Astros pitcher has atrocious day on mound not seen in 105 years
Some days, a pitcher’s a little wild, as he struggles to find the strike zone and just misses his spots.
Other days, a pitcher’s so wild that you can practically hear Bob Uecker saying things like “just a bit outside” and “we never seem to get the close ones!”
For Charlie Morton of the Houston Astros, Saturday’s start against the Texas Rangers was a case of the latter.
Morton got eleven outs and gave up one earned run. His team even managed to win the game 4-3. But how he got there … well that’s what was unusual.
Charlie Morton of the @astros is the first pitcher with 4+ hit batters, 4+ walks and 4+ strikeouts in a game since April 18, 1913, when the Senators' Long Tom Hughes had 4 HBP, 5 BB and 9 K in a complete-game win against the Yankees.#NeverSettle
— OptaSTATS (@OptaSTATS) June 10, 2018
This was true outcomes baseball — a term used to describe walks (and by extension hit batsmen), strikeouts and home runs — writ large.
Morton ended up with six walks and four hit batsmen to go along with four strikeouts. He gave up just a single hit.
Oh, and Long Tom Hughes, who put up the last stat line of four each for walks, strikeouts and hit batters in 1913? He pitched all nine innings. Morton needed just three-and-two-thirds.
You may at this point be sensibly asking yourself how on earth the final score of this game was only 4-3, and furthermore how Houston was the team with four runs.
Well, except for their ability to watch bad pitches sail past for balls and stand like a meat shield between the pitcher and catcher, Texas hitters couldn’t do much of anything else.
How does that happen? 17 men left on base. 5 hits, 10 walks, 5 HBPs. Team went 1-for-17 with RISP. In comparison, the Astros left four on base in the 4-3 win.
— Matthew Pouliot (@matthewpouliot) June 10, 2018
In the last 110 years, no team has had more plate appearances than the Rangers had (47) while scoring no more than three runs.
Texas went 1-for-17 with runners in scoring position. They managed only five hits despite drawing ten walks and getting plunked five times.
The Astros left only four men on base; sure, they grounded into three double plays, but for the most part, they turned their three walks and nine hits into runs as efficiently as one would expect of a major league team.
If Texas had left their runners on base at Houston’s rate, they’d have scored at least seven, and, if you give them the benefit of the doubt from only one double play, probably closer to 10 or 11 runs in this one.
The Rangers are 27-40, dead last in the American League West, and have the sixth-worst record in all of baseball.
On Saturday, we got a pretty good glimpse into why.
A guy pitched one of the worst outings in over a century, and the Rangers responded by having one of the worst hitting days with men on base in over a century as well.
The last time we saw a game like this, “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” was still a novelty song, having been written in 1908.
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