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Abstract

struck out exactly three times. Somehow none of the spots in the Yankees batting order struck out exactly three times.</p><div id="bafe" class="link-block"> <a href="https://readmedium.com/the-cub-we-forgot-to-celebrate-8528bfdd04dc"> <div> <div> <h2>The Cub We Forgot to Celebrate</h2> <div><h3>Remembering the tragic rise and fall of Starlin Castro</h3></div> <div><p></p></div> </div> <div> <div style="background-image: url(https://miro.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:320/1*sksDyu_8QDHbN1ZmyshAdg.jpeg)"></div> </div> </div> </a> </div><figure id="6a5e"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*j_6EqfBLNsMmhdSp_Mf4Mg.jpeg"><figcaption></figcaption></figure><h1 id="e46b">Lots of Pitches and Pitchers</h1><p id="bff4">There were 583 pitches thrown in all, of course not counting the four intentional walks issued to the Cubs. Only twenty players in all of baseball have thrown at least 583 pitches so far this entire season.</p><p id="fde0">Ellsbury, Hicks, Castro, Headley, Schwarber, Bryant, Russell, Jay, Contreras, and Baez each saw at least 30 pitches in this one game. Addison Russell led the way with 39 pitches seen.</p><p id="a9bc">The Cubs used 11 different pitchers in the game, though three of them never threw a pitch. Chicago pinch hit Jake Arrieta, John Lackey, and Kyle Hendricks. The three of them and Cubs starter Jon Lester combined to go 0-for-5 with four strikeouts.</p><p id="4430">Chicago had 11 different names in the clean-up spot at some point in the game, despite starting clean-up Ben Zobrist playing a full nine innings. Other names at the clean-up spot in the lineup included Davis, Edward, Uehara, Montero, Montgomery, Arrieta, Duensing, Lackey, Strop, and Hendricks. Cubs clean-up hitters combined to go 1-for-9 with four strikeouts and saw a combined 31 pitches, an average of fewer than three per player.</p><figure id="68d0"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*j_6EqfBLNsMmhdSp_Mf4Mg.jpeg"><figcaption></figcaption></figure><h1 id="618e">Lots of Hitting Futility</h1><p id="52f9">Sixteen different players had at least five at-bats and nine had at least seven at-bats. Despite that, not a single player in the game had more than two hits.</p><p id="80ef">Only two players in the Cubs lineup raised their batting average on the day. One was Albert Almora Jr who went 2-for-5 and the other was Kyle Schwarber. Sadly his 2-for-7 actually raised his average on the season up to .198. The Yankees had five hitters improve their batting averages.</p><p id="b97f">The Cubs had 11 hits, 10 walks, and of course Rizzo’s hit-by-pitch. That’s 22 base runners in 18 innings. Unfortunately they stranded 18 of them, exactly one per inning.</p><p id="f199">In total, 42 different men played in the game, 22 for the Cubs and 20 for the Yankees. That’s 42 out of the possible 50-man active rosters, which of course includes the full pitching staffs.</p><figure id="1ef0"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*j_6EqfBLNsMmhdSp_Mf4Mg.jpeg"><figcaption></figcaption></figure><h1 id="d7d2">Aroldis Chapman Sucked</h1><p id="b7eb">Cubs fans saw a familiar face as Chapman entered the game in the ninth inning with a 4–1 lead. Chapman is a World Series winner but he’s not exactly a favorite around these parts, sort of like the weird estranged uncle that shows up at reunions but isn’t entirely a

