Weird & Wild MLB June highlights: Running Red Sox, outrageous Ohtani and a 'clock-off' win (2024)

We had a game that endedafter it ended. …We had a hitting streak that endedon a hit. …We had a pitcher win a gamewithout actually facing a hitter. …And we had a runner cross home platewithout scoring a run.

Hey there! It’s been a couple of weeks since the Weird and Wild Department opened for business. So let’s look back at the Best of June, Weird and Wild edition … complete with a once-in-a-century triple play, a Red Sox track meet and so many moments that evoked the memory of the great Willie Mays. (Note: You can find even more Weird/Wild highlights from June here, here and here.) But we begin with an unforgettable episode of …

Rock(ies) around the clock

What can go wrong when clocks tick? Well, you can sleep through your alarm. There’s that. Or you can forget to do that Daylight Savings Time spring forward thing. There’s that, too.

Or, when those clocks tick in baseball, there’s also this …

Rockies-Nationals ended on a…

Pitch clock violation??

🎥 @TalkinBaseball_ pic.twitter.com/TMsGdMYvtT

— The Athletic MLB (@TheAthleticMLB) June 23, 2024

Around my house, we call that a clock-off. My friend Mike Ferrin, of MLB Network radio fame, invented that phrase in 2023 after a spring training game ended amid total pitch-clock bedlam. I was there for that first-ever clock-off. My brain still hasn’t healed.

The new MLB Rules on full display in the #Braves first spring game. Cal Conley didn’t get set in the box with 8 seconds left on the pitch clock. Strike 3. Game over. At least teams have all spring to get use to the new rules. #ForTheA pic.twitter.com/vBqtGbcBDs

— Alison Mastrangelo (@AlisonWSB) February 25, 2023

But that was 489 days ago. At least we could tell ourselves that norealgame had ever ended that way. Until. It. Did. On Saturday night, at Coors Field.

So congratulations (I guess) to Nationals closer Kyle Finnegan, the first pitcher in history to let a game end by forgetting to throw a pitch until after the pitch clock ticked to zero. Memo to Kyle: If your favorite thing about this sport used to beBaseball — the game without a clock, it’s time to find a new favorite thing!

Here at Weird and Wild World HQ, these are big moments. I can tell because one minute, life seems pretty normal … and the next moment, my phone is rattling like the San Andreas Fault, with urgent messages like this.

@jaysonst The Rockies had a Clockoff!!! Is that the first of the new rules era in the regular season? I remember it in Spring, but it finally happened!

— Dave Bahr (@dcbahr) June 23, 2024

So yep, Dave. That’s a first. And hopefully a last. But it still raises the kind of Weird (and Wild) issues we need to have some fun with around here. So let’s do that, with the help of the effervescent color analyst for Rockies TV, Ryan Spilborghs.

KYLE FINNEGAN: VOTED MOST LIKELY TO COMMIT A CLOCK-OFF! Before we get into the goofiness, let’s talk about Kyle Finnegan. There are nearly 400 pitchers hanging out in the big leagues. But most of them seem to have noticed there’s now a pitch clock. Then there’s the Nationals’ most trusted reliever.

Pitch-clock violations by Finnegan this season — 9

Pitch-clock violations by the next two relievers combined — 9

Pitch-clock violations by the entire Rockies staff — 3

The average team now goes more than 2,000 pitches between clock violations. The closer for the Nationals averagesone violation every 56 pitches. He’s now just four away from the single-season record, set by Craig Kimbrel last year (13). At this rate, Finnegan might blow that one away by the Fourth of July.

WE WIN! WE WIN! UH, NOW WHAT?When you’ve just won a baseball game without a pitch being thrown, on a bases-loaded something-or-other, how do you celebratethat?

So I asked Ryan Spilborghs if he had any advice for how the Rockiesshouldhave celebrated that historic moment. (We’ll get to how they did celebrate it shortly.) We know that after every walk-off, the bench empties in search of a hero to mob. But after a clock-off, which “hero” shouldget mobbed? Is it …

The hitter (Ryan McMahon)? The runner who scored (Jake Cave)? Or possibly the clock operator?

