Tag: Chicago Cubs

It’s the most wonderful time of the year … except for one thing:

It’s no longer baseball season!

But that’s where we come in. It’s our not-so-solemn duty to get you through these long, chilly, baseball-free months by helping you relive the best of the Strange But True baseball season of 2023. Don’t tell us you already forgot that …

An unforgettable on-base streak ended even though the man who compiled that streak was standing on first base. … And we really did see a real human being steal third base and home on the same pitch. … And a team pitched a no-hitter despite the minor hindrance of also allowing seven runs — in the same inning!

We’re not making any of that up. We spend the whole year keeping track of wacky stuff like this so you don’t have to. So join us now as we relive The Strange But True Feats of 2023 … in five parts. Today’s installment: the hitters … the pitchers … and that Shohei guy who apparently does both of the above!

The Strangest But Truest Hitter of 2023: The Schwarbino

“Can you do me a favor?” Kyle Schwarber asked us one day in late September, though not totally seriously. “Can you write a story that tells people I actually had a good year?”

Sure. Why the heck not? It can be hard to know what to make of a leadoff hitter who finished the season hitting .197 with 215 strikeouts. So allow the Strange But True Feats of the Year column to help with that. It beats calculating those December wind-chill factors.

He’s the most unique leadoff monster of all time! Does it seem kinda Strange But True to see a team look at a .197 hitter who leads the league in strikeouts and decide: “Here’s a good way to win the World Series. Let’s have that guy lead off?”

Well, that’s what the Phillies did with the Schwarbino. On one hand, it allowed him to become the first man in the modern era to roll up at least 500 leadoff plate appearances in a season in which his average never made it to the Mendoza Line. (Previous record for lowest full-season average: .211, by Eddie “Sparky” Lake, for the 1947 Tigers.)

But wait. On the other hand, after the Phillies moved Schwarber into that leadoff spot to stay on June 2, they went 65-41 in games in which he led off. Which means they played like a 99-win team when he occupied the top slot in their lineup. So whatever. That worked! Here’s a perfect Strange But True example of how …

He was a leadoff earthquake waiting to happen! For 108 games in 2023, Schwarber was the first Phillies hitter to step into the box. He got a hit to lead off exactly 21 of those games. He hit a single to lead off only six of those games. So you think that was a problem?

Um, not so much. His OPS leading off games still wound up at 1.056. Does that sound good? It should, since it was merely the highest OPS, as the first batter of the game, in the history of a franchise that has been around since 1883 … because, apparently, all those leadoff walks (21) and leadoff Schwarbombs (11) can also be helpful. Which reminds us: If we just talk about his whiffs and his average, we’re leaving out some stuff!

He was also Ruthian! You know what else apparently can be helpful? Piling up massive amounts of homers (47), RBIs (104), runs scored (108) and walks (126). You know who has had that season? Oh, only Babe Ruth (six times), Mark McGwire (twice), Lou Gehrig, Mickey Mantle, Barry Bonds and Aaron Judge (once). And also …

Kyle Schwarber.

Which meant even more all-time Strange But True stuff was possible. Such as …

He was pretty much as productive as a guy who hit .306! Let the record show that, according to Baseball Reference, Schwarber finished with an OPS+ of 122. And how Strange But True is it for a guy who batted .197 to have an OPS that was still 22 percent better than league average? Well, it’s the highest OPS+ in history by a qualifying hitter whose average started with a “1.” So there’s that. But there’s also this:

Bo Bichette in 2023 — .306 AVG, 123 OPS+
Schwarber in 2023 — .197 AVG, 122 OPS+

How can that be possible? Excellent question. I’m not in charge of OPS+ calculations, but I’m guessing it has something to do with this: The guy who hit .197, amazingly, had a higher on-base percentage (.343) than the guy who hit .306 (.339)! That can happen when one guy draws 99 more walks than the other guy. But nevertheless, here come more Schwarbarian shockers. …

He hit .197 … and still led his team in runs scored! Does that seem hard to do? You should answer yes, because here’s the complete list of players since 1900 who have done that, on any team, with an average below .200, over any full season:

Kyle Schwarber, 2023 Phillies
List ends here — but not this list …

He had 100 more whiffs (215) than hits (115) … but still led his team in runs scored! You’ll love the rundown of all the special offensive forces who have ever finished a season with at least 100 more strikeouts than hits:

Adam Dunn (twice) … Joey Gallo (three times) … Chris Davis (2018) … and Schwarber (2023). What. A. Group. But … how many of those legendary whiffers also had 108 runs scored or led their team in runs (or both)? Here’s that complete list:

Kyle Schwarber, 2023 Phillies
List ends here

Stay out of the WAR Zone — Not surprisingly, Schwarber says even his teammates had all kinds of fun messing with him over his wacky stat line.

“There was a time,” he recalled fondly, “at some point this year, that I was a negative WAR player. So we were all laughing about that.”

Hey, his good news was that, by season’s end, he did in fact climb out of that negative-WAR zone. The bad news was, thanks to glovemanship issues that the WAR gods couldn’t ignore, he climbed to a final figure of only 0.6 WAR. Which meant …

Was it really possible for a man to mash 47 homers and surpass 100 RBIs and 100 runs scored, yet still be worth less than one win above replacement? Eh, we guess so. But had it ever appeared possible before? That would be no.

Incredibly, the only previous, similar monster season to lead to a WAR number under 3.0 was produced by another Phillies masher of some renown — Ryan Howard, in 2008. Somehow, the Baseball Reference WAR room looked at that Howard season — which included a staggering 48 homers, 146 RBIs and 105 runs — and calculated that to be worth just 1.8 WAR. Clearly, WAR can be confusing like that sometimes.

So in the end, did Kyle Schwarber care about his average or his whiffs or his WAR? Nope!

“I mean, did I picture myself doing this, hitting what I’m hitting? No,” he said. “I’m the first to tell you it’s all kind of interesting. … But you know what? At the end of the day, for me, if we’re getting a win, I’m happy.”

Our favorite Strange But True Ohtani-isms of 2023

It’s almost a reflex action to start every Strange But True column with the regularly scheduled Shohei Ohtani highlight reel. But since you’ve been treated to, like, 988 other Ohtani stories in the past week and a half, we’ll let him hit second in this lineup.

