Editor’s note: This is a bonus Weird and Wild. To read the main W&W column, click or tap here.
You know what happens in baseball when there’s a three-week break between Weird and Wild columns? Weirdness happens. Wildness happens. Games you can’t believe happen. Because you need to know about these games, here are a few we definitely need to bring back to life.
Orioles 9, Rays 7 in 13 zany innings (Monday)
How bizarre was this game? The Orioles trailed in the 11th, 12th and 13th innings … and they won — on Colton Cowser’s first walk-off home run since, um, the day before.
But what do you think? Does it seem hard to win a game in which the team you’re playing is winning in the 11th, 12th and 13th? I hope you answered yes. I posed that question to Baseball Reference’s ever-resourceful Katie Sharp. And she found only one other game like it in the entire Baseball Reference/Retrosheet play-by-play database.
That one was a nutty 7-6 win by Hubie Brooks’ 1988 Expos over Mark Grant’s ’88 Padres, in another 13-inning classic, back in the ol’ pre-Zombie Runner era. But I still think Monday’s game was nuttier.
That’s because, in this tilt, there were two extra innings in which both teams scored at least two runs apiece. And yep, I know that’s Zombie-aided. Nevertheless, Zombies or no Zombies, that has happened only three other times in the last 84 years!
Mets 16, Nationals 7 in 12 goofy innings (May 18)
How’d this one make our list? Ho-ho-ho. You’ll see.
For one thing, the Mets’ 10-run 12th inning made them the first National League team to score 10 or more in an extra inning since Ivey Wingo’s 1919 Reds did that in Brooklyn on May 15, 1919. But guess what? That wasn’t even the weird and wild part.
The weird and wild part featured the Nationals scoring in the seventh, the eighth and in two extra innings of this game … and they still lost by nine runs! Shouldn’t that be impossible?
I was pretty sure it was. So I dumped yet another crazed research project in the lap of my friend, Katie Sharp. She combed through the Baseball Reference database, which contains nearly every game since 1910, and found (yep) exactly zero other games in which a team scored in at least four innings from the seventh on — and still lost by nine.
The previous record for biggest loss like that was set by Sparky Adams’ 1929 Pirates, who put runs on the board in the seventh, eighth, ninth, 11th and 13th innings of a June 15 game with Shanty Hogan’s New York Giants … but still lost by five — which was possibly related to those 20 runs they coughed up that day.
White Sox 9, Cubs 8 in 10 unbelievable innings (May 17)
These two teams have played 155 games, in the heated Deep Dish battleground of Chicago, since interleague play arrived in 1997. But this was the weirdest and wildest of them all.
The Cubs led by three. Then they fell behind by three. Then they hit a tying home run in the ninth. Then they took the lead in the 10th … and they still lost. How hard is that to do?
Yup, Katie Sharp was on that case, too. How many games do you think she found, over the last 115 years, in which a team did all that? Right you are. That would be nada!
Byron Buxton supplied all the offense the Twins needed in a wild win over Cleveland on May 9. (David Richard / Imagn Images)
Twins 2, Guardians 1 in 11 zero-filled innings (May 9)
I call these games “phone rattlers.” That’s because, as soon as they’re over, my phone starts shaking, from all the curious baseball fans of America who think it would be a great idea for me to tell them how weird (and wild) this thing was that they just witnessed.
So sure. Let’s do that. It won’t take long to recap all of the Twins’ hits. In the first inning, Byron Buxton led off the game with a homer. Then … the next 35 Twins would arrive at home plate … and none of them would get a hit … but somehow, they hadn’t lost yet!
That would bring Buxton back around, in the 11th inning, to get their second hit … which drove in the friendly neighborhood Zombie Runner. And … Twins win!
OK, so what’s so weird and wild about that? Oh, boy. For one thing, the Guardians’ fearsome pitching staff blitzed through 35 hitters in a row — and 31 straight outs — without allowing a hit … and they lost?
I looked into this — and found that no team in over 40 years had lost a game in which it buzzed through that many hitless hitters in a row, while getting that many hitless outs.
On April 28, 1985, at Shea Stadium, Mets legend Darryl Strawberry hit a first-inning grand slam against the Pirates. Whereupon Pittsburgh pitchers went the next 38 hitters and 32 outs in a row without giving up a hit … and still wound up losing, in the 18th inning. So there’s that.
But there’s also the part about that Buxton guy. His team got two hits — both by him. And scored two runs — both driven in by him. And it all started with a leadoff homer — by him. Want to guess how many other players since 1920 have had that game? As always, zero is an excellent answer. (Hat tip: Stats Perform.) In other words … good thing Byron Buxton showed up!
Double zeroes in the big city (Sunday)
Am I allowed to write about two games at once here? Ha. I am now. So let’s talk about Yankees 2, Rays 0 … and Marlins 4, Mets 0 … both unfurling on the same weird, wild Sunday afternoon … starring two teams from the same city (Hint: It’s that city with the Empire State Building.)
So I can report that there were 534 pitches thrown in those two games. And why would I bring that up? Maybe because zero runs scored on the first 532 of them. But then … two 0-0 games in one day would end dramatically, on the final pitch, on walk-off home runs – by Aaron Judge for the Yankees … and by the Marlins’ Heriberto Hernández, to finish off the Mets, via a rarified walk-off grand slam.
So did you know … that according to the Elias Sports Bureau, only one other day in history has featured two 0-0 games that ended on walk-off homers? It happened as recently as July 27, 1945 — when Vince DiMaggio hit an 11th-inning walk-off for the Phillies and Eddie Mayo walked it off for the Tigers.
And you know what they said about Eddie Mayo, right? He beat the spread!