Philly 6, @Atlanta 1 (13 inn.) — Atlanta rallied to force extras, but Freddie Freeman flubbed a DP ball, and the floodgates fell open. After Ryan Howard soloed in the 2nd, Cole Hamels and the Phils nursed that 1-0 lead to the 9th. But the weight of history was against them:
The Phillies had never won by 1-0 in Atlanta — nor in Milwaukee, when the team played there. And history is a heavy opponent. Three singles off Jonathan Papelbon tied it, the last one fisted by Andrelton Simmons.
- First time since May 2011 that a home team tied a game at 1-all in the 9th or later, and still lost. Home teams had won their last 10 such games.
- Atlanta couldn’t cash Freeman’s 1-out triple in the 10th. And this seems odd: They pinch-ran for Evan Gattis in that inning, after an IBB. He must have been hurt, no? Gattis has been red-hot this month, and there’s not much value in speed for the trail runner there, is there?
- David Hale was charged with 5 runs in the 13th, for the second straight outing.
- Julio Teheran’s third no-decision this year of 8 IP on one run or less. In his 5 no-D’s: 1.22 ERA, 0.78 WHIP in 37 IP. But not all in vain; Atlanta’s won four of the five.
- Papelbon had converted 15 straight saves since blowing his first.
- Philly’s last 1-0 road win against this franchise was 1944, in Boston — and that took 15 innings, with Charley Schanz going nine scoreless on 2 hits for the relief win. Ron Northey homered off Al Javery, who went the distance — the last 15-IP, CG, 1-0 home loss in MLB history. Since 1914, there’s just two other team losses by 1-0 in 15+ IP settled by a home run, both famous –the Marichal-Spahn duel in ’63 (Willie went deep), and the 22-inning Dodgers-Expos marathon in 1989.
- Philly had played 575 games at this opponent since then, including three in the postseason. They didn’t win by 2-0 in Atlanta until 2010, when Roy Halladay bested Tim Hudson.
- Every other original NL club has at least two 1-0 road wins at this franchise since 1945. Cubs, Pirates and Reds have never done it in Atlanta, but did it in Boston and Milwaukee. Only the Dodgers and Giants did it in all three cities.
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Royals 11, @Tigers 8 — KC hammered Justin Verlander, piled up a season-high 17 hits, and beat Detroit for the first time in six tries this year. Their 8th straight win left them a half-game behind the Tigers, one up in wins. The score is deceptively close, Detroit put up six in the 9th, in Donnie Joseph’s season debut, capped by a 2-out slam, but did nothing after that. The hosts’ only consolation was getting their worst starter out of the way, with three games left in this series.
- Verlander went 15-2 against the Royals through 2012, but 2-4 since.
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@Rays 5, Orioles 4 — Second day in a row, Jerry Sands with a go-ahead pinch hit in the 8th — this one his first homer since 2011. That’s four out of five for the Rays, and their first over Baltimore in six tries; just 7 runs in those five losses.
- Only Sands has two go-ahead events as a PH in the 8th or later this year.
- Kevin Kiermaier is 0-for-9 since being touted in these pages.
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Cubs 5, @Marlins 4 (13 inn.) — What does Game Notes like better than pitchers who hit? Pitchers who pinch-hit! Travis Wood got it done tonight, stepping in with a 2-out double that scored Junior Lake from first base in the 13th. Alas, though — Travis did not stay in for the save.
Tom Koehler took a one-hitter into the 6th, but surrendered three singles and Starlin Castro’s 2-out, 3-run homer, for a 4-all tie. But in my warped view, the game turned in Miami’s 4th, when Koehler bunted foul for strike three with men on the corners. They had Jason Hammel on the ropes, already up 3-0 with six hard hits off him. So what if Koehler’s a terrible hitter? Take a shot! That bunt’s a karma killer, in my book.
- Giancarlo’s 19th — a rope to right that peaked maybe 20 feet off the ground — gave him 136 career homers at age 24, tying Hal Trosky for #17 in that age bracket. Five guys clustered from here to 140, including Joe D., Miggy and Hank (#12).
