Late Wednesday game notes update! |

These would have reached you sooner, but I missed the cutoff man.

Tigers 2, @Mariners 1 (14): In case you didn’t stay up for the slam-bang finish (and didn’t pay your cable bill)….

Smoak has scored from 1st on a double in just 4 of 24 career chances, with 2 outs at the plate.
In a game with 40 whiffs, all hail the mighty groundout! Pena had whiffed in his 2 prior ribby chances; Detroit went 0-for-12 with RISP.
Turning point: Bottom 9th, when the first 2 M’s got aboard, their purely statistical chance of winning reached 81%. Phil Coke came in to face Raul Ibanez, a .203 hitter against southpaws since 2011. Eric Wedge stood pat (really?), and Ibanez hit into a 4-6-3, followed by Justin Smoak’s whiff.
Scherzer has never tossed a complete game, and just once went past 8 innings. He usually hits 100 pitches around the 6th inning.
You saw what happened after I dared to mention Austin Jackson‘s low K rate, right? — 4 whiffs in 7 ABs, against 3 different pitchers.
Prince Fielder fanned 5 times (a personal first) in 6 trips, giving him 9 in 11 PAs over 2 games, including 7 straight. He’s the 5th Tiger since 1916 to sport the Olympic Rings; no shock that Big Daddy‘s on that short list. At least they have broad backs.
Tigers tied their club record with 21 batter whiffs. They won the last one in 14 on the road, on a Mark Salas pinch-HR off Tom Henke. The other time, they fell to a Sudden Sam/El Tiante combo — 21 Ks in just 10 IP.

Padres 7, @Dodgers 2: LA littered the paths with 16 runners, on 10 singles and 6 walks. They’re 4th in OBP but next-to-last in NL scoring. They’ve plated 8% of their baserunners, about half the league average. They’re not hitting HRs (12th with 9), and they’re hitting .171 with RISP.

Combined, Adrian Gonzalez and A.J. Ellis have reached safely 51 times (about a .450 OBP), with 8 doubles and 3 HRs — but have scored 4 runs.
3 HRs allowed by Kershaw for the 2nd time ever (the other was in Denver), including the first of the year for Denorfia and Blanks. Pads began the night with 7 dingers.
Hide the tykes from this ugly Street scene: With a 6-run lead in the 9th, Huston Street gave out two 4-pitch passes.

@Brewers 4, Giants 3: As Marv Albert would say: “Blake … LALLI! From WAY downtown!!”

One year to the day since the Crew’s last PH-walk-off.
Yuniesky Betancourt had your typical line for a combination first baseman/#8 hitter: HR, SF, GDP, IBB.
Sobering news afterwards: Milwaukee has re-signed K-Rod. Just don’t mess with Jimmy Henderson‘s role; the “kid” is all right.

Red Sox 6, @Indians 3: Don’t look now, but the BoSox are on a roll — 5 straight wins, with a total of 8 runs allowed. Only the Braves have a lower RA/G. Tribe got the tying run to the plate with no outs in the 6th — but the Boston pen then crossed out 12 straight batters.

Sawx had 17 baserunners and 19 chances with RISP, with 11 of those in the first 2 innings.
“Mr. Owl … How many hits does it take to score Mike Carp from 2nd base?” Indeed, the world may never know.Carp led off the 2nd with a double, but 2 singles got him only to 3rd, and the Sox never scored in that frame. And then the sequence nearly repeated in the 4th — Carp leadoff two-bagger, 2 singles loaded the bags (this time with 1 out), and again no scratch.
Junichi Tazawa, since 2012: 52 IP, 53 Ks, 5 walks, 2 HRs, 1.38 RA/9. His countryman, Koji Uehara, same span: 42 IP, 50 Ks, 4 walks (1 intentional), 1.49 RA/9.
Red Sox bullpen in save chances: 8 Runs in 6.2 IP. In all other appearances: 8 Runs in 36 IP (2.00 RA/9).

