Stark: Weird and Wild, the Weird No-Hitter Facts Edition

So what did you miss this week in baseball? Aw, not much. Other than round-the-clock programming on a shocking violation of the unwritten rules. … And a three-homer game by a guy hitting .141. … But mostly …

By the time this season is over, it’s now apparent that everybody will have thrown a no-hitter except your neighborhood grounds crew. So no discussion of the Weird and Wild this week can possibly begin without another case of …

1. No-hit fever

What a year. We’re on pace for 23 no-hitters! Which would not only be a record, it would be more than the entire decades of the 1930s and ’40s combined (21). But if we really want to go down this “pace” road (and I’m not sure we do) …

At least all 23 of those no-hitters would be against the Indians, Mariners and Rangers. … And none of them would be against any National League teams. … But somehow, seven of them would be pitched by National League teams. … Because No-Hit Fever is sweeping our land. (Attention, Dr. Fauci!) So …

Always-entertaining Cubs voice Jim Deshaies called me Thursday morning on his way to Wrigley Field. He was clearly disoriented — since here it was, mid-morning, and he hadn’t gotten a single no-hitter alert on his phone yet.

“What the hell is going on?” he asked, only to learn he was speaking to a guy who was just as shaken by this as he was.

With two more no-hitters in the books this week, which brings the 2021 total to six no-hitters in seven weeks — plus that Madison Bumgarner Whatever That Was — “I wake up now in no-hitter watch mode,” Deshaies said.

Hey, frankly, who doesn’t? Sure, it might seem as though 10 in the morning is a little early for another no-hitter to break out. But as Deshaies so eloquently pointed out, with a beautiful tribute to Alan Jackson and Jimmy Buffet, “It’s the seventh inning somewhere!”

“Honestly,” Deshaies said, “when I refresh the scoreboard page now and I see an ‘0-0-0’ in the third inning, I think, ‘Well, here we go again.’”

And seriously, why wouldn’t he? So it’s time to bear down and put the no-hit binge of 2021 in perspective (which has become pretty much a full-time job, I might add).

“I know the way your mind works,” Deshaies said. “You can start to play the ‘What’s gonna happen more often — a no-hitter or a Fill in the Blank?’”

Whoah. How’d he know? I had already begun to compile a very similar list, which will lead off our collection of Weird and Wild 2021 No-Hitter Facts. So here it comes.

THERE HAVE ALREADY BEEN MORE NO-HITTERS THIS YEAR THAN:

• Full moons (four)
• Home runs by the reigning major-league home run champ, Luke Voit (one*)
• Doubles by the reigning major-league doubles champ, Freddie Freeman (three*)
• Weeks when Taylor Swift had Billboard’s No. 1 album in America (three)
• Series won by the Twins (two)
• Triples by the two New York teams combined (five*)
• Games played by James Harden since baseball season started (three)
• Rockies road wins (two — as in 2-17!)
• Nine-inning one-pitcher shutouts that weren’t no-hitters (five*)
• And, as ESPN’s Paul Hembekides so perfectly noted, even three-homer games (four)

Individuals by season:

2021
No-hitters (6)
3-HR games (4)

2016-20
No-hitters (8)
3-HR games (79)

— Paul Hembekides (@PaulHembo) May 20, 2021

Boy, there are so many more where they came from. But we have a multitude of other No-Hitter facts we need to get to. So let’s move on to …

The Best Little No-hitter House in Texas

Those Texas Rangers have now played 23 home games this season. They’ve been no-hit in two of them — by Corey Kluber on Wednesday, by Joe Musgrove on April 9. What makes that Weird and Wild is this:

Times Rangers were no-hit in Arlington Stadium: once in 1,750 games
Times Rangers were no-hit at Globe Life Park: never in 2,081 games
Times Rangers were no-hit at new Globe Life Field: twice in 52 games

Baseball!

