Friday Night Highlights, briefly
Posted by John Autin on June 25, 2011
-- Detroit reliever David Purcey had a streak of 12 straight scoreless innings, but he couldn't put away Wily Mo Pena. The D-backs' temporary DH fouled off a couple of 2-2 pitches, then crushed one 450 feet to LF for a game-winning HR. Pena still misses as much as ever -- he has 8 strikeouts in 15 PAs (and no walks) -- but when he connects, look out.
-- Jordan Zimmermann (7 scoreless IP) had his 10th straight quality start and his 7th straight of 6+ IP and 2 runs or less. Both streaks are the longest by a Nationals pitcher since they moved to D.C. in 2005, matching streaks posted that very year by Livan Hernandez and John Patterson, respectively.
- "Can't anyone here save this game?" The White Sox tied up the game 3 times in their last at bat. Drew Storen gave up a game-tying 3-run HR to pinch-hitter Mark Teahen in the 9th. After the Nats went ahead in the top of the 10th, Todd Coffey's wild pitch scored the tying run in the bottom half. And with 2 outs in the 12th, A.J. Pierzynski hit an 0-2 pitch from Tyler Clippard over the RF wall to tie it up again. ("Mercy," indeed!)
- Washington finally prevailed with 4 runs in the 14th for their 4th straight win and 12th in 13 games. They are now 3.5 games behind Atlanta in the wild-card race.
-- Jason Giambi celebrated his return to the Bronx (and a day in the DH slot) with 3 hits, including a game-tying HR in the 2nd off A.J. Burnett, and the Rox went on to a 4-2 win.
- Ubaldo Jimenez has won consecutive starts for the first time since July 29-August 4 of last year.
-- Ben Francisco's PH single with 2 outs in the bottom of the 9th scored the only run of the game, as Philadelphia downed Oakland, 1-0. The game saw a total of 6 hits, 4 for the Phils. It was the 17th game this year in which both teams had 4 hits or less; 9 have come in June.
- It was the Phillies' first 1-0 win since last Sept. 22, when Roy Oswalt and 2 relievers combined on a 1-hitter against Atlanta. Philly had six 1-0 wins last year.
- The A's were shut out for the 8th time this year, and their 2 hits set a new season low.
-- Pittsburgh used 5 relievers to get the last 11 outs in a 3-1 win over Boston. The Red Sox have lost 3 straight for the first time since a 4-game skid through June 1. They had 13 baserunners, but went 0 for 8 with RISP, and all 9 hits were singles.
- Combined with Wednesday's 10-singles output, it's the first time the BoSox have gone 2 games without an extra-base hit since 2009, and the first time they've done so with 9+ hits since 1931. (Their lineup in those 1931 games, which were both wins over the Browns: Al Van Camp, Hal Rhyne, Otto Miller, Earl Webb, Bill Sweeney, Tom Oliver, Urbane Pickering, Charlie Berry; pitchers were Danny MacFayden and Hod Lisenbee.)
- Pittsburgh has won 3 straight to get over .500 again, and we are required by law to remind you that it's the latest point in any season since 1999 that they've had a winning record.
June 25th, 2011 at 2:50 am
The Nats-ChiSox game is going to have some interesting WPA totals, I think.
June 25th, 2011 at 3:22 am
Jose Bautista hit a go-ahead homer in the 9th as the Jays beat the Cards to snap a 4-game slide. It was his first time homering in consecutive games since May 14-15 against the Twins.
June 25th, 2011 at 3:32 am
Felix Hernandez pitched 8 innings of 2-hit ball as the Mariners beat the Marlins 5-1 in an "away" win at Safeco Field. His 10 strikeouts gives him a league-leading 118 Ks for the season, one ahead of James Shields.
June 25th, 2011 at 4:55 am
The Nationals had 3 blown saves in their game... They literally kept blowing saves until they scored 4 runs - and thus removing the save opportunity.
June 25th, 2011 at 5:57 am
Six Angels were thrown out on the base paths against the Dodgers, including two who were thrown out at first after the catcher threw there after the pitch. An Angel was thrown out at every base in the game. I think Mike Scioscia probably expects better.
June 25th, 2011 at 8:59 am
@4
Interesting factoid, Thomas. Too bad blown saves isn't a searchable stat in the Player Index team pitching game finder to see how often 3 BS has ever happened in one game has happened.
@5
Bip, again, I guess outs on base would have to be a searchable field in order to see how infrequent this is. The box shows two CS and tow PO's. The other two were Abreu trying to score at home from 2nd on a Vernon Wells single and Jeff Mathis trying to go first to third on the back end of a Dan Haren run-scoring single.