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cknowledged or welcomed but darn it if he doesn’t bring a mean fried chicken to the picnic every year.</p><p id="b66e">Chapman delivered a lead-off walk to Russell, then a bloop single to Jay to put two men on before striking out Contreras. That was followed by two run-scoring singles by Almora Jr and Baez to close the gap to 4–3 before Schwarber struck out. With two outs and the winning run on second, the Yankees chose to walk the MVP Bryant to pitch to Rizzo — and Chapman plunked him with his first pitch to bring in the tying run.</p><p id="8a1c">That was it for Chapman, and though the Cubs would never score again and may have taken up an extra three hours of our lives and sacrificed tonight’s game and a possible Rizzo arm injury on the bean ball, there’s not a Cubs fan out there that didn’t take some real satisfaction in Chapman’s failures.</p><p id="d198">His final line: 3 hits, 2 walks, 3 earned runs in 2/3 of an inning for a 40.50 ERA and a blown save. Take that for data.</p><figure id="542e"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*j_6EqfBLNsMmhdSp_Mf4Mg.jpeg"><figcaption></figcaption></figure><h1 id="9795">Kyle Schwarber Made the Catch of the Year</h1><p id="b294">The game lasted so long that Kyle Schwarber had time to turn from a defensive liability into a Gold Glove play-of-the-year candidate and then still be all but forgotten by the time the game ended several hours later.</p><figure id="1105"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*j_6EqfBLNsMmhdSp_Mf4Mg.jpeg"><figcaption></figcaption></figure><h1 id="d94d">Starlin Castro Became the Hero in the Most Starlin Castro Way Possible</h1><p id="dc45">The hero of the game never even had a hit.</p><ul><li>Starlin Castro went 0-for-8 but hit a sharp grounder to short in the 18th inning that scored the winning run, ruled a fielder’s choice.</li><li>Castro did not add to his league-leading 43 hits and saw his batting average fall 26 points in one day to .355.</li><li>Castro also grounded out in the first, scoring a run. He is the first player in baseball history to have two or more RBI with at least eight at-bats in a hitless game.</li><li>The only way Castro could have won the game in a more Castroesque way would have been if he had struck out in the key moment but headed toward first when the catcher dropped the ball, only for the catcher’s throw to beat Castro to the bag when he didn’t hustle down the line, only for the first baseman to drop the ball anyway, and meanwhile a runner scored somehow, probably Jason Kipnis all the way from second base in Cleveland somehow. No, I’m not bitter.</li><li>Castro, of course, was <a href="https://readmedium.com/the-cub-we-forgot-to-celebrate-8528bfdd04dc">formerly the face of the Cubs franchise</a> and rebuild. That seems like a really long time ago, but then again, so does everything that happened before this baseball game.</li></ul><figure id="a46b"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*[email protected]"><figcaption></figcaption></figure><p id="eedf"><i>Shouts <a href="undefined">Baseball Reference</a>. If you enjoyed this, please recommend by clicking the ❤ so others can too. Follow Brandon <a href="https://upscri.be/6e365d/">on Medium</a> or <a href="https://twitter.com/wheatonbrando">@wheatonbrando</a> for more sports, humor, pop culture, & life musings. Visit Brandon’s <a href="https://readmedium.com/brandon-anderson-writing-archives-6b3ee1a29301#.6cteu050v">writing archives here</a>.</i></p></article></body>

Let’s Play Two… Hours Longer Than Anyone Asked For

Here’s what you missed in the marathon Cubs-Yankees game while you were sleeping…

The Cubs and Yankees wrapped up their weekend series with an 18-inning marathon Sunday night. The game finished after 1am local time as a fielder’s choice allowed the Yankees to score the winning run and complete the sweep. Chicago’s bullpen pitched 11 innings, Rizzo and Baez may both be injured, and the Cubs fell out of first place, but HEY everyone that stayed up watched history and some truly #weirdbaseball.

If you took the sane way out and went to bed early, here’s what you might have missed…

Lots of Time Spent

The game lasted six hours and five minutes in all.

That’s longer than two full NFL games.
It’s as long as four full-length soccer games.
It’s long enough for you to have watched the Netflix Dear White People series and still return for the final three innings.
It’s almost long enough for you to watch Godfather AND Godfather 2 (no one liked Godfather 3 anyway).
It’s long enough for you to have taken your family to Guardians of the Galaxy 2 twice and still had enough time to take out a second mortgage to pay for the tickets and popcorn.
It’s so long you could take a train from Paris to London — and back.
It’s long enough for you to read The Catcher in the Rye from cover to cover, or if you prefer, all of Animal Farm, Of Mice and Men, and Macbeth.
This game was long enough for Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge to have run THREE marathons for Nike and still catch the final out.

Lots of Strikeouts

The game set an MLB record for combined strikeouts in a game with 48. Think about that. There’s no weird modifiers there. That’s not combined strikeouts on a cold Sunday night game in May featuring the defending World Champions on ESPN. Nope. Out of every game played in the history of baseball, no game has ever had more strikeouts. Period.

Fifteen different players threw a pitch Sunday night (and technically Monday morning, for a few). Every one of them had at least one strikeout. And if you really want to be technical about it, all eighteen pitchers that played had at least one strikeout since Arrieta, Lackey, and Hendricks all played and all struck out at the plate.

The first 10 at-bats of extra innings were all strikeouts. Wade Davis and Carl Edwards struck out all three batters each faced. Tyler Clippard struck out three of four batters faced. The second batter in the bottom of the eleventh inning (Javy Baez) was the extra innings batter to do anything other than strike out.

Thirty different players had at least one at-bat. All but four of them recorded at least one strikeout. Torreyes, Sanchez, Shreve, and La Stella were the only players with an at-bat not to strikeout. Each was 0-for-1.

The Cubs struck out 26 times and did a marvelous job spreading the Ks out evenly across the batting order: 3–3–3–4–3–2–3–3–2. Seven of the nine spots in Cubs batting order struck out exactly three times. Somehow none of the spots in the Yankees batting order struck out exactly three times.

