A week ago last Thursday, this blog posted on Chicago White Sox lefthander Mark Buehrle’s perfect game effort against the Tampa Bay Rays.  Well, Buehrle’s perfection didn’t end there as the lefthander made a serious bid to the feat on Tuesday against the Minnesota Twins.

It was batter up, batter down as Buehrle retired the first 17 batters he faced through 5 2/3 innings to set an All-Time MLB record of 45 straight hitters retired.

MLB.com’s Scott Merkin reports on the previous holders of Buehrle’s record:

White Sox closer Bobby Jenks had a share of the previous record, retiring 41 straight from July 17-Aug. 12, 2007, and matching Jim Barr’s 41 in a row for San Francisco from Aug. 23-29, 1972.

With 2 outs in the sixth and the White Sox up by 1-0, Buehrle issued a walk to end the consecutive streak and any chance of a repeat perfect game. A single and a double later and the Twins had tied the game.

An inning later, in the seventh, Buehrle was pounded for 4 runs on a couple of soft, seeing-eye RBI singles before leaving the game with 1 out.

AP Sports Writer Jon Krawczynski reports Buehrle’s reaction to the record and to the loss:

“It’s just frustrating after a loss,” Buehrle said… “It might mean more tomorrow or the next day once I cool off. But I’m not too happy right now.”

The White Sox managed to score 2 runs in the ninth on 3rd baseman  Gordon Beckham’s RBI single, but it was not enough as the Twins prevailed by a 5-3 margin.

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Chicago White Sox ace lefthander Mark Buehrle cruised through eight innings of perfection on Thursday before nearly losing his bid for perfection in the ninth.  Opening the ninth inning, Buehrle’s 2-2 pitch to Tampa Bay rightfielder Gabe Kapler broke in and Kapler nailed it.   The Sox had just made a late-inning defensive replacement placing DeWayne Wise in centerfield.  Wise made for the left centerfield fence, leaped and was able to extend his glove above the wall to snare Kapler’s homer bid.  The next 2 Rays hitters struck out and harmlessly grounded out as the White Sox’s Buehrle went perfect on the Tampa Bay Rays by a 5-0 score.

Buehrle, whose earlier bid for a perfect game against the Texas Rangers in April, 2007 was only marred by a fifth inning, 1 out walk to Sammy Sosa, went totally clean this time against Tampa Bay — 27 up, 27 down — nobody reaching.  Buehrle threw 116 pitches in his el-perfecto complete game.

AP sports writer Andre Seligman reports in his recap for Yahoo sports that Buehrle’s perfect game was “the 18th perfect game in major league history.” 

In most perfect games in my lifetime, the game’s perfection inevitably turns on a great defensive play as happened on Wise’s great grab of Kapler’s homer bid.  Classic, in my memory, was the Father’s Day, 1964 perfect game thrown by Phillies great Jim Bunning against the  New York Mets where the game turned on a hard line drive for which Phils 2nd baseman Tony Taylor lept to snare for the perfection-saving out.

The White Sox went up by 4-0 in the 2nd inning on 2 singles and a walk followed by 1st baseman Josh Fields’ grand slam homer to leftfield.  They capped their scoring on an RBI double to rightfield by 2nd year shortstop Alexei Ramirez.

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The San Francisco Giants registered their 1st no-hitter in 33 years as
26 year old lefthander Jonathan Sanchez tossed a near-perfect game against the San Diego Padres, only marred by an eighth inning fielding error at 3rd base.  Sanchez and the Giants shut out the Padres on Friday by an 8-0 score.

AP Sports Writer Janie McCauley reports:

It was the Giants’ 13th no-hitter and first since John Montefusco did it on Sept. 29, 1976, at Atlanta. Their last one in San Francisco came when Ed Halicki beat the New York Mets in the second game of a doubleheader on Aug. 24, 1975.
 