Oh, and also: We’ve already dug deep into the wildness and weirdness of that $700 million contract … and compared him to Mookie Betts/Gerrit Cole … and reminded you how many consecutive hits he’d have to give up before his career batting average would drop below the average of Unhappy Hitters Who Have to Face Ohtani. So no need to do that again.

Which means we can just use this space to shake our heads again over our favorite Strange But True Ohtani moments from 2023. Ready? So … on with the Shoh.

He never stopped making Tungsten Arm O’Doyle jokes possible — Do we need to re-tell, for the final time, the origin of the hilarious saga of Ohtani/Tungsten Arm O’Doyle? OK, we’ll make it quick. It began two years ago, with this then-innocent tweet.

every time I see an Angels highlight it’s like “Mike Trout hit three homes runs and raised his average to .528 while Shohei Ohtani did something that hasn’t been done since ‘Tungsten Arm’ O’Doyle of the 1921 Akron Groomsmen, as the Tigers defeated the Angels 8-3”

— ℳatt (@matttomic) May 18, 2021

Now, 2 trillion references later, Tungsten Arm O’Doyle can go down as one of the 21st century’s greatest fictitious legends. And Ohtani now can go up the freeway to Chavez Ravine to leave him in the dust. But in 2023, his last season in Orange County, the Angels kept Tungsten Arm on all of our radar screens, with stuff like this:

• Opening day — Ohtani the pitcher: six shutout innings, 10 strikeouts. Ohtani the hitter: reaches base twice. Tungsten Arm subplot: Angels still lose, 2-1, because … Tungsten!

• Aug. 18 — Ohtani the slammer: Hits a single in the first inning and whomps a grand slam an inning after that. Ohtani the teammate: Watches his team turn its first triple play since 1997 to keep this game tied in the ninth. Tungsten Arm subplot: Angels get an Ohtani slam and a game-saving triple play … and still lose to the Rays, 9-6, because … see above.

• Sept. 3 — Ohtani the track star: Steals his 20th base of the season, in what turned out to be the final time he reached base this year. Ohtani the historian: Becomes the first man in National League/American League history to join the 20-Steal/10-Win Club since the unforgettable Adonis Terry did it for the 1890 Brooklyn Bridegrooms. Tungsten Arm subplot: Angels still lose, 10-6, to an Oakland team that was 54 games under .500, because, clearly, this was their final chance to get Tungsten Arm O’Doyle into the fake headlines … so the baseball gods demanded they make it count.

Ohtani, the tri-cyclist — Back on May 9, 1918, someone named Babe Ruth went 5-for-5, with a triple, a single and three doubles, while pitching into extra innings before finally losing to Walter Johnson. The Babe never had another game with a single, double, triple and any pitches thrown. But on April 27, Ohtani had a game like that, in a win over Oakland. Here’s why we mention it:

He was the first pitcher with a single, double and triple in any kind of game in 36 years (since Danny Darwin did it in 1987) — and only the third in the past six decades. You know who didn’t have any games with a single and double and triple this year, despite the fact that they weren’t distracted by having to throw a single pitch? Oh, only Ronald Acuña Jr., Mookie Betts, Julio Rodríguez, Bobby Witt Jr. and about 1,000 other guys who otherwise appear seriously multi-talented.

Ohtani, the box-score filler-upper — Then there was June 27. Ohtani the pitcher: Faces 24 White Sox and strikes out 10 of them. Ohtani the hitter: Takes three swings all night … and gets three hits, two of them homers.

Here, at no extra charge, is your handy-dandy list of dudes in the division-play era with a double-digit strikeout game and a multi-homer eruption in the same game: Rick Wise (1971), Madison Bumgarner (2017), Zack Greinke (2019) and … Ohtani.

Ohtani, the 493-foot delivery man — Then, three days after that two-homer, 10-K game, a man who had a better strikeout ratio than Gerrit Cole this year launched a home run that was projected by Statcast at 493 feet, but actually, according to NASA scientists we just made up, reached Earth’s orbit. Don’t believe us? You can watch it! (And you should.)

Ohtani, the all-time twin-bill king — Finally, what do you say we salute the greatest doubleheader performance in baseball history (as declared by Strange But True World HQ, acclaimed as the ultimate authority on this subject, as of two sentences ago)?

July 27 in Detroit. Ohtani the pitcher: Throws a one-hit shutout in Game 1 of this doubleheader. Ohtani the hitter: Mashes two home runs in Game 2 of this doubleheader.

Question from those of us who write Strange But True Feats of the Year columns: Who the heck does this? Who the heck has ever done this?

The answer, according to the Elias Sports Bureau (via MLB.com’s resident Ohtani historian, Sarah Langs): That would be nobody, of course. How many men have ever thrown any kind of shutout in one game of a doubleheader and hit even one homer in the other game of a doubleheader? One man — named Shohei.

But a one-hit shutout in Game 1 and two home runs in Game 2? That’s not something you would expect to see in the major leagues. That’s out of the Marvel Superhero League.

Special bonus note from Langs: The last human before Ohtani who twirled a shutout in one game of a doubleheader and then started at any other position in the other game? George H. (Bambino) Ruth, on July 17, 1918. But no home runs for the Bambino that day!

Christmas special Strange But True Ohtani video treat — What can’t Shohei Ohtani do? If you watch this video, it’ll be obvious that the answer is: Not a freaking thing.

Nice Catch Sho! ✅
Shohei Ohtani catches his own helmet while at bat in Anaheim. Atta Boy! 🤩#大谷翔平 #Ohtani #Angels #GoHalos pic.twitter.com/5m2Hy0lDvG

— Anaheim Sports (@AnaheimSports1) May 7, 2023

Our 10 favorite Strange But True Hitting Feats of 2023

WITHOUT A TRAYCE — Just as we all expected, the first three-homer game of 2023 didn’t come rocketing off the bat of Aaron Judge or Matt Olson. Instead, it was the work of the Dodgers’ Trayce Thompson, a man whose brother (Klay) is slightly more famous for his 3-pointers than he is.

Nevertheless, in his first start of the season, on April 1, Trayce became the first Dodger in history to stuff a grand slam, three-run homer and solo homer into the same box score … and then … to make sure columns like this remain in business … that same guy went 40 days between hits (April 19 to May 30) … batted .148 over the rest of the season … and hit as many big-league home runs over the next six months as he hit that one day … because baseball!

