One pitch, one hit
Posted by Andy on June 15, 2008
Lately, we've talked a bit about games where a relief pitcher throws very few pitches and gets one or more outs in a game. Here I am looking specifically at games where a relief pitcher threw just one pitch and gave up a hit.
Let's start out right here, with the list of games where a pitcher threw exactly one pitch and gave up at least one hit, ranked by innings pitched. As you know, pitch data is far from complete, and as a result we get a bunch of bogus entries on this search. Numbers 1 through 5 as well as 7 are all incorrectly listed at 1 pitch, but if you open up the box score you can see that this is not the case. (For this reason, I am not searching for appearances with 0 pitches, as they are tons and tons that incorrectly have 0 pitches listed.)
#6 on that list, though, is extremely interesting. Here's the box score from the game, a match between Oakland and Minnesota from last year that the Twins won, 6-2. Scrolling down to the bottom of the 7th:
Bottom of the 7th, Twins Batting, Ahead 5-2, Joe Kennedy facing 3-4-5 O --- 4 93% J Mauer Groundout: 2B-1B --- 3 95% M Cuddyer Triple to CF (Fly Ball to Deep CF-RF) --3 2 96% J Morneau Hit By Pitch Kiko Calero replaces Joe Kennedy pitching ROO 1-3 1 96% T Hunter Double Play: Single to LF (Line Drive); Cuddyer Scores; Morneau out at 3B/LF-SS-2B; Hunter out at 2B 1 run, 2 hits, 0 errors, 0 LOB. Athletics 2, Twins 6.
So Kiko Calero came in with runners on 1st and 3rd with one out. On Calero's first pitch, Torii Hunter singled, scoring the run from third, then the runner from first was throw out tried to stretch to 3rd base. Meanwhile, Hunter himself tried to stretch to 2nd base and was also thrown out. Now, runs score on double plays all the time, but rarely do we see an "ROO" play where the batter gets credit for an RBI, as Hunter did in this case.
Very weird.
The rest of the games on that list are of a much more common variety, such as can be seen in this game from earlier this season. Jesse Carlson relieved Shaun Marcum with runners on first and second. On Carlson's first pitch, Mark Teahan singled but the runner from second was thrown out at home. One pitch, one out, and then Carlson came out of the game. Of course, there are many more appearances where a pitcher throws one pitch in a game and records and out WITHOUT giving up a hit as well. They are just much less interesting.
June 15th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
How about 2 pitches, 2 HRs?
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYA/NYA200008080.shtml
Jason Isringhausen came into the game in the 9th inning with a 3-2 lead. First pitch...HR Bernie Williams. 2nd pitch...HR David Justice. Game over.
And, of course there's Jeff Nelson, who threw one pitch and got a triple play.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/SEA/SEA199507130.shtml
June 16th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
On May 1st, Brewers relief pitcher, Brian Shouse, got a win. He threw 1 pitch, and then picked off the runner at first base before he threw another pitch. This is Shouse's 2nd win this season where he threw 1 pitch. He also did this feat on April 17th, against the STL Cardinals.
June 17th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
I did some checking and apparently Nelson is the only one (obligatory since 1956) who has 2 more outs than pitches.
Of course many people have 1 more out than pitch, mostly single-pitch double plays. A number of people have 3 outs with 2 pitches, although only Barry Jones did it with only one BF (he took 2 pitches to get a triple play).
Jeff Ballard got 4 outs with 3 pitches. He took one pitch to get a triple play, then took 2 more pitches to record an out the next inning. I couldn't find any other legitimate cases (i.e., where the number of pitches was recorded) with more outs than pitches.
I could find only 10 cases where the number of outs equaled the number of pitches with more than 3 pitches: 4 pitches, 4 outs
(Brian Shouse, Scott Bailes, Bert Roberge, Skip Lockwood),
5 pitches, 5 outs
(Rick Honeycutt, Bob Owchinko),
6 pitches, 6 outs
(Tom Hume, Greg Minton, Adrian Devine, Joaquin Andujar).
Shouse showed up again, and he got his 4 outs with only 3 BF thanks to a double play). Honeycutt also had a DP to get 5 outs with only 4 BF (DP again). None of the four 6-out/6-pitch occurrences had a DP (i.e., they all had 6 BF), and amazingly they were all in 1979; two were 2 days apart and the other two 4 days apart! Not only that, but 3 other of these 10 events were in 1979 (7 out of 10 total)!! Batters sure were impatient in 1979.
In checking game logs, I noticed that extra innings often did not have number of pitches, even if the earlier innings did, which led to many of the spurious results. In the searches above I added extra requirements (like SO=0 or BB=0) to eliminate these cases.
June 17th, 2008 at 6:52 pm
whiz,
Do you think those "6 pitches, 6 outs" box scores are correct? I noticed that in the game below, there were *10* half innings in which no batter saw more then one pitch. I'd be very surprised if that's not an error.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/ATL/ATL197905192.shtml
June 24th, 2008 at 11:52 pm
I'd be most interested in seeing if there's ever been a game in which a pitcher threw ZERO pitches and got a WIN. Imagine a runner on first, 2 out, and a reliever comes in and before throwing a pitch he picks the batter off first. If his team were behind or tied and took the lead in the next half inning, and the pitcher didn't come out to pitch again, he'd get the W without ever having thrown a pitch. That would be sweet. If I knew how to query the database I'd do it... I'll look into it and re-post if I can find out if it's ever been done.
June 25th, 2008 at 12:01 am
OK--
It hasn't happened, at least in the last 50 years. The database querying is really easy once you find the link 🙂
Now every time I see a pitcher come in with 2 outs in a tie game, I'll be rooting for a pick-off before a pitch, followed by an offensive explosion.