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Doug

11 years ago

For his career, Mike Carp ranks just above the “Mendoza line” for run scoring of 25% of TOB, with 52 runs scored in 205 TOB. These are the guys below the line since 2009 (min. 162 G, excl. pitchers). Rk Player R TOBwe G From To Age 1 Wil Nieves 39 162 187 2009 2013 31-35 2 Garrett Atkins 42 171 170 2009 2010 29-30 3 Humberto Quintero 53 236 274 2009 2013 29-33 4 A.J. Ellis 59 303 229 2009 2013 28-32 5 Yonder Alonso 64 288 239 2010 2013 23-26 6 Josh Thole 65 342 308 2009 2012… Read more »

Those 21 whiffs by Detroit were the third time a Mariners team has fanned as many opponents. The first two were both 12-inning games, on opening day 1996 with Randy Johnson fanning 14 ChiSox in 7 IP and his friends getting the rest. Ditto for Mark Langston and friends against the Tribe in game 156 of the 1986 season.

The most Ks by the Mariners in a 9-inning game are 19, on two occasions, both in 1997 and both by Randy Johnson, in complete games six weeks apart against Chicago and Oakland.

Prince Fielder’s 5 whiffs are the first time for the Olympic Sombrero this season. Sammy Sosa turned this trick 4 times in his career, followed by Ray Lankford with 3 (all in 1998). Ten players have done it twice, including Dick Allen and Mark Texeira. Two Brewers (Ben Grieve, Geoff Jenkins) pulled this off in the same game, in a 1-0 win over Anaheim, on Jun 8, 2004. Likewise, two Angels (Billy Cowan, Tony Conigliaro) were the victims in another 1-0 loss, on July 9, 1971 to Vida Blue and the As. In those two games, Jenkins and Cowan pulled… Read more »

Evil Squirrel

Reply to Doug

Not bad when you can strike out 6 times in a game and still score two runs! No wonder Sam Horn is a baseball legend…

In tonight’s (Thursday’s) 7-2 loss to the Cubs, Matt Cain had his second disaster start (more runs allowed than IP) of the season, 11 days after his first. He now has 18 disasters for his career.

Have no fear, Giant fans – Cain has had these little ruts before with disasters 15 days apart (2010), 11 days apart (2008), and 5 days apart (2006).

In his next start after those two disaster outings in 2006 (and a brief banishment to the ‘pen), he tossed a 1 hitter against the A’s, which I still recall quite well since it rotted on my fantasy bench….

Interesting play the Rockies’ 11-3 romp over the Mets. Jordan Pacheco pinch-hit for pitcher Jon Garland to lead off what would be a 6-run 7th inning for Colorado. The Rockies were still batting when Pacheco’s turn came up again, and he was pinch-hit for by Reid Brignac, who singled to drive in Colorado’s last run of that frame. Had Brignac not been called on to pinch-hit, I’m guessing the box score should have read PH-P for Pacheco, as his second PA would not be as a pinch-hitter. But, apparently I’m wrong, as P-I shows 362 games since 1916 with a… Read more »

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John Autin

Doug, I see your logic, but I still think that until he has another position in the game, he’s a PH for as many times as he bats that inning. Unless you want to come up with a formal name for such 2nd chances….

I see b-ref has added some new pages, including a master page of nicknames (hours of fun there) and a pronunciation guide, which is notable for being something you would never, ever show to a prospective Spanish speaker. Apparently there are three ways to pronounce Blanco.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/friv/baseball-player-nicknames.shtml
http://www.baseball-reference.com/friv/baseball-player-name-pronunciation-guide.shtml

The Rockies are 11-1 against teams not named San Francisco.

Hartvig

The thought of facing Sam McDowell and Luis Tiant in the same game seems almost unfair. The only thing that could have made matters worse would have been if John O’Donoghue had been a knuckleballer, which I’m pretty sure that he wasn’t. Even so the idea of facing Sudden Sam’s blazing fastball 3 times and then there some guy on the mound and it seems like it might have been the first baseman who threw the curveball you just saw and the fastball you about to see will seemingly explode out of his foot…

birtelcom

Current MLB leaders in BBs:
Joey Votto 24
Pujols, Uggla, Wright and Duda 11

The 24 walks has not been topped over a hitter’s team’s first 16 games since Mantle had 27 in the Yankees’ first 16 back in 1962. Rickey Henderson had 24 in Oakland’s first 16 in 1982.

bstar

Reply to birtelcom

I was perusing the leaderboards late last night and Votto’s walk total just slapped me across the face. I wonder how long into a season a walk leader has gone while having over double the total of the second-place guy.

It looks like Barry Bonds came the closest recently to doing this for an entire season. Bonds finished 2004 with 232 walks, 105 ahead of second-place Berkman/Abreu/Helton (127).

Before that, Babe Ruth beat Joe Sewell in the American League 170 to 98 in 1923.