Get a Kluber

But who knows how many no-hitters would have busted out at Globe Life Field if Kluber had been healthy enough to pitch more than one inning for the Rangers last year — seeing as how …

And here’s one for @jaysonst. Corey Kluber has now made 2 starts at Globe Life Field and hasn’t given up a hit in either one. 😉

— Sweeny Murti (@YankeesWFAN) May 20, 2021

Yes, of course that’s a trick question, since that one hitless inning Kluber pitched for the Rangers last July isn’t exactly the same thing as the no-hitter he crafted Wednesday. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a fun note in here.

We had to figure out a way to eliminate a bunch of openers and pretenders. But the geniuses at STATS Perform finally dug up the tidbit of the day. If we use a minimum of five combined innings (over two starts) as the cutoff, Kluber joins only one other pitcher in the modern era to have back-to-back hitless starts at any park. The other?

It could only be Johnny Vander Meer! On June 15, 1938, Vander Meer went into Ebbets Field in Brooklyn and pitched the second of his back-to-back no-hitters. A month and a half later, on Aug. 7, he started and pitched one hitless inning. Unfortunately, it included five walks and three runs. But all in all, as close to Kluber-esque as it gets!

Raging Turnbull

The beautiful thing about baseball is it offers countless opportunities to change pretty much any narrative. Consider Tigers starter Spencer Turnbull. In 2019, he finished out the season by making 18 starts in a row without winning any of them. Tuesday in Seattle, he joined the 2021 No-Hit Club.

So how many pitchers have had an 18-start winless streak in any season and still thrown a no-hitter? Excellent question!

If we just look at streaks within a single season, only one other pitcher in the modern era has ever done what Turnbull did — and it was a long time ago! A mere 112 years ago, Bob Groom made 19 consecutive winless starts for Long Tom Hughes’ 110-loss 1909 Senators. Then he threw a no-hitter for the Cardinals, against the Cubs, in 1917.

Now if I wanted to include winless streaks that long over multiple seasons, I could add the likes of Don (Mr. Perfecto) Larsen (19 starts in a row, 1959-60), and Vida Blue (18, in 1982-83), and Fernando Valenzuela (19, in 1988-89), and even Jonathan Sanchez (18, in 2012-13). But at Weird and Wild World HQ, we make up the rules for our own notes. So sorry. They’re out!

Wrong Turnbull

Hold on. We’re not through with Spencer Turnbull yet — because another thing he did in 2019 was lead the league in losses, by going 3-17! And because baseball is amazing, only a year and a half later, that same person would pitch a no-hitter.

The good news is, he’s not the only pitcher in history to throw a no-hitter and also have a season like that: at least 20 decisions, and a winning percentage of .150 or lower. These two guys join him:

DON LARSEN — Went 3-21 for Duane Pillette’s 100-loss 1954 Orioles, then threw a perfect game you might have heard about in the 1956 World Series.

JIM ABBOTT — Went 2-18 for Rex Hudler’s 1996 Angels, just three years after spinning a no-hitter for the 1993 Yankees.

Good list!

Take the interleague highway

We alluded to this earlier. But even before the Rangers added to this list, loyal reader Louis Gray had this question for us Wednesday.

This may be @jaysonst worthy, that all five no hit victims, including Seattle and Cleveland twice each, were American League squads, but two of the no hitters were thrown by National League pitchers (Musgrove and Miley).

I don't venture that's happened before.

— Louis Gray (@louisgray) May 19, 2021

And Louis, you would be correct! Before this year, there had never been a season with more than one interleague no-hitter. But all the records are toppling now — obviously!

The two-timers

Also Wednesday, we got this dead-on question from the Twitterverse.

@jaysonst when’s the last time two teams were no-hit twice this early in the same season? Never?

— Mart (@getsMart_5) May 19, 2021

Before we could even type out the answer, the Rangers barged in on that club to make it three teams. But either way, “never” is a good call!

• The only time in the modern era that we’ve even seen one team get no-hit twice in its first 45 games of a season was 1917, when Shoeless Joe Jackson’s White Sox got no-no’d two days in a row (May 5 and 6) by the St. Louis Browns.