- Casey McGehee’s ribby single put him on pace for 103 RBI, and 2 HRs. Not since 1943 has there been a 100-RBI year with less than 8 HRs (Billy Herman, 100 and 2). But for more than 100 and less than 5 HRs, it’s 1931 and Pie Traynor, with the exact numbers McGehee is tracking.
- McGehee reached base 5 times, but Garrett Jones went 0-6 with 3 Ks behind him, plus a bags-full force at the plate when it was tied in the 7th.
- Rick Renteria has bowed to the obvious, moving Luis Valbuena into the leadoff spot. Valbuena reached four times tonight, his OBP now at .390.
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@Red Sox 1, Twins 0 — Rubby De La Rosa paced Boston’s first 1-0 win in Fenway since May 2011, two skippers ago. Twins left the sacks full in the 8th against Burke Badenhop, and then Koji put ’em away.
- Since joining the Sox last year, 67 of Uehara’s 117 outings have seen no baserunners, counting the postseason (57%). In the regular season, he has 57 clean outings of an inning or more in that span, 10 more than #2.
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@Mariners 5, Padres 1 — Kyle Seager got it started with a 3-run jack on a 3-and-0 pitch, his first hit (and third AB) on that count.
Why do I note big hits on 3-0 counts? Mike Piazza as a Met just would not swing at a 3-0 pitch, period, whatever the situation. Drove us all nuts. In his 103 Mets PAs that were settled on 3-0 (not counting IBBs), he put one ball in play. In his whole career, Mike had 4 ABs on 3-0 — 2 HRs and a single, before we got him. Of the 64 hitters with 300 HRs since 1988, none had fewer 3-0 ABs than Piazza.
He was a very disciplined hitter, and did massive damage in hitter’s counts; why not 3-0? Frank Thomas was another disciplined hitter who took plenty of 3-0 walks — but when the pitch came where he liked it, he teed off, hitting 11 HRs in 101 ABs, slugging .766. Jim Thome hit 17 HRs in 62 ABs on 3-0; Jeff Bagwell, 11 HRs in 62 ABs; Barry Bonds, 10 HRs in 56 ABs. But Mike gave himself the take sign.
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Will Harris had a rough 8th. Called into a tie game after Joe Thatcher got the first two outs, Harris walked Ryan Braun on four straight, walked Jonathan Lucroy, then a wild pitch. Aramis Ramirez doubled for two, and Khris Davis drove him in. Harris got out of the inning without retiring a man, as Davis was caught stealing.
“Say, uh, Ryan … Didn’t we cover situational baserunning in the pregame meeting, after Carlos messed up yesterday?” (See Sunday notes below.) Tie game with no outs in the 3rd, Braun on second, Lucroy on first. Line drive in the gap that looked like a hit, but Gerardo Parra caught up to it, then caught Braun off second. Where was he going? Wait halfway, don’t break ’til you’re sure it’s falling in — you’ll still score if it does falls. Ah, well, I’m spitting into the wind. Nobody tells a big-leaguer when they messed up any more; it’s just assumed that they already know. And mostly they do.
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@Dodgers 6, Rockies 1 — Four hits for Dee Gordon, with a triple and a walk. He needed that, as his average had slowly eroded to .274.
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More on Sunday’s Action
Rockies 8, @Giants 7 — Colorado rallied to sweep, leaving the Jints in a 1-6 spin after they reached 42-21. They’re good, but I’m pretty sure they’re not the ’86 Mets, the last NL team to win two-thirds of its games.
- Rox have won 5 in a row, beating good teams in their own house, to get back within 2 games of a wild card after a 1-11 swoon.
- Justin Morneau’s pinch-double flipped a one-run margin with two outs in the 8th, with a very close play at the plate. Four pinch-hitters this year have scored WPA of .5 or better, two of them Rockies.
- SF’s home loss despite hitting 3 HRs snapped an 18-win streak in that style, since April 2012. (The prior loss is notable for how the Rockies scored 17 runs: 11 extra-base hits, no homers — one of five such games since 1914.)