Sanchez’s dad, Sirgfredo, watched nervously from the stands, bouncing and biting his nails, then scurried down to the dugout to be among the first to congratulate the pitcher.

“Right now I’m just going to go home and hang out with my dad,” Sanchez said. “I was pumped that he was here watching the game.”

Sanchez almost lost his no-hit bid in the ninth, but Gold Glove center fielder Aaron Rowand saved the gem with a leaping grab at the center-field fence to rob pinch-hitter  Edgar Gonzalez for the second out.

“I was going to go up and over and land on the other side of the fence if I had to, to try to make the catch,” Rowand said.

The 26-year-old Sanchez (3-8) returned to the rotation after a nearly three-week demotion to the bullpen—and only got the call because 303-game winner Randy Johnson went on the disabled list this week with a shoulder injury.

With his father and a friend cheering from the stands, Sanchez threw a called third strike past Everth Cabrera to finish his first career complete game.

Sanchez struck out 11, walked noone and threw 110 pitches in his 1st career shut out and complete game.

San Francisco Chronicle sports writer Henry Schulman adds;

Jonathan Sanchez, a 26-year-old left-hander who until this night was the personification of pitching promise unfulfilled. Now, his name is etched forever on the list of this franchise’s great achievements.

And across America today, people will look at a staff that features Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain and Randy Johnson and say, Jonathan Sanchez?

“If you look at this staff he wouldn’t be the one you’d pick,” said manager Bruce Bochy, who has been like a ping-pong master bouncing Sanchez between the rotation and bullpen over the last three seasons, hoping his pitcher could find it.

Sanchez had not started a game since June 22 nor won since May 25. He was 2-8 with a 5.30 ERA this season…

“We had a toast in the clubhouse after the game, and Sanchy said, ‘I don’t want to go to the ‘pen after this start,’ ” Bochy said.

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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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Phillies ace lefthander Cole Hamels got more than he bargained for on Monday; his own 2 hits and 2 RBIs, a 7 inning, 1 run, 3 hit gem as well as being beneficiary of a 10 run first inning pounding of Cincinnati starter  Johnny Cueto who lasted 2/3rds of an inning giving 9 of the runs.  Hamels was treated 4 Phillies homers including an eighth inning grand slam by rightfielder Jayson Werth to cap the Phils massive scoring.  When the scoring onslaught mercifully subsided in the eighth inning with 1st baseman Greg Dobbs and 3rd baseman Pedro Feliz going down to end the inning, the Phillies had crushed the Reds by a whopping 22-1 score. 

With the one-sided win, and the Florida Marlins’ loss to the San Francisco Giants, the Phillies NL East division lead jumped to 2 games over the Marlins.  The Mets, who had Monday off, dropped to 4 1/2 games back and Atlanta who lost to the Chicago Cubs dropped to 5 games off of the pace.

One has to wonder though about what the next games will bring after the Phils pumped this many runs into one game.    AP sports writer Rob Maaddi, who’s recap for Yahoo sports read like a lengthy dissertation rather than a recap, notes what happened last season after the Phils lumped this many runs into one game:

They hadn’t scored more than 15 runs since a 20-2 victory at  St. Louis last June 13. After that game, the Phillies went 3-11 and scored a total of 38 runs.

The previous worst defeat for the Reds, baseball’s first professional franchise, was 26-6 on July 26, 1892. That also was against the Phillies.

That 20-2 win over the Cardinals came but 19 days after the Phils pummeled the Colorado Rockies by a a 20-5 score on May 26th.  After that game, the Phils went on a winning run so, I suppose, things could go either way after this one, although the Phils offense coming into the Cincinnati opener has not exactly been in high-gear.  But three 20 run games in 2 seasons — Wow! Keep in mind that between 1957 and 2007, the Phils had scored 20 runs or more in exactly 3 games, one of them being that wild-and-wooly 23-22 ten inning slugfest at Wrigley Field with the Chicago Cubs which the Phils won on Mike Schmidt’s tenth inning solo shot off of Cubs closer Bruce Sutter.