• And the only time in the modern era when two different teams got no-hit twice in the same season — in 2015 — it took all the way until Oct. 3.

• Or if you want to venture back to the 19th century and include the United Association and American Association as “major leagues,” it still took until Sept. 28 for the 1884 Pittsburgh Alleghenys and Washington Nationals to get no-hit twice apiece.

But three teams? Never happened. In any league. In any season. Until No-Hit Fever swept our land in the spring of 2021.

Home sweet help

This is also the first season in history in which two teams — the Mariners and Rangers — got no-hit twice in their home park. But wait. It gets worse.

That’s a thing that happened three times in the first 125 seasons of Major League Baseball. And now …

It’s happened twice this week!

It’s all Kyle Seager’s fault!

I bet you always thought Nolan Ryan was Mr. No-Hitter. Nope. The real Mr. No-Hitter is the Mariners’ no-hit magnet, Kyle Seager. He just played in his ninth no-hitter (four for the Mariners, five against). And our friends from STATS tell us that’s the most no-hitters anyone in history has played in with *just one franchise.*

But the worst part about that record is, he can still unbreak it if he ever becomes an ex-Mariner. So let’s also include him on this fun list — of every player in the modern era who played in more no-hitters (regular season and postseason) than Nolan Ryan (seven):

The trouble with Angel

Finally, from our no-hit umpires files, this is Angel Hernández’s 31st season as a big-league umpire. And somehow or other, it took him all 31 seasons until he finally made it behind the plate for Turnbull’s gem. But here is what makes that especially Weird and Wild:

Thanks to NoNoHitter.com’s incredible Dirk Lammers, we can report that since Hernández made his big-league debut in 1991, we count 65 different umpires who worked the plate for a no-hitter before he did. That group includes Harry and Hunter Wendelstedt, three apiece by Eric Cooper and Paul Runge, and two by Steve Rippley — believe it or not. (Rim shot!)

2. Exception to the rules

Forgive Yermín Mercedes and Willian Astudillo. They had no idea what they were getting themselves — and all of us — into Tuesday night, when this Weird and Wild thing happened.

It seemed kind of fun at the time, a lovable position player showing up on the mound to serve up a 47-mile-an-hour, 3-and-0 meatball, which got swatted over the center-field fence in a 16-4 blowout. But that was before we knew Mercedes’ manager, Tony La Russa, was about to appoint himself as chief justice of the Unwritten Rules Supreme Court — and charge his DH with criminal unwritten-rule negligence.

Well, here at the Weird and Wild column, it’s not our thing to unpack all of that. But we do thank our friend, Jim Deshaies, for proposing the most brilliant way to clean up this mess we’ve ever heard.

“You know, we were laughing last night,” he said, “that it would be funny if, when the managers go to home plate to meet with the umpires and go over the ground rules, they each exchange a code by which they’re going to play the game, and it’s negotiated in advance of the series:

“We will not steal any bases if we have a 10-run lead after the seventh inning. We will not swing, 3-and-0. And the other manager has to initial it by the ‘X’ in like seven different places. And copies get sent to the media so they understand what rules are being played under.”

This would totally work for us proper Weird and Wild authorities. Just sayin’. But what would also work are these wacky tidbits:

• Statcast’s time in the pitch-tracking business goes back to 2008. So how many 47 mph pitches had ever been whacked for a home run, in all that time, before Mercedes went rogue (and went deep)? Oh yeah. That would be none.

• Amazingly, though, that wasn’t the slowest pitch on which an actual major leaguer got a hit in that span. That record was set exactly four weeks earlier, with the help of a position-player pitcher on Mercedes’ own team. On April 19, the White Sox’s Danny Mendrick served up a single to Hunter Renfroe on a 41.2 mph mushball — on an 0-2 pitch!

• But Astudillo did set another record: Slowest 3-and-0 pitch thrown in the entire pitch-tracking era — by more than 12 mph! And the previous record was also set this week! Matt Carpenter made it to the mound for the Cardinals last weekend and powered in a 59.5 mph, 3-and-0 smokeball. But at least nobody swung at that one.