THEIR SECOND FIRST ACT — In an April 13 visit to Yankee Stadium, the Twins just might have fired off the Strangest But Truest back-to-back homers ever. You know what their Nos. 1-2 hitters, Edouard Julien and Carlos Correa, did that day? They went back-to-back in the first inning. But that’s not the Strange But True part … because that has happened before.

You know what had never happened before? That would be a team’s 1-2 hitters going back-to-back in the first inning … but not to lead off the game. Turns out it’s helpful to feats like this if their teammates work a convenient little nine-run first-inning bat-around into their busy schedule. Whaddaya know.

FEEL THE PINCH — In baseball, as in life, it’s never just about how it starts. It’s about what happens when you enter the game. For more proof of that profound, age-old saying, which the great philosophers have been sharing since, oh, about half a paragraph ago, you should look at the 2023 stories of Elias Díaz and Andrew Knizner.

• Elias Díaz is a catcher for the Rockies. He turned 33 years old last month. And since the rules required somebody on the Rockies to be an All-Star, that somebody was him.

Remember his huge All-Star moment? How ’bout a game-winning, lead-flipping pinch home run to hand the NL the All-Star game. Awesome. But here comes the Strange But True part:

Pinch-hit All-Star home runs — one … in one swing.

Pinch-hit regular-season home runs … in 15 pro seasons, nine big-league seasons and 2,166 trips to the plate — zero!

Timing truly is everything.

• Andrew Knizner has spent most of his five-year big-league career as Yadi Molina’s backup catcher in St. Louis. But on May 17, quite the Strange But True plot line busted out. One minute, he was pinch running for Paul Goldschmidt (look it up!) in the eighth inning of a 9-1 game. Next minute, the Cardinals were batting around … and then this happened.

What you just saw was A Man With No Position smoking a grand slam. And only two other players in the past 65 seasons have done that. One was Rajai Davis in 2008. The other (Gene Stephens) did it in 1959 after pinch running for Ted Williams. But that isn’t even the Strange But True part.

The Strange But True part was that Andrew Knizner, a man who has never hit a slam while actually playing a position, hit this slam off Mike Brosseau, who doesn’t normally give those up because he’s an infielder. Which means … a guy with no position pounded a grand slam off a position player. And if you’re not more grateful than ever now for these Strange But True Feats of the Year columns, I don’t know how you made it this far into this one.

PLEASE IGNORE THE VIDEO EVIDENCE — A classic Strange But True thing happened to Padres shortstop Xander Bogaerts on May 3: His career-high 30-game on-base streak was broken despite the weird technicality that he was standing on first base when it ended.

Geez, it sure wasn’t his fault. He hit what looked like a single to right field. It wasn’t caught in the air by an outfielder, just like most hits. But unfortunately for him, the most confused man in San Diego happened to be his teammate Juan Soto. … Who missed the part where the baseball bounced … and hustled back to first base … where he found Bogaerts wasn’t as happy as usual to see him.

And that’s how a man who was standing on a base saw his on-base streak disappear, right before his eyes. However many times Bogaerts wondered in 2023 why he ever left Boston, we’re guessing that was one of them!

NICKEL BACKS — Is Five Hit Fever something a guy could catch just hanging around the batting cage? We ask because Marlins hit machine Luis Arraez definitely caught it this June. How Strange But True is this:

Arraez in June: three five-hit games in 16 days.

Miguel Cabrera in his 21-year career: two five-hit games in 2,797 games.

Strange but 100 percent true.

But we also asked about Five Hit Fever because of …

The Angels: They mysteriously went five years — despite employing Mike Trout and Ohtani for all five of them — without having any stinking hitter on the roster figure out how to get five hits in a game … until Hunter Renfroe finally unfurled their first quintuple since 2018 in a June 24 blowout of the Rockies. How even? But wait, Here comes the …

Strange But True Epilogue: So how long after that would it take for an Angel — any Angel — to deliver their next five-hit game? It was quite the wait … of two batters … until Mickey Moniak got his fifth hit of the day in that same inning. Because … Five Hit Fever! Catch it.

THE WILD BLUE YAN-DER — If you’re familiar with the work of Cubs catcher Yan Gomes, you’re probably aware he’ll never be confused with Usain Bolt, let alone Dee Strange-Gordon. But in the Strange But True world we live in, anything is possible, even for a man who ranked 449th in the majors this year in average “sprint” speed.

So naturally, on July 20, at age 36, Gomes did something no catcher his age (or older) had done in the past 95 years: He hit two triples in one game! But that’s not all, because he actually hit triples in two plate appearances in a row. Now here are two reasons we might be interested in something like that:

1) How many other catchers hit two triples in a game not just this year, but the year before that … and the year before that … and the year before that? Anybody out there guess none? Excellent guess!

2) How many triples has Gomes hit on any of the 201 other days he has been allowed to play baseball by the Cubs over these past two seasons? That, too, would be none … in 708 trips to the plate.

But in the middle of all that, this same guy smacked a triple in two at-bats in a row? C’mon. How can you not love the total random wackiness of …

Baseball!

IT’S ALL CYCLICAL — We could have worked the Reds’ human tool kit, Elly De La Cruz, into this column about 12 different ways. Did you know he hit a baseball this year harder (119.2 mph) than any ball hit by Aaron Judge? That seems like a cool thing to do for the fastest dude on the field.

But that’s not even what De La Cruz is doing in this sentence you’re currently reading. Nope. How about this:

On June 23, he hit for the cycle — in the 15th game of his career.

On July 8, he stole for the cycle — by stealing second, third and home in the same inning.

And even though stealing for the cycle is a thing we just invented, it’s still a thing you need to be in awe of, if only because he also stole third and home on the same pitch.

3D tracking — Elly De La Cruz steals third and home on the same pitch

Elly strobed every 1 second starting with the pitcher’s first move pic.twitter.com/bjbmgjnk5H

— David Adler (@_dadler) July 9, 2023

Last Red to steal for the cycle — Greasy Neale, in 1919!

Last Red to hit for the cycle — Eric Davis, in 1989, which meant all the other teams had fit 110 cycles in between Reds’ cycles!

