IBWAA members love to write about baseball. So much so, we've decided to create our own newsletter about it! Subscribe to Here's the Pitch to expand your love of baseball, discover new voices, and support independent writing. Original content six days a week, straight to your inbox and straight from the hearts of baseball fans.
Pregame Pepper
Did you know…
Among other things, Aaron Judge has a chance to reach 400 total bases, last achieved by Barry Bonds, Luis Gonzalez, Todd Helton and Sammy Sosa in 2001. He could also become the first player with a .700 slugging percentage since Bonds did it from 2001-04.
Cleveland closer Emmanuel Clase had a 0.69 ERA through his first 65 appearances and 65 1/3 innings. If that holds, he’d rank second to Zack Britton (0.54 in 2016) for the lowest in any season with at least 50 innings pitched.
Fleet Red Sox outfielder Jarren Duran, MVP of the 2024 All-Star Game, could become the first man since Lou Brock in 1968 to lead the majors in doubles and triples.
If Atlanta misses the playoffs after winning 104 games and hitting 307 home runs last year, the chief culprit would be an unrelenting injury wave that idled five position players from their Opening Day lineup for at least two months each plus the elbow brace surgery of star pitcher Spencer Strider, who went 20-5 with 281 strikeouts in 2023 but made only two starts in 2024.
A 5-8 record against woeful Washington didn’t help Atlanta either, especially since the Gnats went 11-16 against the rest of the NL East. The Braves also lost the season series to the Reds, Cardinals, and — are you sitting down? — the White Sox.
Rookie’s rough ride: Mike Baumann, a right-handed pitcher, appeared in games for five different teams in 2024: Toronto, San Francisco, Baltimore, Miami, and Seattle — tying the 2018 record of the unforgettable Oliver Drake (who went to a sixth team within a year immediately after the season ended).
Leading Off
In The Big Inning
By Dan Schlossberg
Arizona’s 14-run explosion in the third inning of its first game this season was not the biggest in baseball history.
In 1952, the Brooklyn Dodgers plated 15 runs in the first inning of a game against Cincinnati at Ebbets Field. And a year later, the Boston Red Sox buried the Detroit Tigers with a 17-run frame that remains the record for a single inning.
Oddly, neither of those were among the 20 times teams plated at least 25 runs in a game since the advent of the American League in 1901.
On August 22, 2007, the Texas Rangers scored 30 runs in a game (30!) against the Baltimore Orioles. Then the Atlanta Braves mauled the Miami Marlins for 29 – a National League record – during the pandemic-shortened season of 2020.
Only the Rangers and Red Sox (29 in 1950) have scored that many runs in a game in the modern history of Major League Baseball.
Not surprisingly, the Red Sox have been involved in four of the high-scoring games. It helps to play in a bandbox ballpark shoe-horned into a section of town with not an inch of real estate left to spare.
Fenway Park’s Green Monster is exactly that – green, as in dollars earned by the Red Sox sluggers who can practically reach out and touch it, and monster, as viewed by the pitchers whose earned run averages routinely take a beating whenever they pitch there.
Just last year, the Braves tied the 2019 record of the Minnesota Twins with 307 home runs. Atlanta had three 40-homer men for the second time, with Matt Olson, Ronald Acuna, Jr., and Marcell Ozuna all reaching that plateau, and two other sluggers in Austin Riley and Ozzie Albies. Now Jarred Kelenic has joined them with Michael Harris II threatening to crash the party as well.
The New York Yankees, dubbed Murderers Row during the heyday of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, only scored 25 runs in a game once – in a 1936 slugfest against Connie Mack’s Philadelphia Athletics. But they never threatened the record for runs in an inning.
Neither did the Queens-based Mets, usually known more for pitching than hitting, who lost to Washington, 25-4, on July 31, 2018 and to Philadelphia by a 26-7 margin on June 11, 1985.
Oddly, the Colorado Rockies cannot be found anywhere on the lists for runs in a game or runs in an inning. They play in Coors Field, where the ball flies despite the best efforts of the humidor to replicate atmospheric conditions at sea level rather than a mile high.