The Phils scored 22 runs on 21 hits and sending 13 hitters to the plate while scoring 10 runs in the first inning alone.  Phillies Nation’s Amanda Orr brings some historical stats in recapping the game:

It was the first time since 1900 that the Phillies beat an opponent by at least twenty runs.

The Phillies scored ten runs in the first inning, nine off Johnny Cueto, who lasted two-thirds of an inning, raising his earned run average from 2.69 to 3.45. The inning marked the fourth time in franchise history that the Phillies scored ten runs in the first inning. The last time the Phillies scored ten runs in the first inning was in July of 2002 against the  Montreal Expos.

Shane Victorino made his best “vote for me” campaign with a 4-for-5 night. He homered, drove in four runs, and walked. Greg Dobbs (4-for-6, 2 RBI) and Chase Utley (2-for-3, 4 RBI) also homered. Jayson Werth (2-for-5, 5 RBI) hit a grand slam in the eighth inning off Paul Janish, a shortstop, as the Reds were desperate to save their bullpen.

Every starter in the Phillies lineup had at least one hit, including Cole Hamels (2-for-4).  Jimmy Rollins (3-for-4) continued his hitting ways.  The only batter who did not get a hit was John Mayberry Jr. (0-for-1, BB), who came in as a substitute.  Matt Stairs had one plate appearance and walked. Other than that, six Phillies had a multi-hit night. Two Phillies (Victorino and Dobbs) had four hits. Every batter reached base at least once.

The last time the Phillies pounded 22 runs was in 1985 against the New York Mets. It is also the third most runs the Phillies scored in one game. Not only did the win make Phillies history, but Reds history, marking their largest margin of defeat, 21 runs.

The rout was sooo complete sooo early that manager Manuel gave both 2nd baseman Chase Utley and 1st baseman Ryan Howard some in-game rest in the fourth inning pinch-running Eric Bruntlett after Utley’s RBI single and pinch-running John Mayberry Jr. for Howard after his RBI single.

But while most of textual thunder has gone to the Phillies’ heavy lumber, Hamels deserves much credit as well.  After leftfielder Jonny Gomes’ second inning leadoff homer, Hamels went on to retire the last 18 of 19 Reds hitters he faced in evening his seasonal record at 5-5.  He walked no one while striking out 2.  The only other hits Hamels allowed were 2 out singles in the first and fifth innings in one of the finest outings he’s had this season.  

The bullpen  largely rested due to both the offensive explosion and Hamels’ performance.  The Big Bucks relievers; Ryan Madson, Chan Ho Park, J.C. Romero and closer Brad Lidge were all able to catch breathers as Tyler Walker and re-activated lefthander Scott Eyre, in a low-risk situation closed down the Reds in the eighth and ninth innings.

For the scores of all of Monday’s games, click here.

In Tuesday’s game 2, young, unbeaten lefthander J.A, Happ, fresh from 3 consecutive excellent outings including a complete game shutout, is opposed by Aaron Harang for the Reds.  Harang has been up and down so far this season.

For all of Tuesday’s games, click here.

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Ace lefthander Cole Hamels needed just 97 pitches on Thursday to make a 3 run lead stand up while retiring 12 of the last 13 Dodgers he faced. The  Phillies offense scored just enough runs as Hamels spread out 5 Dodger hits in completing a shut out of the Dodgers by a 3-0 score as the Phillies win streak reached 7 games.

With the win, the Phils lead over the 2nd place Mets in the NL East swelled to 4 full games as the Mets lost again Thursday, being swept decisively as  Pittsburgh pounded Mike Pelfrey and reliever J.J. Putz.

Cole Hamels, who won both of his starts against the Dodgers in last season’s NLCS including a 5-1 decision game 5 in L.A. which clinched the Phillies first NL Pennant since 1993, had easily his finest outing of 2009 and the finest of successive fine performances by Phils starters during their 7 game winning streak.  It was Hamels’ 3rd career shutout, his 5th career complete game and the first this season by a Phillies’ starter.