Players in the live-ball era to do both 15 days apart (or quicker) — Elly De La Cruz … and that’ll do it for that list.

Other players in the past 98 seasons who did both in the same year — Exactly one, and it was … um … Wil Myers? He did it in 2017. But that, in this case, is not the Strange But True part.

Because you know what else happened the day De La Cruz hit for the cycle and started all this? The Reds released a guy named … Wil Myers!

VLAD YOU STOPPED BY — Don’t ask us how Vlad Guerrero Jr. didn’t make this column just for fielding a groundball in May, getting the baseball stuck in the webbing and then flipping the whole glove to the pitcher for an out that proved, once again, your glove will not let you down. Except that wasn’t even his Strangest But Truest feat of that week.

Just your ordinary, super casual 3-1 groundout 😅 pic.twitter.com/ZVeDIMwBb6

— Toronto Blue Jays (@BlueJays) June 1, 2023

For his greatest Strange But True classic, we take you to May 23 in Tampa Bay, when one of the goofiest games of the season busted out … in large part thanks to Vlad.

Ever heard of a team scoring nine runs in one inning — all against position players masquerading as pitchers? That. Really. Happened. In the ninth inning of that game. For the first time in the history of this sport.

And the “pitcher” who was responsible for most of that carnage was Rays first baseman Luke Raley. But in the midst of all those rockets Raley was serving up, he at least shared this nutty little moment with the fearsome Vlad Guerrero Jr., right after taking the mound in the eighth.

Luke Raley strikes out Vlad Guerrero Jr.! pic.twitter.com/d856XYH5tW

— Bally Sports Sun: Rays (@BallyRays) May 24, 2023

So Vladdy could have made the Strange But True Feats of the Year just for that, except … have we mentioned there was a nine-run ninth inning in this game? … So what were the odds of the Jays’ lineup turning and turning and turning … until here came Vlad to bat again in the ninth inning … only to find Raley still pitching, with the bases loaded? Want to guess what happened in the rematch? Yeah, it did.

Does it get much Stranger But Truer than a guy striking out and mashing a slam in the same game against the same position player? That would be hard seeing how it had never, ever happened … until Guerrero showed up at home plate.

SUSPENDED ANIMATION — What’s even stranger (but truer) than a Mookie Betts 5-for-5 game? How about a suspended Mookie Betts 5-for-5 game!

That’s a thing that happened during the Dodgers’ August visit to Cleveland. And here’s the part that propelled it into this column:

Aug. 23 — Mookie goes 2-for-2 (with two singles) before half a billion raindrops cause a slight intermission in his hot streak.

Aug. 24 — Mookie gets three more hits (single, single, double) after the game finally resumes.

All right, now here’s what makes that a Strange But True all-timer: For the rest of time, history will try to convince us that Mookie had a five-hit game on Wednesday the 23rd … even though many human witnesses exist who could tell you that three of those hits actually met the bat on the “wrong” day (Thursday the 24th).

So how Strange But True was that? So strange that, according to our friends from STATS Perform, only one other player since 1901 has ever gotten five hits or more in a suspended game … with more than half of them coming on the “wrong” day. But the other (Tom Paciorek) did it in a 26-inning game (on May 8-9, 1984). Which would be 17 more innings than it took Mookie Betts — our official Strange But True Time Traveler of 2023.

WE’VE GOT YOUR NUMBER — The Braves’ whole season could have made this list, because in case you missed it, they somehow had a higher slugging percentage as a team (.501) than bashers like Bryce Harper (.499), Rafael Devers (.500) and José Ramírez (.478) had by themselves. But instead, we’re going to zone in on Aug. 12, our favorite Braves Strange But True day of the year.

They scored 21 runs in Game 1 of a doubleheader against the Mets that day. But that wasn’t the Strange But True part. The Strange But True part was how they divvied up those 21 runs. By which we mean they had …

One guy with one RBI (Ronald Acuña Jr.).

Another with two RBIs (Sean Murphy).

Another with three RBIs (Austin Riley).

Another with four RBIs (Matt Olson).

Another with five RBIs (Nicky Lopez).

And yet another with six RBIs (Ozzie Albies).

Which meant everyone else who played had no RBIs. And that caused way too many of you to say to yourselves: Hmmm, could that ever have happened? And also: You know who we should ask? The Strange But True column!

So we reached out to the great Katie Sharp of Baseball Reference to look into that very question. On one hand, she did find one team that ran off that 1-2-3-4-5-6 RBI box-score trick. On the other hand, that team was Kiki Cuyler’s 1925 Pirates (against St. Louis on June 22, 1925). Which means it happened as recently as 98 years ago.

But wait. That team actually had two players with two RBIs and two players with one RBI. So you know what that means? It means that, since RBIs became an official stat in 1920, this Braves game was the first time in history that six hitters on one team went 1-2-3-4-5-6 in the RBI column … while nobody else on their team was driving in any runs. And that, for all of you who played 1-2-3-4-5-6 in the Powerball that night, is why we love …

Baseball!

GO DEEPER

Are the Braves the greatest offense in baseball history? They’re making quite a case

Our 10 favorite Strange But True Pitching Feats of 2023

FOUNTAINS OF WAINO — We’ll miss Adam Wainwright. This is, after all, a column dedicated to mixing fun with all the beauties of baseball. And we can’t think of any player, over the past two decades, who got that concept any better than the Cardinals’ curveball king.

So what was more perfectly Strange But True than the 200th and final win of Wainwright’s wonderful career? Here’s what made it the kind of game Strange But True Feats of the Year columns latch onto:

• He spun seven shutout innings — for his only scoreless start of the year.

• He won this game, 1-0 — for his first 1-0 win in nine years.

• His catcher, Willson Contreras, hit a home run to drive in the only run — the first time he’d ever done that as a Cardinal. But now let’s keep going, because we’ve barely scratched the surface of the Strange But Trueness.

• Back on Opening Day of the 2014 season, Wainwright won the 100th game of his career. He went seven shutout innings in that game, too. But hold on. There’s more.

• How do you think the only run scored in that 100th win? Would you believe on a home run by his catcher, Yadi Molina? Yep, the same way he won No. 200.

