MLB Daily: Todd Frazier's Walk-Off Slam; More Position Players Take the Mound
By Mike Cardillo
Welcome to a Thursday edition of MLB Daily where one day we hoped our number is called to pitch in a 16-2 game…
Decisions, decisions: This is something that every baseball fan deals with, specifically baseball fans on the East Coast. Eventually games run long — or start at 10 p.m. on the West Coast. At some point you have to make the executive decision — stay up all night or get some sleep.
This happened to me last night. The Tigers-Reds game in Cincy featured a 90-minute delay and then went to extra innings. By the 10th I was tired and went to bed. There’s nothing worse than grinding through interminable extra innings games and see your team lose. I’ve lost way too much sleep doing this. It’s only a game. There are 162 of them every season. Sometimes sanity wins out over devotion.
Good thing I made that call, since the Reds won on a Todd Frazier walk-off GRAND SLAM in the 13th.
When I saw this result on my phone at 4 a.m. when I went downstairs for a sip of water, I just shrugged and trudged back to sleep. Eh. Out of sight, out of mind.
Trendy: In the past two nights we’ve seen six, count ’em six position players assume late-inning mop-up duty: Jeff Francouer, Jake Elmore, Nick Franklin, Alexi Amarista, Ryan Raburn and David Murphy. If we see some more tonight it’ll be time for a thinkpiece or trendpiece on why this is happening. Spoiler: random occurrences of blowouts happening in a 24-hour period, aka baseball is quirky.
The big winner here is the Cubs offense — or fantasy owners — since Raburn and Murphy, the Indians eighth and ninth pitchers of the night, allowed seven runs in the ninth, albeit none were earned. Kris Bryant socked a grand slam and Kyle Schwarber finished the night 4-for-5.
Amarista’s night proved much more uneventful. He threw two pitches and got Billy Burns to fly out.
Highlight reel: Joey Gallo went deep off Clayton Kershaw as the Rangers beat the Dodgers in LA. Note Gallo’s classic swing-from-the-shoes, uppercut technique that launched the ball into the Chavez Ravine night.
Texas continues to impress after its injury-plagued 2014 where it finished with the worst record in the AL. Today the Rangers are 36-30 and certainly have a lot more life than the rest of the AL West in pursuit of the first-place Astros, who after a long losing streak have won four straight.
#TBT: This is a totally random Throwback for Thursday, but MLB had the clip on YouTube and it ties in with all the position players pitching. In it Colorado Rockies catcher Brett Mayne, err, the immortal Brett Mayne gets the win in relief.
Of note, Mayne pitches to Hall of Famer Tom Glavine, current Rockies manager Walt Weiss and, I think, Chipper Jones.
Fun fact: Derek Jeter only hit one grand slam in his career and it happened 10 years ago today off Joe Borowski in a game vs. the Cubs at Yankee Stadium.
This & That: Michael Pineda took a no-hitter into the seventh, but his pitch count was already around 100. It didn’t matter since Christian Yelich hit a home run. He still got the win since the umpires overturned the would-be tying run for the Marlins on a play at the plate. … Not a #TBT, but Joe Blanton got a win for the Royals last night. … Felix Hernandez bounced back from his awful start in Houston and out-pitched Madison Bumgarner. Kingly. … The Orioles have won nine of their last 10. Four games against the Phillies is a gift from the scheduling gods.
[All in good fun]