STRANGE BUT TRUE 2017 EDITION!

Jayson Stark·Thursday, December 28, 2017

MY FAVORITE STRANGE BUT TRUE FEATS OF 2017
10 STRANGE BUT TRUE CLASSICS
1) There are some numbers in baseball that would even make Albert Einstein say: This CAN’T be right. Like this!
Jose Altuve led the league in hitting and outhit Aaron Judge by 62 points.
Meanwhile, Judge led the league in strikeouts and whiffed 124 more times than Altuve.
So which of those two men reached base the most times in 2017? Yessir, it was Aaron Judge. He reached base 15 more times than Altuve. Hey, of course he did!
2) Guess which team had the longest losing streak in baseball this year (11 in a row)? It was – who else? – the team that won the MOST games in baseball (the Dodgers).
They lost 11 in a row in September – and still won 104. Hard to do, friends.
3) In the Indians’ entire 22-game winning streak, they only gave up 37 runs.
A week and a half after that streak ended, the Rangers also gave up 37 runs – in one series (against the Astros).
4) How aggressive was Tigers GM Al Avila at the trading deadline?
So aggressive that he traded his own son (Alex). And no, no GM in baseball history had ever done that.
5) What’s better than getting your first career big-league hit? How about getting your first career hit twice in the same game!
Oakland’s Matt Chapman managed to do that on June 16, thanks to the miracle of instant replay.
He thought he got his first hit on an infield single in the second inning. But the Yankees challenged that one and won.
So six innings later, he got an even better first hit – a game-winning, two-run, eighth-inning single.
6) How about this for déjà vu? On June 4, the Mets played “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” during the seventh-inning stretch. Then had to play it again – and stretch again.
Because while everybody was singing, the Pirates challenged what looked like the final out of the inning – and won the challenge. So the Mets ran back on the field. The old ball game resumed. And it took two more batters to finish the inning for real.
After which, naturally, they played Take Me Out to the Ball Game one more time.
7) The Yankees played a game June 15 in which they scored in the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth and 10th innings. And if you think that was tough, here’s what was even tougher:
They scored in all those innings and still LOST. Only four other teams have done that in the last 99 years!
8) On Aug. 16, the Mets were so short of infielders, they started their catcher, Travis d’arnaud, at third base. But hang on. It gets stranger.
He then went on to change positions 22 times, flipping between third and second, third and second, third and second, until his box-score line looked like this:
d’Arnaud 3B-2B-3B-2B-3B-2B-3B-2B-3B-2B-3B-2B-3B-2B-3B-2B-3B-2B-3B-2B-3B-2B.
Amazingly, he made it all the way to the ninth inning before anyone hit him a ground ball. So yep, it’s absolutely true that eventually, the ball WILL find you.
9) I loved this crazy June 13 Twins-Mariners game:
Eduardo Escobar went 5 for 5 against real pitchers – but went 0 for 1 against a catcher (Carlos Ruiz).
Eddie Rosario had a three-homer game hitting 9th – so doesn’t it make perfect sense that no Twins CLEANUP hitter has hit three in a game since 1963.
And the Twins got 28 hits in one game – a week after a three-game series against the same team in which they didn’t get 28 hits in the whole series!
10) Will Middlebrooks hit two pinch triples in one day Sept. 6, (thanks to the only interleague doubleheader of the year).
Want to guess how many triples he hit in three YEARS with the Red Sox? Right you are. That would be zero.
BONUS STRANGE-BUT-TRUE MOMENTS!
· Leonys Martin is an outfielder. He made his first appearance as a Cub on Sept. 4 – as a pitcher.
· Joey Gallo hit 41 home runs – and 32 SINGLES. Meanwhile, in an alternative universe, Ender Inciarte had three different MONTHS where he got more than 32 singles.
· The White Sox’ starting outfield on April 14 went: Garcia, Garcia, Garcia: Avisail in left, Leury in center, Willy in right. Even the Alou brothers never pulled that off.
· The Twins and Dodgers had an 18-minute double-switch delay (July 25). Yes, really. How’d that happen? Let’s just say Paul Molitor and the umpires had an all-time Strange But True lineup-card malfunction.
· The Angels won a game on a walkoff WHIFF on June 28 (with some minor assistance from a Yasmani Grandal passed ball/E2).
· Chris Gimenez pitched more times this year (6) than Huston Street (4).
· In the Astros’ first game in Houston after Hurricane Harvey, the pitcher they faced was – yep – Matt Harvey (on Sept. 2).
· And for all you Strange But True name-game fans, I’ll let you decide. What was the greatest starting-pitching match-up of the year?
Was it Ray-Romano? (As in Robbie Ray versus Sal Romano in a July 18 Diamondbacks-Reds duel.)
Or was it a match-up that only a Texan could properly appreciate – Dallas versus Austin? (That would be Dallas Keuchel versus Austin Pruitt, in an Aug. 2 Astros-Rays faceoff.)
STRANGE BUT TRUE INJURY OF THE YEAR!
The good news for Braves infielder Johan Camargo was: He made it onto the lineup card as the starting shortstop Aug. 8.
The bad news: He never did make it out to shortstop that night.
He did successfully hop out of the dugout. But while he was gearing up to make that superstitious “good-luck” leap over the baseline, he got a spike caught in the turf, failed to nail the landing and wound up spending the next four weeks on the D.L. – with a hyperextended knee. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yq7qWtF5nx4
Our suggestion for his 2018 New Years resolution? Take an Uber!
3 STRANGE-BUT-TRUE WORLD SERIES ALL-TIMERS!
· The first 13-12 World Series game in history was started by – who else? – two Cy Young winners (Clayton Kershaw and Dallas Keuchel).
· In the history of the World Series, only two players (Josh Hamilton and Dave Henderson) had ever hit an extra-inning home run for a team that didn’t wind up winning the game. Then, somehow or other, the Dodgers homered in two extra innings IN A ROW in Game 2 – and still lost, 7-6.
· And what was the Astros’ true magic number this year? How about 11:59.
They traded for Justin Verlander at 11:59 p.m. EDT on Aug. 31.
They won the World Series at 11:59 EDT on Nov. 1.
And folks, it doesn’t get much stranger, truer or more fatalistic than that!