“The joke in the dugout,” Spilborghs said, “was: ‘Should we have gone and mobbed Kyle Finnegan?’”

That was probably the right choice, come to think of it. But now let’s reveal …

HOW THE ROCKIES ACTUALLY CELEBRATED:As I watched this wackiness unfold, I noticed immediately that Alan Trejo, the ringleader of these celebrations, was spinning around the infield with his Gatorade bucket, not sure who most deserved to get doused.

This is known in the business as “trouble.” And no, I don’t mean the baseball business. I mean the broadcasting business. No one knows that better than Spilborghs, since he was lugging around his microphone on the field, trying to figure out which guyheshould point that mic at.

I reminded him he was in the center ring of history. He’d just seen a regular-season game end the way no game had ever ended before — so he should feel honored just to have been there. That wasn’t quite how he looked at it.

“No, I don’t feel honored by that,” he said, “because of a couple of things. When I’m doing the games for the Rockies, we do a three-man booth. But I’m essentially on the field, with my headset on and my mic on, the whole game. And then, as soon as the game ends, I become the sideline reporter to grab that interview. The problem with this game was, I didn’t know who to interview.”

So maybe you can see what was coming. You had your trusty broadcaster, wandering around looking for someone to talk to. You had your energetic Gatorade carrier, wandering around looking for someone to splatter. Is it all adding up yet?

“If you go back and you watch it,” Spilborghs said, “check who gets doused with Gatorade and water? It was me. But that was because Alan Trejo was running around, trying to figure out: ‘Who do we celebrate?’ Nobody knew who to celebrate.”

So even though Spilborghs waited Trejo out, then corralled McMahon for a little postgame chat, what he didn’t know was that the left fielder, Nolan Jones, had another cooler, filled with water. And he, too, was lurking. Guess who got lurked.

“That’s the fastest Spilly has moved since he was going around the bases against the Giants,” quipped the play-by-play voice of the Rockies, Drew Goodman, as he tossed it to Spilborghs for the interview.

“All right,” a suddenly soaked Spilborghs said to McMahon. “So they missed you, but they got me.”

When clock-offs turn to splash-offs, does any good ever come from that? Discuss!

BASEBALL. IT’S WEIRD. AND ALSO WILD.

So finally, let’s reflect on just how nutty the finish to this game truly was. The Rockies last won a game on a bases-loaded “walk-off” six years ago. The Nationals had only issued one game-ending bases-jammed walk since they moved to Washington20 seasons ago. But at least those games ended with somebody throwing a pitch. Not this time. No pitches were even needed for this clock-off. How crazy is baseball?

“Baseball’s the best,” Spilborghs pronounced. “I mean, I’ve seen (incredible) things happen on Tuesdays in June. I’ve seen random things happen on Saturday nights between two teams where it seems like the records are irrelevant. That’s why I come to the field every day, because there could be something that happens that we’ve never seen before.

“That’s why baseball, to me, is the best and greatest sport. And it can happen any night in any ballpark. … That’s why I’m so attracted to the chaos of baseball.”

So what happens when the chaos of baseball meets the clock-offs of baseball? We get a moment like this, where nobody knows how to celebrate but the Weird and Wild column gets to laugh about it with you — and the broadcasting genius who’s still wondering why he’s the one who got a cooler full of water dumped on him.

BUT WAIT! WE HAVE A CLOCK-OFF EPILOGUE!

Hey sorry. One more thing you need to know.

First clock-off in history (Spring Training Division) — Yours truly was in attendance.

Second clock-off in history (Rocky Mountain Division) — My son, Steve, was there, working on the Rockies’ TV crew. That shot you see from the left-field corner, just before umpire Hunter Wendelstedt waved his arms, was my son’s artistic work.

So clearly, wherever Starks go, clock-offs seem to follow.

“I think at some point,” my eloquent Starkville co-host, Doug Glanville, said to me the other day when this came up on our podcast, “you may have to call it ‘The Starkoff.’”