• But wait. There’s still more. How many other pitchers in history have ever won their 200th game 1-0 on a home run by their catcher? Right. That would be none.

• And how many other 1-0 games in Wainwright’s career did he win on any kind of RBI by his catcher? Right. That would also be none.

Baseball. It’s the best.

NUMBER SCRUNCHING — In baseball, we love big numbers. But here at Strange But True World HQ, we also love little numbers. The littler the better, in fact. So here’s a toast to these tiny numbers from 2023.

1 — Does it seem impossible for a pitcher to record a one-pitch strikeout? Ha. Are you familiar with the weirdness of baseball? All it took for Phillies reliever Jeff Hoffman to pull that off, back on July 28, was about three trillion raindrops in Pittsburgh. Then he marched in after a rain delay, inherited a 1-2 count on Jared Triolo, got him to swing through a slider and voila!

We have a one-pitch strikeout in Pittsburgh for Jeff Hoffman, thanks to all those raindrops! pic.twitter.com/VdSspudMmm

— Jayson Stark (@jaysonst) July 29, 2023

3 — Do first innings get any neater or cleaner than the three pitches it took Giants starter Anthony DeSclafani to zip through his first inning on May 28 against the Pirates? Wait. Don’t answer that too swiftly.

Three pitches. Three outs. But also … one extra-base hit (by Tucupita Marcano, on the first pitch of the game). Luckily, the next two pitches went: Line-drive out … fly-ball double play. The most baseball thing ever.

0 — Finally, hard as we’ve been trying not to pick on the Mets in this column, it doesn’t get much Stranger Than Truer than a walk-off balk, issued by a pitcher (Josh Walker) who threw zero pitches. But that was the Mets season in glorious micro-Met-rocosm.

Here’s that deal. Walker rolls in to relieve Grant Hartwig in an Aug. 1 tilt with the Royals. Tie game. Two outs in the 10th. Leans in for the sign. His PitchCom glitches out. And … oh no!

The umps called a balk to score the walkoff run in extras despite the Mets arguing that they were having pitch on issues pic.twitter.com/mJvCHmrIjp

— Talkin’ Baseball (@TalkinBaseball_) August 2, 2023

We’ve been keeping track of pitch counts for the past 36 seasons. In the 80,000 games or so in those 36 seasons, only one other pitcher has ever managed a no-pitch “balk-off” to end any game: Mike Stanton, for the Nationals, on July 15, 2005. But whatever it took in 2023, it felt as though the Mets were gonna find a way to Met!

CRAZY EIGHTS — Who had a Stranger But Truer 2023 than Lucas Giolito? It was wacky enough that he ping-ponged from the White Sox to the Angels to the Guardians in a mere 36 days. But that wasn’t even the Strange But True part.

The Strange But True part was he found a way to allow at least eight runs in a game for all three of those teams. The “good news” for Giolito: He was not the only guy ever to do that for three different teams. But the bad news was, the last pitcher to do it was Bill McGee … in 1899!

DOMINGO’S PERFECT STORM — If baseball made any sense, all perfect games would be thrown by true aces. So if Gerrit Cole, Justin Verlander or Clayton Kershaw are ever in the mood to go 27-up, 27-down some day, we’re cool with that. We’d even sign off on occasional guest perfectos by Corbin Burnes and Max Scherzer — because at least we could understand how that’s possible.

Instead, we are continually reminded that baseball makes no sense. And could there be any more proof than this: The only perfect game of the past decade was authored this season by world-famous non-ace Domingo Germán of the Yankees. And can we all agree that’s just ridiculous?

Six days before Germán’s perfecto (June 22 versus Seattle) — He faces 23 hitters, gives up 10 runs, gets only 10 outs and never even retires three in a row! (The attractive box-score line: 3 1/3 IP — 8 H, 10 R, 8 ER, 2 BB, 4 K, 4 HR, 93 pitches to get 10 outs!)

Six days later (June 28 at Oakland) — The same human faces 27 hitters, gets all 27 of them out! (The much more presentable line: 9-0-0-0-0-9, 97 pitches to get 27 outs!)

We were so befuddled by this, how could we not ask our friends from STATS if it was as illogical and unprecedented as we suspected? The answer: Well, you could probably guess the answer.

This was baseball’s 20th perfect game since 1909. There was one slight difference between German’s gem and the other 19: He was the only one who faced at least 23 hitters in the previous start and never once retired three in a row … because of course he was!

THE LORENZEN EXPRESS — At least Domingo Germán didn’t throw any other no-hitters this year … but Michael Lorenzen did … because why the heck not! He was traded by the Tigers to the Phillies on Aug. 1. He no-hit the Nationals eight days later.

No need to mention that after the no-hitter, his ERA over the final two months was 8.01. Doesn’t matter. He no-hit his way right into the Strange But True Feats of the Year column. Here’s why:

Steve Carlton — spent 15 years pitching for the Phillies, won four Cy Young awards, led all left-handers in baseball in WAR over those 15 seasons, made the Hall of Fame … and pitched zero no-hitters.

Michael Lorenzen — had spent eight days as a Phillie, had never thrown a pitch for the Phillies in Philadelphia before that night, was out of the rotation five weeks later … but has achieved trivia immortality as the answer to a version of this question: Who’s the only Phillie to pitch a no-hitter in Philadelphia since Roy Halladay?

Wow. Baseball. Is it amazing, or what?

DREAM WEAVER — You should know that Luke Weaver did not throw any no-hitters for the Reds this year (or for his other two teams — the Mariners and Yankees — either). But he, too, did exemplary work in proving our recurring thesis about baseball: It. Makes. No. Sense.

On one hand … From May 31 to July 8, Weaver made eight starts for the Reds. You decide how that went.

• His ERA: 8.66

• Slash line of hitters he faced: .342/.392/.613

• What that means: He basically turned the entire league into 2012 Miguel Cabrera (who hit .330/.393/.606 that year).

So that was a disaster, huh? Um, don’t answer yet, because …

On the other hand … how’d the Reds make out in those eight starts? Would you believe …

They went 8-0!

You’d think we were making that up, right? And then you’d remember … this is the Strange But True Feats of the Year column!

