Red Sox outlast the Yankees in 19-inning marathon
Take a look around the league with Big League Stew’s daily wrap up. We’ll hit on all of the biggest moments from the day that you may have missed, while providing highlights, photos and interesting stats.
If you love weird baseball, the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees had you covered on Friday night and well into Saturday morning. In a game that lasted 19 innings, required 17 pitchers and 628 total pitches, and even included a 16-minute delay after a small power outage in the stadium, the Red Sox finally emerged with a 6-5 victory.
To be honest, everyone who made it through the game — players, writers and fans included — should be considered heroes to some degree, but the headlines belong to Mookie Betts, who’s 19th-inning sacrifice fly provided the difference, with an honorable mention to Xander Bogaerts, who not only scored the winning run, but had four consecutive singles in extra innings alone.
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Of course, just to get to 19 innings requires a lot of, well, it requires a mish-mosh of pretty much everything that makes baseball the lovely game it is. This game was no different, but here are just a few of the more random or interesting occurrences, beginning with this remarkable truth about Mark Teixeira.
In case you’re wondering, Teixeira was still clean shaven after the game.
Teixeira celebrated his birthday with a game-tying home run leading off the 16th inning, which was one of the three last chance rallies mounted by the Yankees. The game-tying homer was the latest hit by a Yankees player in 75 years.
The official time of game was six hours, 49 minutes. That left both teams with ten hours, 55 minutes to get ready for Saturday’s scheduled game, which begins at 1:05 ET.
While Xander Bogaerts had four singles in extra innings, Mike Napoli struck out four times after the ninth inning. Overall, Napoli was 0-for-8.
Final pitchers Steven Wright and Esmil Rogers combined to throw 159 pitches, which is just 25 less than starting pitchers Wade Miley and Nathan Eovaldi threw.
The only thing this game was missing was a position player on the mound. We suggest you stay tuned on Saturday though. If it’s shaping up as a blowout, the losing side might happily save their bullpen.
MARK BUEHRLE GETS 200TH WIN
Though the pitcher win is widely regarded as an outdated stat in today’s world of advanced stats and metrics, it’s still worth acknowledging milestones such as the one accomplished by Toronto Blue Jays left-hander Mark Buehrle on Friday. In Toronto’s 12-5 victory over the Baltimore Orioles, Buehrle picked up his 200th career win, making him just the 112th pitcher in MLB history to reach that mark.
Buehrle, who’s starting his third season with the Blue Jays, pitched six innings of two-run ball to pick up the victory. It’s his 26th win since joining Toronto. He won 161 over 12 seasons with the Chicago White Sox, and added 13 more for the Miami Marlins in 2012.
Tim Hudson (214), CC Sabahia (208) and Bartolo Colon (205) are the other active pitchers in that group.
But that’s not the only select company he belongs to.
Getting to 300 is very unlikely, but Buehrle could move into the top 50 if he reaches 246.
BILLY HAMILTON STEALS WIN FOR REDS
The Cincinnati Reds are having quite the opening week at the Great American Ballpark. Coming off back-to-back walkoff victories on Wednesday and Thursday, the Reds continued their roll and improved to 4-0 on Friday with a thrilling 5-4 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals.
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In this case, the winning run came around to score in the eighth inning, and it was done almost exclusively on the legs of Billy Hamilton. With out one, Hamilton drew a walk and then stole second base. That took the bat out of the hands of Joey Votto, who had homered twice earlier in the game. He was intentionally walked, but Hamilton soon advanced to third on a wild pitch. From there, Todd Frazier delivered him home with a sacrifice fly that provided the difference.
A’S CONTINUE ODD SCORING PATTERN
To say the Oakland A’s offense has been all or nothing through five games would be an understatement. Coming off their 12-0 victory over the Seattle Mariners on Friday, they’ve now alternated blowout victories with almost non-existant performances at the plate.
It all started with an 8-0 win over the Texas Rangers on Monday. On Tuesday, they fell 3-1 before rebounding to win 10-0 on Wednesday. On Thursday, they lost 10-1, to split the series with Texas, which led to Friday’s remergence.
If the pattern stays true on Saturday, the A’s aren’t going to do much against Seattle left-hander JA Happ. On Sunday, however, they would be due to light up Felix Hernandez and Seattle’s bullpen to the tune of 14-0. In other words, don’t expect the pattern to continue. It’s just one of those opening week oddities.
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Mark Townsend is a writer for Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @Townie813