I’ll wait for you to finish your applause. Now let’s move on.

Say Hey! No. 24 lives on

There will never be another Willie Mays. But the number, 24 …hisnumber … shines on.

We’ve learned that lesson in the bittersweet days following the passing of the late, great Say Hey Kid. But as always, the baseball gods have made sure to do what they do best since we said goodbye to a one-of-a-kind legend.

KNOCK ON RICKWOOD — Who writes these scripts in baseball? How could it be possible that Willie Mays would die in the same week that major-league baseball was played at the first pro ballpark Mays ever played in, Rickwood Field?

Then again, how could this also be possible:

There were two home runs hit in that Rickwood Field game, the first NL/AL game ever played in the state of Alabama, Mays’ home state.

• The first home run was hit by a man from Alabama, Brendan Donovan.

• The second home run was hit by Heliot Ramos … the manplaying center field for the Giantsin what we’ll always remember as The Willie Mays Game.

And, as Tom Verducci so poetically pointed out on the Fox Sports telecast, the scoreboard that night read:

Giants — 5
Cardinals — 6

Which was the only possible way to honor the birthday of Willie Mays … on (what else) 5-6.

MERRILY HE ROLLED ALONG — Then there was Padres center fielder Jackson Merrill, an eye-popping 21-year-old talent. How did he pay tribute to Mays? By homering in his first two games following Mays’ death.

So why would we mention that here? Because that gave Merrill six home runs in his last eight games. And as our friends from STATS Perform pointed out, only one other 21-year-old center fielder in history ever hit six home runs in any eight-game span: That would be a guy named … (right) … Willie Mays.

YOU CAN GO HOME AGAIN — And finally, on Monday, the Giants returned to San Francisco for their first home game ever without Willie in their world. Once again, the stars aligned to pay homage to this man, just as they’d have scripted it.

As our own Andrew Baggarly wrote so beautifully that night, every Giant on the field wore No. 24 … in a game in which two Giants — Matt Chapman and Nick Ahmed— homered … and the Giants eventually won on a walk-off in the ninth. So how did that fit into this storybook?

Last home run by a No. 24 for the Giants in San Francisco:Aug. 15, 1971, Willie vs. the Mets’ Ron Taylor.

Last game with two home runs by No. 24 for the Giants in San Francisco:July 31, 1970, when Willie went deep twice off the Astros’ Larry Dierker.

Last walk-off RBI for the Giants by a No. 24: June 6, 1971, a walk-off homer by Willie off Joe ho*rner of the Phillies.

And what was the date of that game Monday?Just as the baseball gods drew it up … 6-24-24.

Boston Nine-Nine

I bet you thought the Olympic track-and-field trials took place last week in Oregon. Ha. I can make a case that they actually took place June 16 in Fenway Park … when somehow, this happened.

Please enjoy all 9 (yes, NINE) stolen bases from tonight. pic.twitter.com/IH5ek7R4Os

— Red Sox (@RedSox) June 17, 2024

That’s a sight never before witnessed by any human, living or dead:The Boston Red Sox stole nine bases in a game?Yeah, they did. Against the mighty New York Yankees. And we have video to prove it.

So what’s so Weird and Wild about that? C’mon, people. It’s the weirdest (and also wildest) thing ever, if only because …

The last time the Yankees allowed nine stolen bases in a game… Ty Cobb stole four of them. That was in 1915.

The last time the Red Sox stole nine bases in a game …was (ha-ha) never. And the last time they stole eight, Ted Williams stole one of them. That was in 1940.

Only twice in the previous 10 years …had the Red Sox even stolen nine bases against the Yankeesin a season.(That was in 2015 and 2018).

As recently as 2022 …the Red Sox stoletwobases against the Yankees all season (in 19 games)… and they were both in the same game, off Gerrit Cole and Jose Trevino … and they waited to steal those twountil Sept. 13!

And as recently as 2021 …the Red Sox stole nine basesin the entire second half. That was in nearly 2,700 plate appearances. Then they stole nine in one game … in eight turns at-bat … including five in 14 plate appearances? What the heck. They’re the Red Sox!

