abolished. However, there are no sac fly stats on B-R league or leader pages until until 1954. Thus, for example, Hack Wilson is not credited with any sac flies for his entire career (1925-34), but he is credited with 102 sacrifice hits. Obviously, a good many of those were not bunts.
April 20th, 2011 at 10:53 am
Babe Ruth had a total of 21 SH in 1930,Gehrig had 18,Wilson had total of 18(had 24 in 1928).Agree with some of the other guys must be fly ball sacs in regards to Wilson.
April 20th, 2011 at 11:05 am
Don't be fooled -- Hack could run when he had to. And remembering Marse's style of managing, I could see how everyone on the team might be expected to put out an extra effort.
April 20th, 2011 at 11:05 am
@ 10
John : Thanks for the confirmation. So obviously BAs were a bit inflated for that period. Ruth had 21 SF in 1930 and none for the rest of his career. Gehrig had 97 SF from 1925 to 1930 but only 8 for the rest of his career.
I think the SF rule was changed after the 1930 season in response to the ridiculously high BAs of that year.
April 20th, 2011 at 11:10 am
@13
I should have said SH instead of SF in my post #13.
April 20th, 2011 at 11:43 am
There is no question in my mind that the style of play in the 1920`s and early 1930`s still had a bit of the "scientific" approach mixed in with the heavy hitting.Lou Gehrig stole home 15 times in his career!(no doubt part of a double steal).Ruth had 43 bunt singles in his career(no record was kept of his 1923 total though-so might be 50).Conversely,Harmon Killebrew had nary a one sac hit for his entire.Wilson could run-two of the greatest managers of all time(McGraw and McCarthy)chose to play him in center field.
April 20th, 2011 at 1:07 pm
I know he's a pitcher, but it is also possible that Bill Lee had one sacrifice fly (of the run scoring type, not the runner advancing type) and one sacrifice hit as sac flies were not recorded in 1941. He had 2 HR and 3 RBI. If Lee were to hit a 2 run home run it would have had to have been in the 9th inning - it is impossible that he hit a 2 run home run in the 1st inning (actually, it's impossible that he hit a HR in the first inning - the Cubs would have had to have scored at least 7 runs for that to happen). Given how the Cubs lineup turned over it is plausible that Lee hit a 2 run home run in the 9th, but there is still no guarantee.
So the only person we know for certain who hit 2 home runs and had two sacrifice hits is Jim Davenport. And he did all that in his first 4 PAs of the game.
April 20th, 2011 at 7:46 pm
@16 Artie
Lee hit the only 2 HR's the Cubs hit that day, and looking at the Phillie pitchers we see that they were allowed by reliever Lefty Hurst who pitched innings 4 thru 6; and the other off Johnny Pogajny who came in to pitch the in the 7th.
Since the Cubs were held scoreless in Innings 6, 7, and 8 we can tell that his 1st HR was either in the 4th or 5th inning and the other was definitely in the 9th
April 20th, 2011 at 8:14 pm
@9, one of those two Tony Cloninger 2 HR games was 2 grand slams in one game, if I remember right.
April 20th, 2011 at 8:22 pm
@16, @17
The Phils first two pitchers faced 19 batters over 3 innings. This means the number 2 hitter for the Cubs led off the fourth inning. The Cubs scored one run which could not have been a HR by the number 9 batter. Therefore the HR was hit in the fifth inning.
April 20th, 2011 at 9:00 pm
@9: "when's the last time a pitcher was penciled in the original lineup card hitting 3rd?"
Using the PI Game Finder you can specify GS, P only, batting 3rd, and you get 3 games: Babe Ruth on 1930-09-28 and 1933-10-01 (interestingly, these were both on the last day of the season and his only games pitching in those years), and Andy Sonnanstine on 2009-05-17.
Regarding the Sonnanstine game, he was in the lineup due to an error by Joe Maddon in filling out the line-up card -- he wrote in two third basemen and no DH. It was not an interleague game, but he does have an OPS+ of 106 for his career, so if Maddon was going to make a mistake like that, that was the time to do it.
April 21st, 2011 at 8:00 pm
Of course, when I saw that Bill Lee name there, my first thought was the later pitcher with that name whose nickname was "Spaceman". I think he was in the majors before the DH rule went into effect, and I also think he spent some time with at least one NL team, the Expos, after that.
As for the multi-homer games by pitchers, the first one that came to mind was Tony Cloninger's two grand slams game. It's still somewhat ironic that for many years, the only National Leaguer to have hit 2 grand slams in a game (at least in the so-called "modern era") was a pitcher.
I recall a two-homer game by Robert Person of the Phillies in the early 2000s. I think they were a grand slam and a three-run shot.
The two best-known multiple homer games by pitchers, at least since Babe Ruth became a full-time outfielders, are probably Wise's no-hitter and Cloninger's 2 grand slams game.