BOX-SCORE CORNER — You don’t need us to point out that certain trips to the mound are Strange But True material. You just need to consult the box scores. They tell you all you need to know about games like this …

Ben Lively, Aug. 1 at Wrigley — In the Cubs’ 20-9 thrashing of the Reds, Lively was more like Ben Deadly:

4 IP, 13 H, 13 R, 13 ER, 2 BB, 2 K, 4 HR, 1 HBP, 94 pitches to get 12 outs!

So what’s up with that? You know how hard it is to give up 13 hits and 13 earned runs but not even get 12 outs? Nobody had done that since Les (not a McDonald’s entrée) McCrabb … on April 16, 1942! … But you know how much harder it is to give up 13 earned runs and four homers? So hard that, since earned runs became an official stat more than a century ago, just one pitcher has done that. His name: Ben Lively.

Luis Cessa, April 16 versus the Phillies — We’re not sure how this column turned into a Reds Rotation’s Greatest Hits collection. But it wouldn’t have been possible to compile these Strange But True Pitching Feats of the year without this sparkling start by Cessa:

3 IP, 14 H, 11 R, 11 ER, 3 BB, 0 K, 1 HR, 1 HBP, 1 WP, 88 pitches to get nine outs.

So what’s up with that? Before we could even look this up, loyal reader Allan Wood beat us to it. You know how many pitchers since 1900 have given up that many runs and that many hits but not even gotten 10 outs? Just one. Right … Luis Cessa.

Josh Fleming, May 28 versus the Dodgers — Meanwhile, in non-Reds box-score developments, Fleming’s final start of the year for the Rays was a classic in more ways than one:

6 IP, 12 H, 10 R, 8 ER, 2 BB, 3 K … and 5 HR!

So what’s up with that? Ha. Trick question. You won’t believe it. Yes, this man gave up 12 hits, 10 runs and five looonnnggg balls — but it was all worth it. Not just because he saved the bullpen, but also because … his team won (11-10)! He’s the first pitcher to get bruised for that many runs, hits and homers in a game his team won since the legendary Dodger, Ralph Branca, was allowed to stick around for all nine innings in a scenic 17-10 game in Pittsburgh on June 25, 1949.

CUT TO THE CHASE — Every trip to the mound at Coors Field is an opportunity, all right — an opportunity to wind up in the Strange But True Feats of the Year column. So congratulations to Chase Anderson, for doing his part in a messy little 25-1 loss to the Angels on June 24.

Here is how he kicked off a fun little 13-run third inning that day:

First pitch — Mike Trout home run.

Second pitch — Brandon Drury home run.

Third pitch — Matt Thaiss home run.

That’s three pitches, three home runs. And you don’t see that much. In fact, home runs on three pitches in a row, at any point in any inning, is a thing that’s happened only one other time to any active pitcher … and it was the same pitcher.

No kidding. Back on Sept. 17, 2020, when Anderson was a Blue Jay, he served up three in a row to the Yankees in the fourth inning. And that would make no sense at all, except it’s …

Baseball!

NO-HIT PANDA-MONIUM — We don’t ordinarily take these Strange But True expeditions into the wilds of the minor leagues. But we’re making an exception here for the beloved Rocket City Trash Pandas, of the always-entertaining Double-A Southern League, because …

The good news: On April 9, the Trash Pandas did one of those things that are supposed to feel like a dream come true — by throwing a no-hitter, in an all-time minor-league classic, against Chattanooga. But now comes …

The not quite as good as that news: They managed to throw that no-hitter and lose, which doesn’t happen much, even in the Southern League. And that isn’t even the Strange But True part, because you should definitely read on to …

The not even as good as that last thing news: They pulled off the rarified feat of throwing a no-hitter … and allowing seven runs … but also … allowing all seven of those runs in the same inning.

How Strange But True is it to give up seven runs in a no-hitter? Oh, you know. No big-league team has ever done it. And the only other time it’s known to have happened in the minor leagues was Aug. 31, 1948, in the late, great Pony League, when Louis Blackmore of the Wellsville Red Sox did it in a game in which there wasn’t much need for anybody to get a hit … since he also sprinkled in 17 walks that day!

So is that how the Trash Pandas did it? Eh, not exactly. Their attractive seven-run inning … in the middle of a no-hitter, remember … went like this:

Walk … walk … infield-fly rule popup (one out) … walk … strikeout (two outs) … walk (one run) … three-run error on the center fielder (four runs – oops!) … new pitcher … hit-by-pitch … hit-by-pitch … hit-by-pitch (five runs) … walk (six runs) … run-scoring wild pitch (seven runs) … hit-by-pitch … strikeout (three outs).

So what are the odds of giving up seven runs in a no-hitter, no matter how many innings it takes? This took some math. But here goes …

In the last 105 big-league games in which a team gave up no hits, you know how many runs those 105 teams gave up? That would be six — in all 105 of those games combined! But somehow, the Trash Pandas gave up seven … in one inning. And if you’ve never seen anything like that, we can help with that too!

90 seconds of how to NO HIT a team…but give up 7 RUNS and lose. 😳 pic.twitter.com/aClXzUfyJS

— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) April 9, 2023

GO DEEPER

Weird & Wild: Marveling at the Trash Pandas’ no-hitter loss and the Rays’ winning streak

THE GHOST OF HARVEY HADDIX — But the Milwaukee Brewers don’t need to check in with any Trash Pandas to know that throwing a no-hitter can be overrated. They lived it Sept. 10 — in one of the Strangest But Truest games of any year.

For nine innings that day, Corbin Burnes and Devin Williams no-hit the Yankees in the Bronx. Then reliever Abner Uribe stomped out of the bullpen and made it 10 hitless innings. If the Brewers had just remembered to score a run or 12 in those 10 innings, they’d have had a way better time.

Instead, this game kept going — through the 11th inning, through the 12th inning, into the 13th inning — during which … the Yankees went from getting no hits in any inning to getting at least one hit … and scoring … in every inning, from the 11th through the 13th, because … it’s baseball … and … it makes no sense.

So on a day when the Brewers gave up no hits for 10 innings, they still lost, 4-3. And how Strange But True was that? You’ve come to the right place.

On one hand … teams that spin off nine hitless innings tend to win a lot. In the division-play era (1969-2023), 150 teams have pitched exactly nine innings of hit-free, run-free domination in either a regular-season or postseason game. The record of those teams is a perfect 150-0. OK, sure.