But we’re being told these are not your grandfather’s Red Sox. They’re different. They’re swifter. They might even (gulp)lead the league in stolen bases.

That’s true, actually. The Sox are already up to 78 steals, just two behind the American League leaders, the Rays. And what’s the weird/wild deal with that? Oh, only that the Red Sox haven’t led their league in stolen bases since 1935.Which means they haven’t done that in 89 seasons! Which means you should be keeping track of this, because …

Most consecutive seasons without leading AL in SB

(*still going)
(Source: STATS Perform)

Triple threat

What was the weirdest/wildest play of the week? This feels like an excellent candidate.

🚨 TRIPLE PLAY 🚨 pic.twitter.com/eHmPP4ejv6

— Philadelphia Phillies (@Phillies) June 24, 2024

That was just your standard little 1-3-5 triple play the Phillies turned in Detroit on Monday: Aaron Nola to Bryce Harper at first, then Harper to Alec Bohm at third. If a double play is the pitcher’s best friend, what’s that? The pitcher just hit the PowerBall?

America seemed to enjoy that triple play … even before America found out we hadn’t seen a 1-3-5 triple play in the National League or American League in 95 years.But after that, there were many fun factoids to unearth. So yeah, I went way, way down the rabbit hole of the Society for American Baseball Research’s super cool Triple Play Database. Check out what I found.

The last 1-3-5 triple playwas also turned in Detroit, because of course it was, on July 11, 1929, during the first few months of the Herbert Hoover administration. It went: Josh Billings to Dale Alexander to Marty McManus (Tigers), on a ball hit by Boston’s Russ Scarritt. It happened a mere 397 triple plays ago.Sorry, no Statcast data available to help with that one.

The only other active pitcherbesides Nola to start any kind of triple play is Michael King, who kicked off a rare 1-3-6-2-5-6 Yankees trifecta off the bat of Vlad Guerrero Jr., on June 17, 2021.

The last 1-5-3 triple playis one of my favorites, because it was pretty much this one in reverse. But that’s not why it’s in here. It’s in here because the three guys who turned it were Ed Lynch (the pitcher), Davey Lopes (third base) and Terry Francona (first base), on July 9, 1986. How’s that for a Cubs trio for the ages?

The last Phillies pitcherto start a triple play before Nola was John Boozer, on Aug. 15, 1964. That was a 1-6-3 special at Shea Stadium. But the best part, as Matt Gelb wrote in his account of Monday’s triple play in The Athletic, was that the guy Boozer threw the ball to was Ruben Amaro, the father of Ruben Amaro Jr., who was (naturally) calling Monday’s game on TV for NBC Sports Philadelphia.

But for fun names in a triple play,this is the winner. None of those other trios can beat the threesome who got mixed up in the first Phillies triple play ever started by a pitcher. How ’bout this 1-6-3 from June 29, 1925: Hal Carlson … to Heinie Sand … to Chicken Hawks.

That happened … to real people … with those names … because …

Baseball!

We’d take this Cruz liner

A fun thing happened in back-to-back half-innings Monday night in Cincinnati. In the bottom of the sixth, the electrifying Elly De La Cruz launched this mind-warping space shuttle.

That was Elly …to the steamboat.Whew. But just as we were recovering from that, the shortstop for the Pirates, Oneil Cruz, did this outrageous thing in the top of the seventh.

That was 458 feet worth of long ball, about 700 rows up the seats in deep right-center.

So I couldn’t help but wonder: Had two shortstops that tall (6-foot-7 for Oneil, 6-5 for Elly) ever homered in the same game before that? And the answer, courtesy of Baseball Reference’s ever-resourceful Katie Sharp, is: Of course not.(In a related development, they’re the two tallest shortstops ever to homer anywhere, so that helped.)

But there’s also this, for you Name Game fans: This was only the second time in history that a hitter named Cruz had ever homered off a pitcher named Cruz. The other: José Cruz Jr. off Nelson Cruz (not that one), in a Blue Jays-Tigers game on July 31, 1999. Set the Cruz Control!