Other active ballparks where the ball flies include Fenway, the oldest ballpark in the majors, and Chicago’s Wrigley Field, where the winds of Lake Michigan can be a pitcher’s friend one day or an enemy the next. Consider the fact that the Cubs hosted a 26-23 game in 1922 and a 23-22 game against the same opponent, the Philadelphia Phillies, years later.
The 49 runs scored on August 25, 1922 remain the most ever produced in a single game. Chicago held a 25-6 lead after four innings but had to hold on for the win.
In 1976, the Cubs led the Phils, 13-2, but Philadelphia came back to win, 18-16, in 10 innings.
None of them were record-setting innings, however.
Ebbets Field is long gone but the memories remain. After that 15-run first inning in 1952, the Dodgers scored only four more times. But that was more than enough to cement a 19-1 win.
When the Red Sox had their 17-run seventh inning in 1953, the final score was 23-3.
This year, Arizona’s outburst came on like a desert monsoon. Yes, the game was at Chase Field in Phoenix, not the notorious downtown Denver bandbox.
The D’backs, a wild-card winner that somehow reached the World Series last fall, needed only 34 minutes to set club records for runs in an inning, hits in an inning, and plate appearances in an inning.
Starting pitcher Zac Gallen actually went to the batting cage behind the home plate dugout to keep loose by playing catch. And he did it twice!
“I’ve never seen each guy get two at-bats in an inning,” he said. “Maybe in Little League?”
Arizona sent 18 men to bat against three Colorado pitchers.
Such explosions seem more likely to occur in Fenway, Philadelphia’s Citizens Bank Park, or Cincinnati’s Great American Ballpark – not to mention Yankee Stadium with its short distance to right field.
As Joaquin Andujar once said when asked to describe baseball in a single word, “Youneverknow.”
Cleaning Up
The Lost Pitchers
By Dan Schlossberg
Trevor Bauer once won a Cy Young Award. Julio Urías won a World Series ring. And Domingo Germán pitched a perfect game less than a year ago.
Yet all three pitchers remain on the outside, looking in, while most of the 30 major-league teams prepare to head into the stretch drive of the 2024 season with patchwork pitching staffs.
Even teams with serious last-minute injuries won’t give the three lost pitchers a second look.
Bauer, a 33-year-old right-hander, has pitched for Arizona, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Los Angeles but ran afoul of the baseball establishment in 2021 when allegations surfaced about his sexual harassment of several women. Placed on administrative leave for 324 games (later reduced to 194), he drew his release from the Dodgers on Jan. 12, 2023. No other player has been hit with a suspension that lengthy except for those banned for life.
A California native who once studied mechanical engineering at UCLA, Bauer led the school to its first College World Series championship. He was the first player from that school to win the coveted Golden Spikes Award, given to the nation’s top collegiate star.
He broke into the majors in 2012 but pitched most recently for the Yokohama DNA BayStars, a Japanese ballclub. He has repeatedly expressed a willingness to sign for the major-league minimum of $740,000 in a contract that would be loaded with incentives.
Bauer never completed the three-year, $102 million contract he signed with the Dodgers in 2021.
On July 2, Commissioner Rob Manfred placed him on administrative leave while his office opened an internal investigation. At the time, he had an 8-5 record and 2.59 earned run average in 17 starts and was leading both leagues with 137 strikeouts in 107 2/3 innings pitched.
Urías, a left-hander who became a free agent after the 2023 season, had spent his entire career with the Dodgers before his off-the-field behavior became a front-page issue.
Signed by the Dodgers in 2012, he broke into the majors four years later, eventually leading the National League in victories (2021) and earned run average (2022).
Like Bauer, however, bad behavior overshadowed his baseball ability. Arrested for domestic battery in 2019, he attended a year-long domestic violence counseling program as a condition for the City of Los Angeles to defer prosecution.
In 2023, however, he was arrested again, this time for felony domestic violence following an incident at a soccer match. Seen assaulting a woman, Urias was placed on administrative leave by MLB just as the season reached Labor Day. The L.A. District Attorney later decided not to pursue felony charges against the pitcher.
