On Sunday, David Lough (pronounced “low”) became the 11th player with 4 extra-base hits in a game while batting 8th. Here are some notes on those games. (All game distinctions mentioned are since 1916, the searchable era.)

Win Probability Added: Nine of the 11 games have complete play-by-play accounts (all but Lazzeri and Gordon), and thus have WPA figures. Lough’s performance scored 0.638 WPA, by far the most of the nine. His hits were 3 of the 4 most positive events for the Royals, including the decisive HR in the 8th inning.

• For any order spot, Lough ranks 6th among the 246 regulation four-XBH games (any order spot) for which WPA figures are known. The top mark by far is 1.027 by Joey Votto last May 13: 3 homers, including a 2-out, walk-off, come-from-behind slam. Second is Carlos Delgado’s 4-HR game, the first one making a 3-0 lead, the last 2 tying the game. The lowest WPA in this group was .011 by Al Kaline (sorry, Hartvig!) in 1956, thanks mainly to a bases-loaded, inning-ending DP when the game was still scoreless.
• The highest WPA in extra innings was 1.126 by George Brett: A cycle plus a walk-off HR. (The home 12th featured no Brett hits, but is still my favorite inning in that game, on account of the names and events.)

Notable names: The list includes two Hall of Famers doing it two years apart at the Yankees’ keystone: Tony Lazzeri (1936, near the end of his career) and Joe Gordon (100th game of his debut season). Lazzeri did it in his AL-record 11-RBI game, collecting 3 HRs and a triple — one of 6 such games, most recently by Ryan Braun last April 30. It was Lazzeri’s second 3-HR game, the first coming nine years earlier in a game he split between 3B and SS.

• Gordon was the main #8 hitter for the 1938 Yankees. That spot produced 112 RBI and 61 extra-base hits; all six spots from #3 through #8 generated at least 103 RBI and 56 XBH. Five players on that ’38 team hit at least 20 HRs, the first club with more than three such. Gordon’s 4-XBH burst was in a 7-4 win, matching the fewest runs scored in these 11 contests.
• Another likely HOFer is Miguel Cabrera, who did it in his 11th game (4th-fastest for any batting order position). It’s well remembered that Miggy hit a walk-off HR in his debut, but less so the fact that hits were hard to come by in his first MLB month (.217 in 23 games), partly why he stayed mainly in the 8-hole. Thanks to the blowout nature of his big game, each of Cabrera’s 4 XBH came off a different pitcher, starting with a tiebreaking HR on the first pitch he ever saw from Mike Hampton.

Rarities: Freddie Patek did it with 3 HRs in his last year as a regular (as a member of the Angels, not the Royals). Freddie had hit 37 HRs in 1,582 prior games, never more than one a game. The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract states that Patek was the first shortstop ever to hit 3 homers in a game, which isn’t quite right: Freddie was the first ALer, but Ernie Banks had done that twice, in 1955 and ’57.

• Craig Paquette (not to be confused with Patek) is the only one of these 11 to do it in a loss, the last of Detroit’s 11-game skid to start the 2002 season. (And to think, even worse days were ahead.)
• After Lazzeri in ’38, it didn’t happen again until Jim Mason in 1974. Five of the 11 came since 2000, including…
• Doug Mirabelli was the first NLer in 2000, a game started by Joe Nathan (on Doug’s side) and finished by infielder Tim Bogar, who surrendered Mirabelli’s 3rd double.

Their next-best: The second-best XBH game of these players’ careers:

• 4 — Cabrera (one other time)
• 3 — Lazzeri, Gordon, Patek (a cycle!), Haselman,
• 2 — Mason, R.Miller, Mirabelli, Paquette, D.Miller
• 1 — Lough

Positions: Lough was the first to do it as a right fielder, making seven positions represented on the list (counting Cabrera at LF, where he finished his game). Our lineup still needs a first baseman (Babe Dahlgren had the most PAs batting 8th, by more than 3-1 over the immortal Dutch Schliebner); a DH, if you like (Jeremy Giambi the leader in 8th-place PAs); and a hurler.

• Only one pitcher is known to have had 4 extra-baggers in one contest, and he batted cleanup — and took the loss, on a 10th-inning walk-off RBI by another good-hitting pitcher.

Runs scored: The most scored by these 11 eighth-place hitters was 4, by Lough and three others. The fewest runs was 1, by Damian Miller, scoring only on his HR. He was stranded on three 1-out doubles, but no one complained about Dave Bush‘s poor hitting since he twirled a 4-hit shutout.

• 5 runs is extremely rare for a #8 hitter: There are only 4 such games, including the 30-3 rout from 2007 (with the #7-9 hitters tallying 14 runs). Another was a Larry Parrish 3-HR, “5-5-5-5” game in 1977 — one of his three 3-HR games for the Expos (he had another with Texas). Parrish is the only Expo/Nat with more than one of those. My favorite, though, is this Walt Weiss effort: he scored 5 of the 10 Rockies runs (in San Diego), going 4-4 plus a walk, and snapping a 219-game HR drought that had reached almost 900 PAs.

Postscript: Here’s the only game where teammates each had 4 XBH, which is also the only game where five teammates had 4 hits or more. (And none of them had a cycle!)