Zach McKinstry for Cy Young!

Who doesn’t get a chuckle out of moments like this?

That was just last weekend. David Dahl homering off a Tucker Barnhart flutterball tracked by Statcast at a rip-roaring 40.7 mph, as the hitter and pitcher erupt with laughter. This related note on Tucker Barnhart: not a pitcher by trade.

All right, that was just a distraction from the real bulletin here: That isnothow your local backup catcher has been faring lately when the manager drags him to the mound.

Would you believe that until Jose Trevino coughed up a run in a rough inning against the Orioles last week, position-player pitchers had ripped off16 consecutive scoreless appearancesthis season … a streak that lasted a month and a half, and was strung together by mystery pitchersfor 12 different teams?

I was pretty sure that had to be a record. So I checked with Baseball Reference’s Kenny Jackelen, who confirmed that and reported that the previous record was a mere 10 in a row, most recently in 2021.

So how Weird (and also Wild) is this? Oh, man. You have no idea.

Consecutive scoreless innings by position players in that streak — 16

Most consecutive scoreless innings by AL ERA leader Tanner Houck — 12

Baseball! It’s the best.

They shoulda started Patrick Wisdom

So obviously, the Cubs would have been way better off starting a position player last Friday than that guy with a 1.89 ERA (Shota Imanaga) who actually started.

Imanaga came into that game against the Mets with the lowest ERA, over his first 13 starts, of any Cubs pitcher in the live-ball era. He came out of that game as the winner of our latest Box Score Line of the Week award:

3 IP, 11 H, 10 R, 10 ER, 1 BB, 3 K, 3 HR

So what’s up with that?How could I not ask Kenny Jackelen if any pitcher had ever entered a game with an ERA that low, and as many innings pitched as Imanaga (76), and thengiven up 10 runs. Jackelen found nine Dead Ball Era dudes who did it between 1913-19, but only one guy other than Imanaga who had done it since. That was Dave (Boo) Ferris, who had a 1.33 ERA before he spun off this beauty 79 years ago.

4 1/3 IP, 7 H, 10 R, 8 ER, 6 BB, 2 K

But not all of Boo’s runs were earned. So how many pitchers in the live-ball era have given up 10earnedruns after entering a start with a sub-2.00 ERA? Only one. Shota Imanaga.

Box Score Line of the Week (Hitting Division)

Hey, we can’t overlookthe other sector of the box score because last week at Coors Field, the Dodgers’ Freddie Freemanput up this wild line:

6 trips to the plate
5 walks
1 hit

Well, you don’t see that much! Over at the awesome @NotGaetti feed on X, they got so excited about this, they looked up every first baseman in the modern era who has had a game with five walks (or more) but only one hit. It’s a fun one:

Todd Helton … Frank Thomas … Mo Vaughn … Cecil Fielder … Tony Muser … Dick Allen … and a fellow named Henry Aaron.

Who’s No. 1?

Did you know we’re only a couple of weeks away from the 60th edition of the baseball draft? And for the purposes of these next few paragraphs, let’s just say: That’s a lot of No. 1 picks.

Darryl Strawberry, Chipper Jones and A-Rod were all the first players picked in the draft once upon a time. So were Shawn Abner, Al Chambers and Danny Goodwin. But enough about them, because we had a super cool No. 1 daily double last week in Minnesota.

Three batters, two home runs, a 3-0 lead.

Carlos Correa and Royce Lewis go back-to-back for the @Twins. pic.twitter.com/V1SORc5Bic

— MLB (@MLB) June 16, 2024

Carlos Correa was the first player taken in the 2012 draft. Royce Lewis was the first pick in the 2017 draft. And if you’re following along here, you’ve probably caught on to their brand new place in history:

They just became the sixth set of No. 1’s to hit back-to-back homers. And the list (courtesy of the great Katie Sharp, from Baseball Reference) is fantastic:

• Ken Griffey Jr. and A-Rod — 11 times
• Bob Horner and Jeff Burroughs — five times
• Bob Horner and Chris Chambliss — twice
• Harold Baines and B.J. Surhoff — once
• Harold Baines and Steve Kemp — once
• Carlos Correa and Royce Lewis — once*

(*and counting!)