• And now the greatest record of them all set by that dynamic Astudillo/Mercedes long-ball duo: Earlier this season, on April 14, Mercedes also whomped a homer off a pitch from Zach Plesac that was recorded at 92.2 mph. Which means he has hit home runs this season on pitches with a velocity differential of more than 45 miles per hour! So is that a first? Of course, that’s a first. Check out this fantastic research by Statcast wiz Jason Bernard:

 3. Albert’s L.A. story

When Albert Pujols showed up in Dodger Stadium this week, wearing a Dodgers jersey with No. 55 on the back, this is what’s known in my world as a Weird and Wild notes bonanza. So how about all this:

HE HIT CLEANUP! Here’s the kind of thing that happens to a guy who just got a job after getting released — but his name is Albert Pujols: In his very first game for his new team, he got to bat in the cleanup hole.

Turns out he’s the oldest player to start in the cleanup slot, in his first game for a new team, in 105 years! Here’s the whole spectacular leader board, courtesy of STATS.

Oldest Players to Start Cleanup in First Career Game with Team (Since 1901)

IT’S AN MVP-FEST! So when Albert joined the band, it gave the Dodgers four former MVPs (Pujols, Clayton Kershaw, Mookie Betts, Cody Bellinger) and three former Cy Youngs (Kershaw, Trevor Bauer, David Price). So how many teams in history could ever say that? That would be none, the great Sarah Langs, of MLB.com, reports.

So I asked STATS how many teams in any of the four major pro sports have ever had four former MVPs. This won’t take long. In the NFL, no team has ever had more than two. In the NBA, the record is three, by the 1985-86 76ers (Julius Erving, Moses Malone, Bob McAdoo). The NHL record is also three Hart Trophy winners — most recently for the 2008-09 Capitals (Sergei Fedorov, Alex Ovechkin, Jose Theodore).

In other words, it’s only baseball (where it’s easier, since they give out two of those MVP awards every year). And the Dodgers are the fourth team with four. The others:

1978 Big Red Machine: Pete Rose, Joe Morgan, George Foster, Johnny Bench

1982 Angels: Rod Carew, Fred Lynn, Don Baylor, Reggie Jackson

1996 Red Sox: Roger Clemens, José Canseco, Kevin Mitchell, Mo Vaughn

 55-SKIDOO! After two decades of seeing Pujols wear No. 5, it was stunning to see him with that 55 on his back. He then drove in a run in each of his first two games as a Dodger. But he needs to pick up the pace to ascend the list of Most RBIs by a No. 55 for the Dodgers, which Stathead’s Kenny Jackelen was kind enough to work up for us:

Russell Martin: 320
Orel Hershiser: 46
Skip Schumaker: 30
Wayne Kirby: 11
Ron Fairly: 8
Ramón Hernández: 6
Sir Albert: 2

4. This Week in Useless Info

IF MATT WERE A CARPENTER — The parade of position players marching to that pitcher’s mound just keeps growing larger in 2021. And as we mentioned, Matt Carpenter etched his name on that list last Saturday in San Diego, for the first pitching outing of his fine career. But here comes the Weird and Wild Part.

Carpenter had 1,125 hits to his name before he ever reached that mound. And only one Cardinal in history ever racked up more before his first career pitching outing. You’ve heard of him. In fact, we wrote all about it last week.

Most Career Hits with Cardinals Before First Pitching Appearance with Cardinals — All-Time

THE MENDOZA TRIFECTA CLUB — Miguel Sanó headed into Wednesday’s Twins-White Sox game with a lower batting average (.141) than 22 pitchers. But then this happened.

Miguel Sano has 3 HRs in one game 😨

(via @mlb)pic.twitter.com/e5EAjRZdLz

— B/R Walk-Off (@BRWalkoff) May 19, 2021

According to STATS, at least he broke a record once held by Babe Ruth with those three home runs. Except, well, that sounds better than it is — since that record is: Lowest batting average in the modern era by a player who hit three home runs in a game.

