Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category

-- Saturday in Boston, CC Sabathia was touched for 7 ER on 9 hits in 6 IP in Boston's 10-4 win. It was his first "disaster start" (more ER than IP) since Sept. 23 of last year, a span of 25 starts. (And that previous game snapped a stretch of 32 disaster-free starts.)

CC has lost all 4 games against the BoSox this year, with no quality starts and a 7.20 ERA. Against all other teams this year, he's 16-2 with a 2.11 ERA. He was 4-1 in 8 starts vs. Boston over the previous 2 seasons. He's 6-9 career against them, 2-4 in Fenway.

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-- This is the sort of thing that happens to a team in the throes of a losing streak: Pittsburgh got 24 baserunners (15 hits, 9 walks), but scored just 5 runs and got clobbered for their 8th straight defeat.

• It's the 1st time since 1979 (and just the 5th time since 1919) that a team reached safely 24+ times but scored 5 runs or less in a 9-inning game.
• And how about Aaron Harang's winning line? 5 IP, 13 hits, 3 walks, 1 strikeout, 1 HR. Harang stranded 10 runners and got 3 GIDPs from Pedro Alvarez, who became the 4th player this year to wear those horns and also went 0 for 5 with an error. Harang's 23 Game Score was the 2nd-worst for a winning SP in the past 2 seasons.
• The Padres had 4 HRs in a game for the 1st time since July 17, 2010; other teams combined for 106 four-HR games since then.

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Craig Counsell was hitless in his last 45 at-bats, one shy of the longest known hitless streak by a non-pitcher -- a mark held, as are virtually all records for bat-wielding futility, by Bill Bergen, the catching wizard of the Brooklyn Superbas. (N.Y. Times article; Stephen Colbert segment)

But with 2 out in the 9th, Counsell pinch-hit for the pitcher and singled to RF -- a meaningless hit in a blowout win that probably brought everyone in the Milwaukee dugout to the top step.

Bill Bergen cannot be beaten.

As noted by B-R reader Dave in another thread, the Yankee pitchers did not issue a walk in their recent 4-game sweep of the White Sox. That streak ended Friday in the 5th inning on a full-count walk to Jacoby Ellsbury by Bartolo Colon.

Sure, the White Sox are next-to-last in the league in walks drawn. But no other team in the last 2 seasons has gone even 3 straight games without issuing a free pass.

Since 1919, it matched the 3rd-longest walkless streak, and was just the 2nd 4-game, no-walk series sweep.

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Given his performance over the last 6 weeks, it may be hard to remember that Aroldis Chapman was a floundering phenom back in May. He went on the DL after a May 15 meltdown (23 pitches, 18 balls) that capped a grisly 4-game stretch in which he walked 12 out of 19 batters faced. To that point in the season, he had a 6.92 ERA in 13 IP, with 20 walks, 6 hits and 15 strikeouts. The diagnosis, in layman's terms: strike-zone amnesia.

In his first game back, Chapman struck out the side on 12 pitches, and he's hardly faltered since. In 18.1 IP since returning, he's allowed just 3 hits and 5 walks, with 32 strikeouts. In his last 8 games alone, he has allowed 1 walk and no hits in 9.2 IP.

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It's amazing how often Art Shamsky's famous 1966 performance is mentioned on this blog. In that game, he entered in the 8th inning and ended up with 3 homers and 5 RBI.

I did an advanced Google search and here are past posts on this blog that mentioned the game in either the original post or the comments:

Pirates @ Reds, August 12, 1966

Brian McCann's 2-HR game

Most hits in a game as a sub

Two catchers homering in the same game for the same team ...

140+ HRs Since 1919 In Games Team Lost

Trivia time – who are these 10 players?

Most Home Runs by a Pinch Runner

Miguel Cabrera's 3 HR in a loss

Justin Maxwell and doubling twice after pinch-hitting

Gary Finkler is an artist with a new blog, 7th Inning Sketch, containing sports cartoons (mostly baseball).

Thanks to Gary for permission to run one of his cartoons. Click the link or image above to see the rest of Gary's work.

Yesterday the Blue Jays blew two saves in extra innings and lost the game. It made me curious to find other recent games where a team blew more than one save after the 9th inning.

• In this memorable game 5 weeks ago, the Nationals blew a 3-run lead in the bottom of the 9th, and then blew 1-run leads in both the 10th and 12th inning before finally scoring 4 times in the 14th and having it hold up. That's 3 blown saves, of which 2 came in extras.
• About a month before that, the Rockies blew 2 saves in extras against the Brewers.

[Rounding up the day's action while still pondering the scoring of Brendan Ryan's "infield triple"....]

-- Cliff Lee became the 4th pitcher this century with 5 shutouts in a season, joining CC Sabathia, Dontrelle Willis and A.J. Burnett. (See, I can say something nice about A.J.!) The last pitcher with more than 5 was Randy Johnson in 1998 (6).

• Madison Bumgarner (8 IP, 2 runs, 9 Ks, loss) now has 13 starts this year in which he's allowed 2 runs or less in 6 IP or more. In those 13 games, he's allowed 17 total runs (13 ER) in 82.2 IP, a 1.42 ERA -- yet has gone 5-5. Every other pitcher with at least 10 such starts has a winning record in them; the median W% for that group is .875.
• Hunter Pence went from the team with the worst record to the team with the best, and the difference has shown from day 1. He's been with the Phillies for 6 games, all wins, and has hit in all of them. He hadn't experienced more than 4 straight wins since 2008; his last 6 wins with Houston took 19 games. He had endured six 5-game losing skids this year alone; the Phillies haven't lost 5 straight since May of last year.

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 A late bulletin from the corner of First Time for Everything and the Boulevard of Broken Streaks....

-- Jacoby Ellsbury had never hit a game-ending HR. Joe Smith had not allowed a HR since last August 6, a span of 67 games and 57.2 IP. Both streaks died with 2 out in the 9th on Ellsbury's 18th HR.

• Ellsbury never had a game-ending RBI before Tuesday; now he has 2 in a row. He also has 50 extra-base hits, and is 16 for 35 (.457) in the 9th inning this year.
• It was just the 2nd time in his last 29 appearances that Smith was charged with a run. The RHP had held lefties to just 4 for 44 this year before Ellsbury's blow. 
• Boston leads the majors in most measures of production from the leadoff spot -- Runs, RBI, OPS+.

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