They were just 17 and you know what I mean

But are we finished with the uplifting Twins tag-team tidbits here? No, we are not, because last weekend, Twins starters Bailey Ober and Pablo López picked out the same magic number: 17.

Saturday:Ober retires the last 17 hitters he faces!*

Sunday: López retires the first 17 hitters he faces!

(*in an 89-pitch complete game)

So the next day, we heard from loyal reader Joe Rowe, who had been thinking about thison his 47-hour train ride home from Oakland.Let’s sum up Joe’s thinking this way: Doesn’t that have to be some kind of record?

Good question. So I posed it (and several variations) to my friends from STATS Perform. They blitzed through the 50 years of complete play-by-play data in their database. And …

How many teams have donethat — by which we mean having the starter one day retire the last 17 hitters and the starter the next day retire the first 17? Right you are. That would be none.

How many teams have done it at any point — by which we mean having back-to-back starters blow through at least 17 hitters in a row at any point in consecutive games? Surprisingly, this was the 20th time that’s happened in the last 50 years. But none of those pairs were Twins. And only one other set of active pitchers has done it: Gerrit Cole and Jameson Taillon for the Yankees, on June 2-3, 2022.

I’m amazed Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling never pulled that off for the Diamondbacks. But Schilling and Tyler Green once did it for the 1998 Phillies.

So whatisthe record for most consecutive batters retired?The Twins were eight hitters away. That record, over the last half-century, is 42, by Eric Wedge’s 2012 Mariners … with some helpful assistancefrom a Félix Hernández perfect game.

But guess what? It turned out that 17 wasn’t a magical number only for the Twins because …

It was a very good year

On June 20, the Orioles rolled into Yankee Stadium and scored 17 runs. Which got me thinking (always dangerous, I know). Here’s what I learned from that thinking:

The last time any team from Baltimore put up a 17-spot (exactly) in regulation at any version of Yankee Stadium …

It wasn’t the Orioles!

It was the Colts, in the first overtime championship game in NFL history.

Yes, the Giants and Colts were tied, 17-17, after 60 minutes, on Dec. 28, 1958. So they played the first NFL overtime game ever. Whereupon this happened …

Football!

But meanwhile, back at the ballpark …

They’ll hit on 17, too

The parade of “17” trivia rolls on, because here comes a real thing that those outside-the-box Phillies have done this year:

Monday in Detroit,they struck out 17 times — for the third time this seasonin a nine-inning game. But here comes the weird (and also wild) part.

Their record in those games:3-and-0!

We bring this up because …

Games won by the other 29 teams when they’ve struck out 17 times (or more) this year in nine innings: Zero! (As in 0-4)

Of course, it helped the Phillies’ cause that in that game Monday, they also got 15 hits. Which prompted loyal reader Anthony SanFilippo to ask how many teams have ever jammed both 17 strikeouts and 15 hits (or more) into one nine-inning game. And that answer is …

Only three in the live-ball era — and they all won! The other two:

The Rockies on Opening Day 2023 — but not at Coors Field. (They were in San Diego.)

The Rays in Toronto, on July 28, 2019.

Shoulda spent the $700 million!

Do the Angels miss Shohei Ohtani yet? We ask because …

In the very first game he ever played against them last Friday, he squashed a 455-foot homer and reached base four times.

In the second game he ever played against themlast Saturday, he pounded a 459-foot homer. So perhaps you’re wondering (because I was) …

How many playershave ever homered in each of their first two games against a team they won an MVP Award for? That answer, according to STATS, is none.Of course. Except for Shohei.

But let’s just talk about that first game. How many playershave even homered in their first game against a team they won an MVP Award for? STATS found 11 others since the inception of the BBWAA MVP Award. It’s a cool list, especially because it includes names like Willie Mays (against the Giants) and Frank Robinson (against the Orioles).