Ruth was hitting .153 for the Braves in 1935 before the game in which he bopped the final three homers of his career. And hard as many tried, nobody could beat that for the next 85 years — until Miguel Sanó came along. So just for fun here’s the rest of that Weird and Wild Worst Average leader board. It’s something.

Lowest Season Batting Average by Player Entering a 3-Home Run Game, MLB Since 1901

(minimum 75 plate appearances)

THIS TIME IT COUNTS — For the last 45 springs, the Blue Jays and Phillies have spent their spring trainings hanging out about three miles from each other — the Jays in Dunedin, the Phillies next door in Clearwater. So what they did last weekend, they have done before — sort of.

They played three baseball games in Dunedin — something it’s estimated they’d done before in the neighborhood of 175 times. There was just one slight difference. These games actually counted!

The Blue Jays’ Rodney Hiemstra, the Phillies’ Kenny Ayres and Pinellas County baseball historian Rick Vaughn did their darndest to figure out how many times they’d played before this, and how many times each team had won before this. Best they could do was tell us that since 2006, those teams have played epic 40 Grapefruit League tussles — in which the Blue Jays went 22-16-2.

But before that, it turns out that spring training records can disappear on you like nothing else in sports. It’s almost like those games don’t count or something. Almost!

KING OF THE HILL — I watched Rich Hill do those Rich Hill things he does last Thursday against the Yankees — 6 2/3 scoreless innings for the Rays, at 41 years old — and I thought: Who does that to the Yankees at that advanced baseball age? So I looked!

Thanks to the miracle of baseball-reference.com/Stathead, I found five other games in history in which a starting pitcher, 41 or older, twirled at least six shutout innings against the Yankees. It’s an awesome list.

 SPECIAL K — Thanks to the legend, Peter Gammons, for pointing out this amazing feat. Last Saturday against the Cardinals, the Padres piled up 13 runs and 17 hits. But that isn’t the Weird and Wild portion of this section. They did all that despite zero strikeouts by their position players!

The starting pitcher, Chris Paddack, did what pitchers do these days — and whiffed twice in two at-bats. But 12 position players also batted in this game. And in 36 plate appearances, they managed to avoid striking out once — even in the Year of the Strikeout.

Last time any team had that many runs, that many hits and no Ks by any position player in a game? It was more than a decade ago, according to STATS: Sept. 17, 2010. Kyle Loshe strikes out three times for the Cardinals. But none of his position-player buddies whiffed once on the way to 14 runs and 19 hits against — yep, the Padres!

5. This Week in Strange but Trueness

CAN’T WIN FOR LOSING — It seems kind of hard to break an 11-game losing streak and still lose that day. But it’s been that kind of month for those Kansas City Royals.

One minute, they had the best record in baseball. The next, they’d reeled through 11 losses in a row — until they finally pulled the plug on that streak with a 6-2 win over the White Sox last Friday.

But here’s where this gets Stranger But Truer: Right after ending that losing streak, they were forced by the proper AL authorities to also play the second game of their doubleheader. Which ended in a 3-1 loss. Which meant that they couldn’t even break their losing streak and end the day high-fiving.

So how rare is that? According to STATS, the last team to stop a losing streak that long (or longer) in the first game of a doubleheader but then go out and lose the second game was none other than Casey Stengel’s 1963 Mets. Beat the Houston Colt .45s in Game 1 to pull the plug on a 15-game streak, but got wiped out, 8-0, in Game 2. … And that got them so inspired, they then lurched into another 11-game losing streak three days later!

THE 100-100 CLUB — How much fun is Marlins rookie Jazz Chisholm? He seems like he’s mostly a base-stealing kind of whirling dervish. But he also does stuff like this.

That’s a home run Tuesday off a José Alvarado fastball that was traveling 100.5 MPH, the hardest pitch ever smoked for a homer off any Phillies pitcher in the pitch-tracking era. But that wasn’t the Strange But True part.