Urías never lived up to his one-year, $14.5 million contract for 2023. Although he has a glittering lifetime record of 60-25, he went only 11-8 with a 4.60 ERA last year, when he made 21 starts. Hampered by persistent hamstring problems, the Mexican lefty was only a shadow of the man who led the league in wins and winning percentage during a 20-3 season in 2021 and a 2.16 ERA a year later.
He would pitch at age 27 this year if somebody signs him but, like Bauer, he’s worn out the welcome mat at Dodger Stadium.
And what has become of Domingo Germán?
A right-handed pitcher from the Dominican Republic, he spent most of his six-year career with the New York Yankees, even leading the American League with an .818 winning percentage (18-4 record) in 2019. But he’s only 31-28 and 4.41 –- no great shakes -– for his career.
Originally signed by the Miami Marlins, he was dealt to the Yankees on December 19, 2014 along with with Nathan Eovaldi and Garrett Jones. Going the other way were David Phelps, Martín Prado and cash.
Suddenly last summer –- on June 29 to be precise –- Germán pitched the 24th perfect game in baseball history, blanking the hapless Oakland Athletics, 11-0. He needed only 99 pitches, fanning nine, and banked heavily on a sharp-breaking curveball. Then he threw the Yankees a curve that was even more unlikely.
He had an alcohol-induced meltdown inside the Yankees clubhouse, confronted manager Aaron Boone and several teammates, flipped over a couch, and damaged a TV. That effectively ended the Bronx tenure of the 31-year-old Dominican, whose similar angry outburst early in 2020 led to an 81-game suspension for violating baseball’s domestic abuse policy.
This season, he was picked up and released by the pitiful Pittsburgh Pirates. Could he be history at age 32?
Whether any of the Lost Pitchers returns is subject to conjecture, though teams have grown increasingly weary of injecting controversial players into their clubhouses.
Everybody needs pitching but nobody needs trouble.
Former AP sportswriter Dan Schlossberg of Fair Lawn, NJ has covered baseball since 1969. He writes for forbes.com, Memories & Dreams, USA TODAY Sports Weekly, Sports Collectors Digest, and Here’s The Pitch, among other outlets. The author of 41 baseball books, Dan is promoting his newest project, Home Run King: the Remarkable Record of Hank Aaron [Sports Publishing, 320 pages]. Email him at ballauthor@gmail.com.
Timeless Trivia: O Brother, Where Art Thou?
“Every time I’m in the locker room, I get to hang out with my brother, so it’s a new special moment. Every time I’m out there on the field, every end of inning I get to throw a ball over to him, it’s special. So for me, it’s a new part of the journey every day and I’m super grateful to be able to share these experiences with him.”
— Cleveland catcher Bo Naylor about playing with brother Josh
Not all brother combines are created equal:
Hank Aaron hit 755 home runs to Tommie’s 13 but they hold the record for home runs by brothers . . .
Greg Maddux was a far better pitcher than brother Mike Maddux, best-known for his work as a pitching coach . . .
Joe Torre won a batting title and MVP trophy because of his bat but brother Frank, a better fielder, could hardly hit a lick . . .
Dizzy Dean was better than Daffy, Larry Sherry was better than Norm, Bret Boone was better than Aaron, and Felipe Alou was better than Matty and much better than Jesus . . .
Knuckleballing brothers Phil and Joe Niekro, were nearly equal, though only the former reached the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Know Your Editors
HERE’S THE PITCH is published daily except Sundays and holidays. Benjamin Chase [gopherben@gmail.com] handles Monday and Tuesday editions, Elizabeth Muratore [nymfan97@gmail.com] does Wednesday and Thursday, and Dan Schlossberg [ballauthor@gmail.com] edits the weekend editions on Friday and Saturday. Readers are encouraged to contribute comments, articles, and letters to the editor. HTP reserves the right to edit for brevity, clarity, and good taste.
On June 8, 1950, Tom Ferrick entered a game in which St. Louis was being crushed by the Red Sox, 29-3. After the Sox had scored five times on three homers in the eighth, Ferrick got the last two outs and kept the Browns from being the first team in the twentieth century to give up 30 runs in a game.