@2
Doug, what the others may not be aware of is Jose Bautista'a HR took place in the second at bat after a power outage to the first base light standards at Busch delayed play for around 15 minutes. Leading to all kinds of corny Sportscenter quips like "Bautista restores the power at Busch....." etc.
Also, Doug, Bautista's third (?) opposite-field shot this year?
June 25th, 2011 at 9:36 am
The notable thing about the '31 Red Sox lineups getting zero XBH is that it was THE Earl Webb season - the one where he had an MLB-record 67 doubles. Looking closer at Earl Webb, for a guy who played in the 30's, 6 of the 10 "Most Similar" by Similarity Scores are active players - Hunter Pence, Delmon Young, Andre Ethier, Matt Kemp, Shin-Soo Choo and Corey Hart.
June 25th, 2011 at 10:13 am
Neil L, you certainly can search for most blown saves by a team in a game. Use the regular pitching game finder (not team), set it for blown saves, and most times in a team game:
Generated 6/25/2011.
I just showed some of the most recent 3-BS games.
Raphy did a post on this fairly recently, I will look it up.
June 25th, 2011 at 10:17 am
Ok, first here are two posts regarding multiple blow saves in the same game:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/blog/archives/3320
http://www.baseball-reference.com/blog/archives/6957
And also, as I predicted, there are some crazy WPA values from that game yesterday. Here are the games since 1950 with the most different pitchers (from both teams) having a WPA as bad as -0.30:
Generated 6/25/2011.
June 25th, 2011 at 10:17 am
It's also worth mentioning that AJ Burnett struckout 4 batters in the 6th inning of the NY-Colorado game. In doing so, he became only the second pitcher to ever to accomplish this feat more than once, joining Chuck Finley who struckout 4 in one inning 3 times during his career.
Burnett also became the first and only player to ever accomplish the feat in both leagues.
June 25th, 2011 at 10:30 am
. . . And Burnett became the first and only Yankee pitcher to accomplish the feat.
June 25th, 2011 at 11:01 am
In the top of the 9th inning in the Dbacks/Tigers game, Chris Young was up with one out and the bases loaded.
Kirk Gibson called for the squeeze, Young bunted the ball straight back to the pitcher, who started a 1-2-3 double play.
June 25th, 2011 at 12:17 pm
@8
Thanks, Andy, especially for the instructions. I'm still a relative PI newb. I have trouble knowing which finder to use first ....... obviously, since I couldn't find blown saves.
June 25th, 2011 at 12:24 pm
Combined with Wednesday's 10-singles output, it's the first time the BoSox have gone 2 games without an extra-base hit since 2009, and the first time they've done so with 9+ hits since 1931.
Is that only regulation games or 10+ innings also?
June 25th, 2011 at 1:10 pm
@6 Neil: Yes, that was JBau's third opposite field HR, which is three times as many as all last year.
You can see his HR spray chart here:
http://www.hittrackeronline.com/detail.php?id=2011_1976&type=hitter
To see the 2010 HR spray chart, change the year in the upper right. The URL does not change.
June 25th, 2011 at 1:43 pm
@15
Appreciate it, BJST. Yes, the spray chart is really nice. And with distances to boot.
June 25th, 2011 at 2:44 pm
@16, Neil: Hittrackeronline is part of my daily baseball fix, along with this site, BBB, FG and MLBTR.
June 25th, 2011 at 3:20 pm
Wouldn't want to see you get arrested John!
June 25th, 2011 at 3:26 pm
"and we are required by law to remind you that it's the latest point in any season since 1999 that they've had a winning record"
Will the Pittsburg-0.500 WP watch be on all season long? 🙂
June 26th, 2011 at 12:32 am
@18, Kenh -- Just to be clear, I'm rooting super-hard for the Pirates. When I refer to their stretch of losing seasons, it is out of deep sympathy for their fans.
I used to wear a Pirates cap in my stickball games, for some reason. My teammates called me Johnny Ray for a while....
June 26th, 2011 at 12:34 am
@14, Dave -- That's all games, whatever the length. (FYI, the Streak Finder does not have a "9-innings" filter, as the Game Finder does.)
June 26th, 2011 at 12:36 am
@7, Stephen -- Congrats; I was hoping a reader would make the connection to Webb's 67-double season!
June 26th, 2011 at 12:37 am
@3, Doug -- Good point about King Felix, but he didn't get to hold that K lead very long....
June 26th, 2011 at 12:44 am
@12, Chuck -- Wow, the ol' bases-loaded-squeeze-with-your-cleanup-hitter-for-an-insurance-run trick, eh? Well, I guess you have to pull a surprise play once in a while just to keep yourself young, but my goodness -- that has to be one of the dumbest ploys I've seen in a looooong time.
I guess Gibby was feeling his oats back in the Motor City!