Or 10 is also cool … because no team in the modern era has pitched exactly 10 hitless, scoreless innings in a game and lost, either. The record of teams that do that: 4-0 … as we’d all expect. However …

On the other hand … here comes the Strangest But Truest no-hitter fact ever: No team has ever taken a no-hitter into the 11th inning … and won that game! This is true. Those teams are now 0-4. Really.

So if your favorite team ever finds itself throwing a no-hitter in the 11th inning, don’t say we didn’t warn you. It may seem like a beautiful thing while you’re watching it. But in reality, it’s more dangerous than you think, just because it’s …

Baseball!

(Top photo of Kyle Schwarber: Rich Graessle / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Nine weeks from today, we’ll find out who gets to live out the weekend of a lifetime next July in magical Cooperstown, N.Y. Spoiler alert: Adrián Beltré’s friends and loved ones had better make those dinner reservations ASAP!

But there were 25 other names on the 2024 Baseball Hall of Fame ballot that was announced on Monday. And when I looked over those names, I could already see the storylines forming in my brain.

So here they come — my Five Things to Watch on the latest, greatest Hall ballot.

1. Can Adrián Beltré make ballot history?

Could Adrián Beltré really become the first position player to get elected to the Hall of Fame unanimously? It’s a fascinating question to contemplate, isn’t it?

Derek Jeter missed by one vote. Ken Griffey Jr. missed by three. Ty Cobb was four away. Cal Ripken Jr. was eight away.

Babe Ruth wasn’t unanimous. Willie Mays wasn’t unanimous. Henry Aaron and Ted Williams weren’t unanimous. It’s bizarre even to type those words.

But Hall of Fame voting is in its ninth decade of making way too little sense. So even if the voters of the 21st century seem a lot more rational than their predecessors of 50, 60 and 70 years ago, there are always questions. Don’t expect that to change between now and Jan. 23, when the results are announced.

So let’s ask again: Is it possible that Beltré could join the great Mariano Rivera as the only unanimous Hall of Famers? I’ll take the “under,” but seriously, what reason could any voter find to not check Beltré’s name?

Who could not vote for a third baseman with 3,166 hits? Can’t answer that … if only because no true full-time third baseman ever got that many. (George Brett finished with 3,154 hits. Paul Molitor topped 3,300 but spent more time at DH than at third.)

Who could not vote for a third baseman so smooth that he owns five Gold Glove awards and the most career Fielding Runs of any third baseman in history not named Brooks Robinson?

Who could not vote for a third baseman who once won a home run title, led his league in hits and was still winning Gold Gloves and collecting MVP votes at age 37?

Who could not vote for a third baseman who rolled up 93.5 career WAR, according to Baseball Reference? You understand that puts Beltré in legend territory, right? He ranks 25th in WAR among all position players whose careers began after 1900. And every non-Hall of Famer in that group is in the team picture of the All-PED team.

I’m sure somebody will find a reason not to vote for him. But even if Beltré isn’t unanimous, he could still rack up the highest first-ballot percentage by a third baseman in history. Brett was at 98.2 percent. Mike Schmidt was at 96.5. If Beltré isn’t somewhere in that range, I can’t wait to hear the reasoning from those voters who leave his name unchecked.

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2. Are we finally going to have a Hall of Famer who spent his whole career on a Rocky Mountain High?

Todd Helton is on the verge of election. (Christian Petersen / Getty Images)

Four elections ago, Larry Walker knocked down the big billboard at the Colorado state line that used to say: THE ROAD TO COOPERSTOWN — YOU CAN’T GET THERE FROM HERE. So now that the road is finally open, is it Todd Helton’s turn?

Helton spent 17 seasons playing for the Rockies. He finished his career with a .316/.414/.539/.953 slash line. You know how many players whose career started after 1930 have topped that? Exactly two: Ted Williams and Stan Musial.

So do we even have to ask whether Helton would already be a Hall of Famer if he’d put up those numbers anywhere else? That’s obvious.

But what’s also obvious is that Coors Field is like no place else. And Helton is the first player ever to play his whole career in Colorado and find himself on the precipice of the Hall of Fame. So even if the Coors Cooperstown Curse isn’t what it used to be, has it magically evaporated all of a sudden? Don’t be so sure of that.

Nevertheless, there’s an excellent chance Helton’s time has arrived. He was the biggest shooting star on the ballot last year, jumping by an amazing 20 percent. So he missed election by 11 votes last year, his fifth on this ballot. And history tells us that pretty much everybody who comes that close gets his ticket to Cooperstown punched the next year.

In the past 50 elections, only 10 other players returned to the ballot after coming up short by 11 votes or fewer. Of that group, just Jim Bunning didn’t get elected the next time he was up. And Bunning got his plaque eventually (via the Veterans Committee).

So Todd Helton is going to be the first career-long Rockie to make it onto that podium. The drama over these next two months is whether that happens now or later. And “now” is an excellent bet.

3. Jimmy Rollins and Chase Utley: Together again?

Jimmy Rollins and Chase Utley will reunite on the Hall ballot.  (Hunter Martin / Getty Images)

They were the Trammell and Whitaker of their generation. Will Hall of Fame voters value that?

Not so long ago, Jimmy Rollins and Chase Utley hung out in the middle of the infield for an incredible 1,227 games together, the most in National League history. And not all of those games were in Philadelphia, by the way. (They also teamed up for 14 games for the Dodgers at the end of the 2015 season.)

But now it’s time for them to make yet one more cool reunion — on the new Hall of Fame ballot.

It’s Utley’s first year on the ballot, and he’s as intriguing as any first-timer on the list. It’s Rollins’ third spin through the process. And at first, I thought: Hey, that’s fun. But then my next thought was: Wait. Has this ever happened? Have two longtime double-play partners ever taken a ride together on the Cooperstown Express?

I knew, you see, that Alan Trammell and Lou Whitaker somehow never appeared on the same ballot. That’s the voters’ fault, not theirs, of course. Whitaker remains one of the writers’ worst one-and-done’s ever, getting bounced following his first election in 2001 after receiving just 2.9 percent of the vote. Which meant he was missing in action once Trammell arrived in 2002.