The Strange But True plot line here was that last month, against Jacob deGrom, Chisholm turned around another pitch over 100 mph for a home run. So who does that? Who hits multiple home runs off pitches that fast? Correct answer: Nobody!

Statcast has recorded no other player who has hit two home runs (or more) off pitches that registered at 100 mph or harder — and not just this year, but ever, in their whole careers. So maybe it’s more revealing to ask: Who doesn’t do that?

Oh, only Giancarlo Stanton. And Aaron Judge. And Nelson Cruz. And Mike Trout. And Bryce Harper. They’re among the many, many noted mashers who have never hit a home run on a pitch flying at them in triple digits. But Jazz Chisholm has done that twice within the first seven home runs of his career. Because wow.

THE MORE BOMBS THAN DOUBLES CLUB — I don’t know about you, but I’m constantly amazed by the stuff we can look up these days. So there I was last Friday, watching baseball, when Rays catcher Mike Zunino hit a ball harder than your average human.

That’s a 450-foot home run, according to Statcast. Which is cool enough. Except it was also Zunino’s third home run of 450 feet-plus this season. That’s the most in baseball. But it isn’t the Strange But True thing that I decided needed to be researched.

Mike Zunino, you see, has only hit two doubles this year. Which means he has more 450-foot homers than doubles. And once again, let’s ask: Who does that?

Fortunately for peoplekind, Sarah Langs thought this would also be a fun thing to find out. And the answer is … nobody in the Statcast era has ever done this in a season in which he actually hit a double. Even one double.

So I don’t know if we should be rooting for more Zunino 450-foot shots or just no gappers. But I’m in!

GRANDAL’S CANYON — This is what a Yasmani Grandal box-score line looks like at its finest:

 0 AB, 3 R, 0 H, 1 RBI

Pretty wacky, isn’t it? But that appeared in the real box scores Monday night, after the White Sox catcher’s innovative evening in Minnesota. Five trips to the plate…but no official at-bats. Because of four walks and a sac fly.

It’s only the second 0-3-0-1 box-score line in the last 93 years. The other: a Brian Downing 0-3-0-1, four-walk classic on July 30, 1988. But again, we’ve barely even touched the Strange But True surface here.

Grandal’s whole season (complete with a rarified .139/.397/.354 slash line) is actually a Strange But True column waiting to happen. But we’ll get to that one some other time. His Strange But True box-score line claim to fame is this:

That’s the second time this month he’s had a game in which he made it to home plate five times — but the box score will claim he never got “an at-bat.”

He also did that May 8, against the Royals. In the modern era, only one other player has ever done that twice in the same month — and it last happened a measly 106 years ago.

Meet Wally Schang, who unfurled two 0-for-0’s on Sept. 14 and 29, 1915, for Connie Mack’s Philadelphia A’s, back in simpler times, before Weird and Wild columns and even Twitter. But hey, we just brought him back to life, didn’t we? De nada, Wally!

WHO YA GONNA CALL? GHOST RUNNERS — Once upon a time, when the world was normal and the only ghosts in baseball haunted the Red Sox, there were certain things that didn’t seem possible. And now, here in the post-pandemic after times, those same things almost start to feel normal.

For our latest, Strange But True, example, we bring up the saga of Rockies closer Daniel Bard and his fun-filled appearance Tuesday in San Diego:

Arrived on the mound in the ninth inning of a tie game. Faced three hitters — and went strikeout, strikeout, groundout. Then he was back out for the 10th, still in a tie game, except there was now a ghost runner in his life. So two pitches later, the Padres bunted the ghost runner to third. Then moments later, this unfortunate thing happened.

So here’s the deal for poor Daniel Bard. Faced four hitters. Retired them all. Allowed no hits, no walks, no hit batters, no earned runs — and he got a loss to show for it.

That used to be a thing that couldn’t be done. It has now happened to eight different relievers in extra innings here in the Ghost Runner Era. Because what we have here is …

Baseball! (In 2021!)

(Top photo of Kluber and the Yankees: Kevin Jairaj / USA Today)