- DJ LeMahieu is the 5th this year to score 3 runs without a hit, but just the 3rd in the last 10 years to do that batting 8th. Twenty-six have scored 4 runs without a hit, covering every spot in the order but the last two.
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- Brain cramp? Or did Josh Hamilton really think the throw would go through to third? (Oh, right — that also would be a brain cramp.)
- Five innings, 11 hits, 2 HRs, just 3 runs: Mike Minor tied a record of sorts, set in 1944 by Luke “Hot Potato” Hamlin.
- Minor has allowed 11 hits three times in nine starts. No one else more than two this year; last with four was Edwin Jackson, 2011.
- In Saturday’s LAA-ATL tilt, Mike Trout and Albert Pujols both had 6-2-3-4 box score lines. No other team since 1914 had two such lines in a game — so, no point adding that each had one HR and one double … and batted consecutively … and both homered to left-center in the 6th on an 0-1 count. Just one other game had two such lines: 1950, Cards-Bucs (and not the usual suspects).
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Rays 4, @Astros 3 — David Price has a 3.93 ERA, but a 3.04 FIP, an estimate of what his ERA “should” be given his underlying stats. This particular estimate smells fishy. Price has allowed 15 HRs in 107.2 IP — that’s 1.25 HR/9, and a 3.37 HR%. Just two qualified pitchers with either of those HR-rate minimums ever posted an ERA under 3.10 — Curt Schilling’s 2.98, Steve Trachsel’s 3.03 — and none had an FIP under Schilling’s 3.11. Price’s K/W stats are astounding, so maybe I’m wrong….
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Royals 6, @White Sox 3 — KC’s 7-win streak has put them into a wild-card seat. More encouraging is how they’ve won, averaging 6.4 runs per game, with 9 HRs and .498 slugging, improving on last-place or next-to-last marks in all three categories.
The struggles of Mike Moustakas and Eric Hosmer have been widely noted, but I think their key bats are Alex Gordon and Billy Butler — the two guys in that lineup with proven on-base skills. They need Gordon producing something like his .372 OBP from 2011-12, not last year’s .327, nor his .300 for the first 36 games this year. In the last 32 games, Gordon has a .437 OBP, raising his season mark to .365, and the Royals went 19-13 in that stretch. Butler had a fine .372 OBP over his past 5 seasons, but limped into this month near .300. In the win streak, he’s reached at a .448 clip.
The team’s .311 OBP (next-to-last) is at least as much of a drag on their scoring as the lack of home runs. Gordon is the only regular over .337. They might not be able to fix the power outage, but they can work on their anemic walk total.
- Who is Francisley Bueno, and how does he get so many ground balls? In 30 innings spread over the last 3 years, this KC lefty has a 1.19 ERA and 0.99 WHIP, despite a low K rate. His GB/FB ratio in that time is 1.45; the AL average is 0.81, and just a handful this year are as high as 1.45 with 30+ innings.
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Reds 13, @Brewers 4 — A lack of situational thinking: Carlos Gomez got doubled off first base on a deep catch by Jay Bruce. There were no outs in the 4th, Brewers down 3 runs. The clip doesn’t show much of Carlos, but he must have gone well past second base; Bruce continued running quite a ways after the catch, then turned and threw from the wall. That’s way too aggressive for that situation. If you play safe and it falls, you’re on third with no outs, #6 hitter up. The Crew still came up with 3 runs in the inning, but it could have been more.
- Has Gomez slowed? That’s 8 outs on base, 3rd in the NL. His stolen bases, WAR/baserunning and dWAR are all down this year, and his rate of extra bases taken is a modest 44%.
- Is Wei-Chung Wang’s presence hurting the Brewers’ bench depth? With Tom Gorzelanny coming off the DL Saturday, they’re now carrying 8 relievers, by my count, with four lefties (including Wang). That leaves 4 position reserves. I’m not close enough to know who else they might keep on the bench, but they sure don’t have any bench power: They’re one of two NL teams without a homer by a non-starter, and their pinch-hitters have just one extra-base hit (other NL teams average 6.5 XBH by PH).
