Friday might have been the most ridiculous day of the MLB season. For the first time in in more than 90 years, three different games had a combined score of at least 25 runs…
The silliest one of the three happened in Colorado, because of course it did. Coors Field in Denver is well known for having high-scoring games, but this one actually set records.
The Pittsburgh Pirates scored 9 runs in the top of the first inning, so the hapless Colorado Rockies were down 9-0 before they even stepped to the plate. But it was then 15-10 Pirates after five innings, which is the most total runs scored by both teams through 5 frames in Coors Field history. The fireworks then took a rest, and it was 16-10 Pirates going into the 8th inning. But Colorado scored twice in the bottom of the 8th to make it 16-12, and that was still the score going into the bottom of the 9th…
And that’s when this game spiraled into legendary stupid status. The Pirates got the first out pretty quickly, but the next Rockies batter homered to make it 16-13. At that point the “stupid finish” alarms were blaring. The guy after that tripled, and it was 16-14. The next guy singled and it was 16-15. And on the second pitch of his at-bat, Brenton Doyle hit a walk-off game winning 2-run homer, and the final was 17-16, the second time in Rockies history they had given up 16 runs and won…
It was also just the 5th time in MLB history a team allowed at least 9 runs in the first inning and won. I looked up the other games, because I can. And here’s the dumb coincidence to the dumbest game of the year: the last time, it also happened to the Pirates.
On June 8, 1989, the Pirates scored 10 runs in the top of the first inning against the Phillies (three of them on a Barry Bonds homer on his second at-bat of the inning)- and Philly won 15-11. The Phillies didn’t even have to bat in the bottom of the 9th because they scored 5 in the 8th to take the lead for good, the winning hit being a Darren Daulton 2-run single, if you needed a “I remember that guy” moment.
(This game is most well-known for a Pirates announcer saying “If the Pirates lose this game I’ll walk back to Pittsburgh” and then he actually did, all 300 miles after the season, for charity. Here’s full breakdown of just how ridiculous this game was.)
Actually, all these 9-run comebacks are dumb. The Phillies have been involved in three of them, winning two. The very first one of these, in June 1884, is the one they lost (the box score isn’t easily findable and I’m not looking) in Cleveland to the Blues, which was Cleveland’s NL franchise at the time…
The Blues folded after the season and basically merged with the Brooklyn team of the American Association, the second major league at the time. And eventually, the Brookyln AA team came to the NL… and in 1896, the “Brooklyn Bridegrooms” were involved in the second one of these in Cincinnati. And then the third one happened in 1913 when the Phillies allowed 9 first-inning runs to the Dodgers and then won 10-9 on a walk-off single…
So how rare is this feat? The Dodgers can claim to be involved in the first three of the five that have ever happened, the last time they were in one was the year Ebbets Field opened, and they haven’t played home games in Brooklyn in almost 70 years…
Which makes what happened in Miami on Friday night seem almost ordinary. The New York Yankees “only” led the Miami Marlins 6-0 at one point, the Marlins then took a 10-9 lead, the Yankees led 12-10 going into the bottom of the ninth, and the Marlins scored three to walk it off and win 13-12 (25-run-game number two).
The game winning play wasn’t a hit, and it featured newly-traded San Francisco Giants reliever Camilo Doval in no-mans land, unsure of what to do...
Remember a week ago when the Giants got four players for Doval and the “experts” said the Giants didn’t get anything good back? How are you with that trade today?
As for the other Giants who were traded at the deadline, Mike Yastrzemski homered in his first at-bat for the Royals on Friday night in Toronto… and what’s funnier is that it came off former Giants teammate Kevin Gausman…
And yeah, the Giants traded submarine reliever Tyler Rogers to the New York Mets, who they were going to play over the weekend, and Rogers did actually fly with the Giants to New York on their charter, and then promptly went to a different team hotel. He did pitch against them over the weekend, but didn’t strike anybody out, because if one team is going to know how to hit the submariner, it’s his old club…
The third game that had 25 runs on Friday? Well, that’s goofy in its own way. The Washington Nationals scored five runs in the bottom on the ninth to “only” lose to the Milwaukee Brewers 16-9. Except, those five runs are more than either the Rockies or Marlins scored in their 9th-inning comeback wins on Friday… and the Nats still lost, 16-9…
The last time three MLB games had at least 25 runs total was June 23, 1930, and there must have been some kind of weird planet alignment going on. Of the 11 games played that day, three had at least 25 runs, but four broke the 20-run mark, six had at least 15 runs and seven went over the 10-run barrier... and there were no walk-offs…
After Trey Lance threw two of the easiest touchdowns a QB can throw in the not-the-San-Diego Chargers preseason opener, social media of course was full of “Kyle Shanahan is a terrible coach” and “See what Lance can do when coaches trust him” comments…
Wait, you’re telling me that Trey Lance is an NFL-caliber QB after one preseason game and two touchdown passes that went 20 yards through the air combined?
Why do I say these are simple touchdowns? Because whenever I played pickup football and got to be QB those were my go-to plays every time. Roll out with me or slant-and-go. And I just think if his two biggest plays were plays I run, maybe we should hold off on anointing Trey Lance an NFL starting QB, especially after a preseason game where maybe half a dozen guys who will play meaningful snaps week one played the entire game on both sides…
Besides, you know who else knows those are easy plays with a high success rate? A guy who ran a college offense just like that for a decade, current Chargers head coach Jim Harbaugh. Those were easy ways for Lance to gain confidence. Hey, I want the kid to do well. But he’s got to be able to read a defense and look off his first option, and he never showed that with Kyle Shanahan or during his cup of coffee with Dallas, and he most certainly didn’t in his first preseason action with the Chargers…
But by throwing those two TD’s, Trey Lance officially accounted for 12 points… and somehow, that was less than all but one MLB team in those 25-run point-a-paloozas on Friday. Usually, if a QB accounts for fewer points than an MLB team, they haven’t had a great game… and, well, that still seems to be the case here…
Clearly, if Trey Lance was rhe next big thing, Dallas or San Francisco would have kept him. And, when the Cowboys released him, NFL teams would have engaged In a bidding frenzy for his services. Sigh...
Camilo Doval needed a fresh start. Unfortunately, the fresh start arrived with the same stale bread.
Tyler Rogers will be what he has always been...solid, reliable and effective.
Baseball has always been a crazy numbers game...although last Friday was a bit crazier than usual...
25 or 6 to 4
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