So I had to turn to my friends at STATS Perform to see if there was any parallel in history to Rollins and Utley. And let’s start with this: No double-play combination in the history of baseball ever played as many games together as these two guys and then showed up on the Hall ballot together. Wow.

STATS’ Tom Paquette dug deeper on this. Besides Rollins/ Utley and Trammell/Whitaker, he found only six double-play duos in the modern era (1901-present) that played at least 1,000 games together. But to find the last time any of those combinations appeared on the same Hall ballot, you have to go back nearly 40 years.

Nellie Fox and Luis Aparicio spent 1,035 games in the same infield in the 1950s and ’60s. Then, between 1979 and 1984, they made it onto six Hall ballots together, a streak that ended with Aparicio’s election in ’84.

Before them, you have to travel back another four decades to find any other member of the 1,000-Game DP Combo Club that appeared on the same ballot. The only other was the fabled Joe Tinker/Johnny Evers tag team. But don’t look for any YouTube footage on those two. They played their last game together for the Cubs in 1913. Then they appeared on six Hall ballots in the 1930s and ’40s.

So is it possible that Rollins and Utley are in for a longer ride than six years? Since Rollins has eight years of eligibility left, it’s theoretically possible. But is one of them going to get elected by 2031? Or both of them? Or neither? Good question. And if that answer is one of them, then which one?

Rollins has the more traditional selling points on his side: An MVP trophy, four Gold Gloves, more than 2,400 hits, 200 homers, 400 steals and 857 extra-base hits. And how many other shortstops in history can say that? That would be none. Yet he attracted only 50 votes last year. So is he going to find another 242 votes out there? That seems hard.

Utley, meanwhile, has a very different case. He’s basically an analytics cult hero, whose monster peak (six seasons, from 2005-10, in which he averaged 7.6 WAR) has the potential to make him a popular name to check, especially when you add in all the winning his teams did.

But Utley never even got to 1,900 hits. And the writers haven’t elected a player with under 2,000 in almost 50 years (since Ralph Kiner, in 1975). Yet if I had to place a friendly wager on this, I’d still bet Utley gets more votes this year than Rollins.

You know what would be really interesting, though? What are the chances these two can somehow elevate each other’s candidacy — just by generating perspective and conversation about who’s more deserving? It’s a question worth asking, if only because I’ve always wondered what might have happened if Trammell and Whitaker had gotten the chance to do that.

4. Will Billy Wagner and Gary Sheffield run out of time?

Billy Wagner received 68.1 percent of the vote in the last election. (Ronald Martinez / Allsport)

It’s Gary Sheffield’s 10th and final year on this ballot. It’s Billy Wagner’s ninth, so he has two more shots at this. But is that enough time?

Fourteen years after he took his final ferocious hack, Sheffield attracted 54 more votes last year than he’d gotten the year before, so he’s now at 55.0 percent. Thirteen years after his final save, Wagner’s vote count rocketed upward by 64 votes last year — the biggest one-year jump by any reliever in Hall voting history. He made it all the way to 68.1 percent.

If one of them is going to make it to 75 percent, Wagner is the obvious favorite. He was only 27 votes — 6.9 percentage points — away from election last year. So are there really 27 voters so dug in on keeping him out of Cooperstown that he can’t find those votes? History would suggest that’s highly unlikely.

Five previous relievers — Trevor Hoffman, Goose Gossage, Bruce Sutter, Hoyt Wilhelm and Rollie Fingers — have crossed the 60 percent barrier with at least two years left on the ballot. All five of them got elected within two years.

On the other hand, Hoffman was at 67.3 percent in 2016 and still came up short the next year. So does Wagner have a 7 percentage point leap in him this time around? We love election night drama, right? That story has all the makings.

Sheffield, meanwhile, has a bigger mountain to climb because he’s trying to do something extremely rare. Over the past 50 elections, only one man has made the unlikely pole vault from 55 percent (or lower) in his next-to-last year to getting elected at the buzzer. And that was Larry Walker, who was at 54.6 percent with one year to go — and then eked in by six votes on his final turn.

But does a guy with Sheffield’s ties to performance-enhancing drugs, vague as they might be, have that sort of jump in him? Seems unlikely, but we’re about to find out.

5. Can Joe Mauer channel his inner Ernie Banks?

Joe Mauer was the AL MVP in 2009. (John Biever / Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)

Once upon a time, in a baseball galaxy far, far away, there was a future Hall of Famer named Ernie Banks. Just like Joe Mauer, his career was divided between time at two positions. Just like Mauer, he was special at one, not so much at the other.

In his nine seasons at what was then looked at as primarily a defensive position, Banks was the greatest hitting shortstop of his time. But then, in part two of his career, when he moved to an offensive position (first base), let’s just say he didn’t remind anybody of Willie McCovey.

So what happened when Banks finally appeared on a Hall of Fame ballot? He cruised to first-ballot election in 1977, with 83.8 percent of the vote. And why do we tell this tale of Mr. Cub at a time like this? Because it seems instructive to how voters could view Mauer in his first go-round on this ballot.

GO DEEPER

Joe Mauer ‘humbled and honored’ to be considered for Cooperstown

In his 10 seasons as a catcher for the Twins, Mauer did stuff at the plate no catcher had ever done. Three batting titles. An MVP award. A 135 OPS+. That’s not just greatness at that position. That’s historic greatness — for a full decade, remember.

But then concussions forced him to spend the last five seasons of his career at first base. And you know how that went. In his time at first, Mauer batted only .278, slugged a minuscule .388, never made another All-Star team and never showed up on a single MVP ballot. So now that his debut on the Hall ballot has finally arrived, here’s the question:

Why wouldn’t the voters treat him like they once treated Ernie Banks? At a position where he played 10 seasons, Mauer was clearly way over the Hall of Fame line. So how heavily does he deserve to be penalized for honoring his contract by playing another position, where he wasn’t That Guy?

On a ballot that’s jammed with so many fun first-ballot names — Beltré, Utley, David Wright, Bartolo Colon, Matt Holliday, etc. — nobody is a more fascinating candidate to watch than the pride of St. Paul, Joe Mauer. But where is his vote total headed? That, my friends, is the reason columns like this exist.

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(Top photo of Adrián Beltré in 2012: Ronald Martinez / Getty Images)