Three Strikes looks back at the best of another crazy baseball weekend:
STRIKE ONE -- AT THE MICAH DEPT.
How can you not love Micah Owings? How can you not love Dusty Baker for sending a pitcher up there to pinch hit, down a run with two outs in the ninth? How can you not love both of them for conspiring to produce one of the most amazing moments of the whole season?
Owings hit a game-tying, pinch-hit home run for the Reds on Sunday -- with two outs in the ninth inning, against Cardinals closer Ryan Franklin.
"Owings' home run was like what you do in your backyard and your imagination -- two outs, bottom of the ninth, 3-and-2," Jay Bruce told Dayton Daily News legend Hal McCoy afterward. "It's crazy."
Crazy? It's mind-blowing -- even though the Reds wound up losing in extra innings. Here are some of our favorite tidbits on that mighty blast:
• As the Elias Sports Bureau reported in the latest edition of "Elias Says," Owings now has two game-tying pinch-hit homers in his career (his other coming last year, as a Diamondback). And the only other pitcher in the past 50 years who has even hit one game-tying pinch-hit homer is Brooks Kieschnick, who hit two -- for the 2003 and 2004 Brewers.
• But Kieschnick is a tricky case, because he's a converted outfielder who pitched and played the outfield for the 2003 Brewers. So if we don't count him, Owings is the first pitcher to hit a pinch-hit home run at any point in the ninth inning since Gary Peters hit one for the White Sox on Sept. 4, 1971. But Peters hit his homer in a game his team trailed by five runs in the ninth. So …
• That makes Owings the only pitcher in the past half-century to hit a game-tying pinch-hit homer with two outs in the ninth inning.
• Finally, here's a list of just some of the guys who have never hit a game-tying, or lead-erasing, homer with two outs in the ninth: Mark Teixeira, Ryan Howard, Carlos Lee, Paul Konerko and Carlos Pena. But now Owings has hit one. Amazing.
Oh, and one more thing: As ESPN's sensational research department points out, Owings' career OPS is now up to .934. That's a higher career OPS than (ready for these names?) Hank Aaron, Frank Robinson or Duke Snider!
STRIKE TWO -- AT THIS CLIP DEPT.
Our rule of thumb here at Three Strikes is that we don't take any hitting streak seriously until it reaches 28 games -- aka, Halfway To DiMaggio. So by that rule of thumb, Ryan Zimmerman is now officially on our radar screen.
When Zimmerman lengthened his streak to 28 games Sunday, he became the 12th active player to compile a streak that was at least half as long as Joe DiMaggio's fabled 56-gamer in 1941. The others:
38: Jimmy Rollins, 2005-06
35: Chase Utley, 2006
35: Luis Castillo, 2002
31: Vladimir Guerrero, 1999
30: Albert Pujols, 2003
30: Willy Taveras, 2006
30: Nomar Garciaparra, 1997
29: Johnny Damon, 2005
28: Garret Anderson, 1998
28: Gabe Kapler, 2000
28: Carlos Lee, 2004
• As ESPN research guru Mark Simon reports, Zimmerman is the 36th player to climb halfway up DiMaggio's ladder since 1941. Of that group, 23 made it to 30 games, just six got to 35 games and only Pete Rose (in 1978) kept rolling into the 40s. And here's the fact that best explains how unchallenged DiMaggio has been: Even Rose (who had a 44-game streak) was still two 0-fer-free weeks away from breaking DiMaggio's record.
• It's always entertaining to list just a few of the great players who never made it Halfway To DiMaggio. So here goes: Ted Williams, Tony Gwynn, Stan Musial, Rod Carew, Honus Wagner, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Roberto Clemente. Ever heard of those guys?
STRIKE THREE -- BEST OF THE REST DEPT.
Other fun weekend developments:
• The good news Sunday for Pirates pitcher Paul Maholm was that he extricated himself from the 200 At-Bat, One Extra-Base Hit Club with a home run against the Mets. The bad news was, he hit that homer in a 10-1 loss. Simon reports Maholm is only the fourth pitcher in the division-play era to homer in a game his team lost by nine runs or more. The others: Jim Perry in 1970, Felipe Lira in 2000 and Carlos Zambrano in 2008.
• The Yankees allowed at least 10 runs in a game for the sixth time this season Saturday in Baltimore. It's the first time in Yankees history they've given up double digits in runs six times by May 9. The old record was five, by Hippo Vaughn's 1911 New York Highlanders.
• Joe Saunders and Zack Greinke hooked up for a game out of the '60s Saturday -- a 1-0 Angels win over the Royals in which both starters threw a complete game. It was the first 1-0 game in which both pitchers went the distance since the unlikely duo of Carlos Silva and Joe Blanton did it in a Twins-A's game on June 2, 2007.
• A moment of silence for Chipper Jones' 29-game hitting streak against the Phillies. It ended Sunday with an 0-for-3 by the Chipster. Our streak guru, Trent McCotter, reports there have been only five longer streaks against any team in the past 55 years. Here they are:
44: Vladimir Guerrero versus the Rangers (2004-06)
35: Ken Griffey Jr. versus the Indians (1992-96)
34: George Bell versus the Indians (1985-87)
32: Paul Molitor versus the White Sox (1993-96)
32: Dave Parker versus the Reds (1976-79)
• Are strikeouts overrated? The Rockies' Jorge De La Rosa whiffed 12 Marlins on Sunday -- and lost. That's the eighth time this year a pitcher has racked up at least 12 strikeouts in a game -- and those guys have combined for exactly one win, by Tim Lincecum on April 24 in Arizona. But a lot of this is the Marlins' fault. They've now won three games this year in which the opposing starter has fanned 12 or more (against Johan Santana, Javier Vazquez and De La Rosa). Last team to win three games like that in one year: the 2006 Tigers (against Santana, Francisco Liriano and Ted Lilly).
• Here's something you don't see every game this late in a season. Sunday's Dodgers-Giants game featured two first basemen -- James Loney and Travis Ishikawa -- who still haven't hit a home run this year, in a combined 190 at-bats.
• Finally, a preview of Monday's Greatest Note of the Day. Nationals PR whiz John Dever reports that Monday's pitching matchup in San Francisco -- 6-foot-10 Randy Johnson versus 6-foot-9 Daniel Cabrera is the tallest duel in history -- at a combined 163 inches worth of pitchers. The old record: 162 inches -- Cabrera versus Mark Hendrickson in an Orioles-Rays game on Sept. 1, 2004.
Jayson Stark
