{"id":707778,"date":"2026-06-01T12:38:37","date_gmt":"2026-06-01T12:38:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/707778\/"},"modified":"2026-06-01T12:38:37","modified_gmt":"2026-06-01T12:38:37","slug":"the-weirdest-wildest-mlb-games-of-the-month-so-far","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/707778\/","title":{"rendered":"The Weirdest, Wildest MLB games of the month \u2014 so far"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editor\u2019s note: This is a bonus Weird and Wild. To read the main W&W column, click or tap here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You know what happens in baseball when there\u2019s a three-week break between Weird and Wild columns? Weirdness happens. Wildness happens. Games you can\u2019t believe happen. Because you need to know about these games, here are a few we definitely need to bring back to life.<\/p>\n

Orioles 9, Rays 7 in 13 zany innings (Monday) <\/p>\n

How bizarre was this game? The Orioles trailed in the 11th, 12th and 13th innings \u2026 and they won \u2014 on Colton Cowser\u2019s first walk-off home run since, um, the day before.<\/p>\n

But what do you think? Does it seem hard to win a game in which the team you\u2019re playing is winning in the 11th, 12th and 13th? I hope you answered yes. I posed that question to Baseball Reference\u2019s ever-resourceful Katie Sharp. And she found only one other game like it in the entire Baseball Reference\/Retrosheet play-by-play database.<\/p>\n

That one was a nutty 7-6 win<\/a> by Hubie Brooks\u2019 1988 Expos over Mark Grant\u2019s \u201988 Padres, in another 13-inning classic, back in the ol\u2019 pre-Zombie Runner era. But I still think Monday\u2019s game was nuttier.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because, in this tilt, there were two extra innings in which both teams scored at least two runs apiece. And yep, I know that\u2019s Zombie-aided. Nevertheless, Zombies or no Zombies, that has happened only three other times in the last 84 years!<\/p>\n

Mets 16, Nationals 7 in 12 goofy innings (May 18)\u00a0<\/p>\n

How\u2019d this one make our list? Ho-ho-ho. You\u2019ll see.<\/p>\n

For one thing, the Mets\u2019 10-run 12th inning<\/a> made them the first National League team to score 10 or more in an extra inning since Ivey Wingo\u2019s 1919 Reds did that in Brooklyn on May 15, 1919. But guess what? That wasn\u2019t even the weird and wild part.<\/p>\n

The weird and wild part featured the Nationals scoring in the seventh, the eighth and in two extra innings of this game \u2026 and they still lost by nine runs! Shouldn\u2019t that be impossible?<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 and still lost by nine.<\/p>\n

The previous record for biggest loss like that was set by Sparky Adams\u2019 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\u2019s New York Giants \u2026 but still lost by five \u2014 which was possibly related to those 20 runs they coughed up that day.<\/p>\n

White Sox 9, Cubs 8 in 10 unbelievable innings (May 17)\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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 \u2026 and they still lost. How hard is that to do?<\/p>\n

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!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n Byron Buxton supplied all the offense the Twins needed in a wild win over Cleveland on May 9. (David Richard \/ Imagn Images)<\/p>\n

Twins 2, Guardians 1 in 11 zero-filled innings (May 9) <\/p>\n

I call these games \u201cphone rattlers.\u201d That\u2019s because, as soon as they\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n

So sure. Let\u2019s do that. It won\u2019t take long to recap all of the Twins\u2019 hits. In the first inning, Byron Buxton led off the game with a homer. Then \u2026 the next 35 Twins would arrive at home plate \u2026 and none of them would get a hit \u2026 but somehow, they hadn\u2019t lost yet!<\/p>\n

That would bring Buxton back around, in the 11th inning, to get their second hit \u2026 which drove in the friendly neighborhood Zombie Runner. And \u2026 Twins win!<\/p>\n

OK, so what\u2019s so weird and wild about that? Oh, boy. For one thing, the Guardians\u2019 fearsome pitching staff blitzed through 35 hitters in a row \u2014 and 31 straight outs \u2014 without allowing a hit \u2026 and they lost?<\/p>\n

I looked into this \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

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 \u2026 and still wound up losing, in the 18th inning. So there\u2019s that.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s also the part about that Buxton guy. His team got two hits \u2014 both by him. And scored two runs \u2014 both driven in by him. And it all started with a leadoff homer \u2014 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 \u2026 good thing Byron Buxton showed up!<\/p>\n

Double zeroes in the big city (Sunday)<\/p>\n

Am I allowed to write about two games at once here? Ha. I am now. So let\u2019s talk about Yankees 2, Rays 0 \u2026 and Marlins 4, Mets 0 \u2026 both unfurling on the same weird, wild Sunday afternoon \u2026 starring two teams from the same city (Hint: It\u2019s that city with the Empire State Building.)<\/p>\n

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 \u2026 two 0-0 games in one day would end dramatically, on the final pitch, on walk-off home runs \u2013 by Aaron Judge for the Yankees<\/a> \u2026 and by the Marlins\u2019 Heriberto Hern\u00e1ndez, to finish off the Mets, via a rarified walk-off grand slam.<\/p>\n

So did you know \u2026 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 \u2014 when Vince DiMaggio hit an 11th-inning walk-off for the Phillies and Eddie Mayo walked it off for the Tigers.<\/p>\n

And you know what they said about Eddie Mayo, right? He beat the spread!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Editor\u2019s note: This is a bonus Weird and Wild. To read the main W&W column, click or tap…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":707779,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[3966,49,48,3961,491,3981,3965,462,475,3980,82,480,3968],"class_list":["post-707778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-baltimore-orioles","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-chicago-white-sox","tag-cleveland-guardians","tag-miami-marlins","tag-minnesota-twins","tag-mlb","tag-new-york-mets","tag-new-york-yankees","tag-sports","tag-tampa-bay-rays","tag-washington-nationals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/707778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=707778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/707778\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/707779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=707778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=707778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=707778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}