Rockies Reliever Gets Win Without Making a Pitch
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This blog has noted various Baseball oddities such as a reliever credited with a save in a 30-3 game, the impressive minor league prospect who, in his lone MLB appearance, took an 0-for-3 collar accounting for 6 outs; a strikeout‚ double play‚ and triple play. Also blogged about was a pitcher who went 4 for 4; 4 starts, 4 homers — three of them leading off innings.
Well, here’s the latest oddity: a reliever credited with a win without making a pitch.
The Colorado Rockies scored an eighth inning run without a hit to break a 4-4 tie as Washington’s reliever Joe Beimel threw to the wrong man on the wrong side of 2nd base on an attempted force play as the Rockies went on to defeat the Nationals by a 5-4 score. But Beimel’s wrong-way throw is not the oddity of note here.
Rockies’ lefthanded relief pitcher Alan Embree entered the game with 2 outs in the eighth inning and pinch hitter Austin Kearns on 1st base having just singled to rightfield. With Nationals leadoff hitter centerfielder Nyjer Morgan at bat, Kearns was caught attempting to steal second, pitcher to first to shortstop to pitcher for the final out of inning. The Denver Post describes the play:
[1st baseman] Todd Helton caught Embree’s throw, then slipped. But he was not penalized, because Kearns tripped as he burst for second base. Eventually, the ball ended up back in Embree’s glove for the putout.
“I am not sure if I will be available (today). I am beat,” joked Embree, who had the baseball waiting in his locker afterward in a Ziploc bag. “It was a fun play for me because you just never think that’s going to happen.”
The AP recap of Tuesday’s game cites a stat on such occurences for Yahoo sports:
According to STATS LLC, it was the first time a pitcher had gotten a win without throwing a pitch since Baltimore’s B.J Ryan also had a pickoff against Detroit on May 1, 2003.
Not so oddly enough, Ryan is also a lefthanded reliever and I’ve heard since long ago, as a youngster, that lefthanders have an edge over righthanders on pick-off plays. And the Orioles ended up taking both ends of the a doubleheader that day by scores of 5-2 and 6-4.
There are 2 other known cases of a reliever winning a game without throwing a pitch.
California Angels lefthanded reliever Greg Garrett also accomplished the feat on a pick-off play in a July 1, 1970 4-3 win over the the then-AL Milwaukee Brewers.
The other case dates back to September 7, 1914 in the defunct Federal League when the Brooklyn Feds defeated the Pittsburgh Feds in both ends of a doubleheader as righthanded reliever Jim Bluejacket performed the feat in the nightcap which Brooklyn won by a 12-11 score. Baseball Library cites a Brooklyn Eagle report describing what went down:
Blue jacket (sic) did not pitch a single ball to a Pittsburgh batter‚ but even at that he gets credit for winning the second game. He entered the fray in the eighth inning‚ with Monasky on third and Yerkes on first. Bringing his Indian cunning into play‚ he caught Yerkes napping off first and ended the inning. In the last half of the same round the local team scored the five runs that won the game.”
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