The AP recap for Yahoo sports caught Hamels’ thoughts on his outing Thursday against the Dodgers and notes some statistical and trivia info on Hamels:

For those wondering what the 25-year-old left-hander could possibly do for an encore this season, this was a good start.

“That’s always something that kind of gets in your mind,” said Hamels, 4-0 with a 2.84 ERA over his last seven outings. “I mean, you don’t have the type of time off to really gather your thoughts and get prepared for another season. I had a little bump in the road with the elbow soreness, and that kind of delayed some things. But I’m ready to go now.”

Hamels (4-2) threw 97 pitches, retiring 18 of his last 20 batters and allowing only two runners as far as second base—one of them on defensive indifference in the ninth.

“Sometimes I’ll have a lot of strikeouts and sometimes I won’t. But I don’t want to be the big strikeout guy because it’s hard on you and that really pushes up your pitch count,” Hamels said. “My past three or four games I’ve been going 110 pitches and only getting through the sixth. So pitch efficiency is something I’ve been trying to work on.”

In his May 14 start against the Dodgers at Philadelphia, Hamels gave up two runs in seven innings and settled for a no-decision in the Phillies’ 5-3 loss.

Hamels has not thrown a wild pitch in 344 2-3 innings since July 14, 2007, against St. Louis, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.

For 3 innings, the game was a classic duel between two fine lefthanders, with Clayton Kershaw actually getting the better of the early going retiring the first 9 Phillies he faced before 2nd baseman Chase Utley led off the fourth inning lining a full-count pitch for a double to rightfield.  Center- fielder Jayson Werth then grounded out to shortstop moving Utley to 3rd base.  1st baseman Ryan Howard then sacrificed Utley in with the 1st Phillies run by lofting a sacrifice fly to centerfield.

In the sixth inning, leftfielder Raul Ibanez followed a single and a walk by lining a run-scoring double to left centerfield — 2-0 Phillies as Kershaw was replaced after 5 1/3 innings by the 1st of 4 Dodger relievers.  Kershaw threw 105 pitches in a quality outing while giving up 2 runs on 4 hits, walking 3 and striking out 5. It was his 5th loss vs 3 wins.  Jayson Werth added the 3rd Phillies run with a 2 out RBI single to centerfield in the seventh inning,

Regular starting centerfielder Shane Victorino remained out of the lineup with a strain of his left hip.  Therefore Jayson Werth moved over from rightfield to center and utilitiy man Eric Bruntlett took up Werth’s regular rightfield post.

MLB.com’s Todd Zolecki posted this report on the Flyin’ Hawaiian”:

Shane Victorino said he is fine, even though he isn’t completely fine.

He wasn’t in the lineup on Thursday against the Dodgers at Dodger Stadium because he strained his left hip rounding first base in the first inning on Wednesday against the Padres at PETCO Park. Victorino took batting practice before the game and said he could pinch-hit if needed.

Phillies manager Charlie Manuel said Victorino is day-to-day, which is good, because they need bats on the bench. Because the Phillies are carrying 13 pitchers, they have just four players on the bench.

Victorino seems confident the injury will not linger.

“That’s why I did what I did,” he said of leaving the game in the sixth inning on Wednesday.

Victorino also said he has had soreness on the right side of his lower back for much of the season.

“A little sore, but nothing that I really have to worry about,” he said. “I had a problem on the right side. Now all of a sudden my left side.”

For all of the scores of Thursday’s games, click here.

On Friday, another couple of lefthanders oppose each other as 46 year old veteran Jamie Moyer hopes to duplicate his previoous fine outing while facing Eric Milton.

On Saturday, Joe Blanton is opposed by Hiroki Kuroda.

For all of Friday’s and Saturday’s games, click here and here.

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