There are only two other active players on it: Freddie Freeman (versus the Braves) and Bryce Harper (versus the Nationals). But … there is only one other player besides Ohtani who did it the very next season after winning that MVP award: A-Rod, versus the Rangers, on May 21, 2004.

And what about reaching base four times in a player’s first game against a team he won an MVP Award for? Only two men have ever pulled that off: Joe Gordon, against the Yankees, a mere 77 years ago, and that man they call Ohtani.

On with the Leadoff Shoh

But the Big Shoh doesn’t stop there, because Shohei keeps on doing stuff other humans never do. Like drive in a run every darned day, for instance.

He’s up to 10 straight games with an RBI. And you’ve probably heard that that’s an all-time record for any Dodger. Which is wild enough. But here’s what I bet you haven’t heard:

He’s driven in a run in nine straight games as a leadoff hitter! And it’s safe to say you never saw, say, Juan Pierre do that.

Last player to drive in a run in nine straight games as a leadoff man: That would be some guy named Pete Rose, for the Big Red Machine. Except Rose split his streak over two seasons (1975-76). So you should know …

The only leadoff man in the live-ball era to make it to 10in a rowwas Wally Moses, for the 1945 White Sox. So there you go. Shohei Ohtani: He’s one game away from parting the Dodger Blue Sea.

Another Blanco for Blanco

How incredible is the saga of Ronel Blanco in Houston?

April 1, in his first start of the year:Threw the ultimatewho’s that guyno-hitter, against the Blue Jays.

June 16, in his 13th start of the year: Threw seven hitless innings against the Tigers, then got pulled by his not-sentimental-enough manager, Joe Espada, after 94 pitches.

So here’s the question we asked around here: How many pitchers have ever thrown a no-hitter in one start and then gotten taken out, in the eighth inning or later, of another start, with a no-hitter working, in the same year? That turned out to be a pretty wild (but also weird) question:

From 1901-2022 — Nobody

Since 2023 — Two Astros! Yep, Framber Valdez did it last year!

Walk this way

Juan Soto drew his 707th career walk this week. Does that seem like a lot? You should vote yes on that, because …

Juan Soto is only 25 years old, but now he’s already drawn more career walks than …

Yogi Berra (704 in 19 seasons)
Dave Parker (683 in 19 seasons)
Jim Rice (670 in 16 seasons)
Torii Hunter (661 in 19 seasons)
Ichiro (647 in 19 seasons)

I could list 707 more names you’ve totally heard of. But you get the idea!

This Month in Strange But Trueness

KWAN YOU’RE HOT YOU’RE HOT — Guardians hit machine Steven Kwan had his 14-game hitting streak end last Friday …on a hit! Wait. What? Well, it should have been a hit. But then this happened.

That was Austin Hedges, holding up to see if the ball got through, and then getting forced out at second,on a line-drive rocket to center field.Even at Weird and Wild World HQ, we hate it when that happens.

THAT’S USING YOUR HEAD — This was last Sunday, in that same series. The Blue Jays’ always crafty Justin Turner got tagged on his helmet while sliding into second base. That was the bad news. The good news was:He wasn’t wearing it at the time.So he was safe (thanks to the miracle of replay).

Never seen this one before…

Umpires overturn this and call Justin Turner safe because his helmet fell off and prevented the fielder from tagging him pic.twitter.com/mJbI98Q98R

— Talkin’ Baseball (@TalkinBaseball_) June 23, 2024

DEJA WHEW — Ever heard of a game endingan hour and a half after it ended? Is that a confusing enough question for you? Except that really happened (well, sort of) in a June 14 Phillies-Orioles game. Let’s explain.

Or better yet, let’s watch the Orioles’ Cedric Mullins get tagged out at the plate in the 10th inning, on this bizarre sequence, for what was ruled to be the final out of the game.