The Cub We Forgot to Celebrate

Remembering the tragic rise and fall of Starlin Castro

Lots of Pitches and Pitchers

There were 583 pitches thrown in all, of course not counting the four intentional walks issued to the Cubs. Only twenty players in all of baseball have thrown at least 583 pitches so far this entire season.

Ellsbury, Hicks, Castro, Headley, Schwarber, Bryant, Russell, Jay, Contreras, and Baez each saw at least 30 pitches in this one game. Addison Russell led the way with 39 pitches seen.

The Cubs used 11 different pitchers in the game, though three of them never threw a pitch. Chicago pinch hit Jake Arrieta, John Lackey, and Kyle Hendricks. The three of them and Cubs starter Jon Lester combined to go 0-for-5 with four strikeouts.

Chicago had 11 different names in the clean-up spot at some point in the game, despite starting clean-up Ben Zobrist playing a full nine innings. Other names at the clean-up spot in the lineup included Davis, Edward, Uehara, Montero, Montgomery, Arrieta, Duensing, Lackey, Strop, and Hendricks. Cubs clean-up hitters combined to go 1-for-9 with four strikeouts and saw a combined 31 pitches, an average of fewer than three per player.

Lots of Hitting Futility

Sixteen different players had at least five at-bats and nine had at least seven at-bats. Despite that, not a single player in the game had more than two hits.

Only two players in the Cubs lineup raised their batting average on the day. One was Albert Almora Jr who went 2-for-5 and the other was Kyle Schwarber. Sadly his 2-for-7 actually raised his average on the season up to .198. The Yankees had five hitters improve their batting averages.

The Cubs had 11 hits, 10 walks, and of course Rizzo’s hit-by-pitch. That’s 22 base runners in 18 innings. Unfortunately they stranded 18 of them, exactly one per inning.

In total, 42 different men played in the game, 22 for the Cubs and 20 for the Yankees. That’s 42 out of the possible 50-man active rosters, which of course includes the full pitching staffs.

Aroldis Chapman Sucked

Cubs fans saw a familiar face as Chapman entered the game in the ninth inning with a 4–1 lead. Chapman is a World Series winner but he’s not exactly a favorite around these parts, sort of like the weird estranged uncle that shows up at reunions but isn’t entirely acknowledged or welcomed but darn it if he doesn’t bring a mean fried chicken to the picnic every year.

Chapman delivered a lead-off walk to Russell, then a bloop single to Jay to put two men on before striking out Contreras. That was followed by two run-scoring singles by Almora Jr and Baez to close the gap to 4–3 before Schwarber struck out. With two outs and the winning run on second, the Yankees chose to walk the MVP Bryant to pitch to Rizzo — and Chapman plunked him with his first pitch to bring in the tying run.

That was it for Chapman, and though the Cubs would never score again and may have taken up an extra three hours of our lives and sacrificed tonight’s game and a possible Rizzo arm injury on the bean ball, there’s not a Cubs fan out there that didn’t take some real satisfaction in Chapman’s failures.

His final line: 3 hits, 2 walks, 3 earned runs in 2/3 of an inning for a 40.50 ERA and a blown save. Take that for data.

Kyle Schwarber Made the Catch of the Year

The game lasted so long that Kyle Schwarber had time to turn from a defensive liability into a Gold Glove play-of-the-year candidate and then still be all but forgotten by the time the game ended several hours later.

Starlin Castro Became the Hero in the Most Starlin Castro Way Possible

The hero of the game never even had a hit.

Starlin Castro went 0-for-8 but hit a sharp grounder to short in the 18th inning that scored the winning run, ruled a fielder’s choice.
Castro did not add to his league-leading 43 hits and saw his batting average fall 26 points in one day to .355.
Castro also grounded out in the first, scoring a run. He is the first player in baseball history to have two or more RBI with at least eight at-bats in a hitless game.
The only way Castro could have won the game in a more Castroesque way would have been if he had struck out in the key moment but headed toward first when the catcher dropped the ball, only for the catcher’s throw to beat Castro to the bag when he didn’t hustle down the line, only for the first baseman to drop the ball anyway, and meanwhile a runner scored somehow, probably Jason Kipnis all the way from second base in Cleveland somehow. No, I’m not bitter.
Castro, of course, was formerly the face of the Cubs franchise and rebuild. That seems like a really long time ago, but then again, so does everything that happened before this baseball game.

Shouts Baseball Reference. If you enjoyed this, please recommend by clicking the ❤ so others can too. Follow Brandon on Medium or @wheatonbrando for more sports, humor, pop culture, & life musings. Visit Brandon’s writing archives here.