The Phillies thought they won the game in the 10th inning but you cant escape Cedric Mullins @StoolBaseball @Barstooldmv pic.twitter.com/9pzRq2ViTA

— Barstool Sports (@barstoolsports) June 15, 2024

Yep, he’s out. Except no he wasn’t, according to the replay center. So the game resumed. Except no it didn’t. About four seconds later, the Extra Inning Rain Clouds opened, so that launched an enjoyable 71-minute rain delay. After which the Phillies finally did win this game in the 11th, a long, long time after they’d won it the first time.

BATTERS NOT INCLUDED — There are a million ways to win a baseball game, although you’d never know it if you watched the Oakland A’s much these days. But they did in fact win a game last Friday. And their winning pitcher was Sean Newcomb.

So what’s so Strange But True about that? Oh, not much. Only this little entry in the box score:

Batters faced — Newcomb 0.

How’d he pull that off? Piece of cake. He came in from the bullpen and promptly picked Austin Martin off first base for the final out of the top of the eighth inning. Then Shea Langeliers launched a game-winning homer two pitches into the bottom of the eighth. So a few minutes later, the box score read:

WP — Newcomb (1-0)

THE BIG EEEEE — Don’t try this at home (or on the road). In a June 14 game against Milwaukee, the Reds committed five errors. And four of them involved two different players (De La Cruz and Jeimer Candelario) each making two errors on the same play — a trick no team had pulled off since Daryl Boston’s 1988 White Sox. And how’d that work out? The Reds made all those errors … and they still won.

THE CAUGHT-STEALING OF THE CENTURY (ANY CENTURY) — Until last Sunday, the Royals’ Maikel Garcia hadn’t been thrown out stealing all year (17-for-17). The Rangers’ catcher, Andrew Knizner, hadn’t thrown out a base stealer all year (0-for-16). Then Garcia took off for second. Guess what happened.

So what were the odds of that? That’s what the ever-inquisitive voice of the Rangers, Jared Sandler, wanted to know.

An hour after alerting us to this momentous development, he checked back in to report that, according to SportRadar, it was the first time in the annals of their play-by-play files (back to 1951) that any base stealer who was that perfect had ever been thrown out by any catcher with zero caught stealings and that many stolen bases.

How could that be possible? Oh, that’s right. It’s …

Baseball!

HE DID NOT GET BY WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM HIS FRIEND

Finally, have you ever seen a runner cross home platebut not score a run?Then you obviously weren’t watching the relentlessly creative A’s in action Wednesday.

I’ll try to make sense of this, but it’s not easy.

It was the second inning in Anaheim. Max Schuemann roped a double up the gap in left-center. One run would score (Armando Alvarez doing those honors). On that, there’s no debate. But if you thought two runs would score, when Kyle McCann staggered across the plate behind him, you were doing that thing you should never do while watching the A’s:

Making logical assumptions … because here’s the nuttiness that actually ensued.

Kyle McCann was called out after failing to touch the plate and then proceeding to make contact with Armando Alvarez before going back to touch home 🙃 pic.twitter.com/p046l0Mdxa

— A's on NBCS (@NBCSAthletics) June 26, 2024

That’s McCann, managing to miss home plate, which is never a good idea … and then scrambling back to tag it, which is actually a better idea … but then being called out anyway because Alvarez was kind enough to let him know he’d missed it the first time … which would have been awesome,if he hadn’t grabbed McCann firstand directed him back to the plate.

Assists are great in basketball and hockey. But getting physically assisted by your friends in baseball? That would not be legal, meaning McCann was out. So what do call a wacky play like that … when a guy crosses home plate but doesn’t actually score a run?

I posed that question to A’s color analyst Dallas Braden, who probably thought he’d seen it all in Oakland before that happened.

“We call that a lil’ home-plate hopscotch!” he replied, then credited his wife, Megan, “the Pirates fan.” Oh, and one more thing.

“We also call that a quick way into the manager’s office,” Braden said. Which is a second thing you never want to do in …

Baseball!

(Top photo of Hunter Wendelstedt and Ryan McMahon as the Rockies start to celebrate the first regular-season clock-off win: Dustin Bradford / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)