MLB Weird & Wild Week 1: Yankees' torpedo power, strange injuries, Sacramento has a ball

Ever heard of Ronald Acuña Jr.? Pretty good player right? He played 49 games last year before he got hurt — and had four home runs and 15 RBIs. Meanwhile, that Aaron Judge guy had four home runs and 11 RBIs in the first series of this season.

Cheaper by the dozen — Did you know that at one point, the Yankees hit 12 home runs in 11 innings on Saturday and Sunday? Is that ridiculous or what? I asked the great Katie Sharp of Baseball Reference how many teams have ever done that.

Only one other team has: the 1999 Cincinnati Reds, in back-to-back games in Philadelphia, on Sept. 4 and 5. You know who played third base in those two games for the Reds? A fellow named Aaron Boone.

Crazy eights — Finally, I found this kind of amusing: By Sunday night, the Yankees already had eight players who had hit a homer. The Mets at that point only had six players who had hit a single. But of course, just one of those teams had bats designed by their resident MIT physicist. I wonder which one!

It’s all cyclical in Sacramento

Sutter Health Park: Home of the A’s. (Ed Szczepanski / Imagn Images)

They play Major League Baseball in Sacramento, Calif., now. It hasn’t been boring.

Cycle race — Before Monday, before the big leagues showed up in Sacramento, no Cub had hit for the cycle in 32 years. In fact, only one catcher on any team had ever hit for the cycle anywhere in the state of California — and that was Charlie Moore, in Anaheim, 45 years ago.

But Cubs catcher Carson Kelly wasn’t alive to see any of that. So Sacramento, this was what a cycling catcher looks like.

Carson Cycle Kelly. pic.twitter.com/NWJMNJeWUj

— Chicago Cubs (@Cubs) April 1, 2025

So what’s so Weird and Wild about that? Oh, just a couple of things. Nothing important:

• The A’s played over 4,000 games in the Coliseum in Oakland. Want to guess how many visiting players — at any position — hit for the cycle there? Somehow or other, that would be … zero! And then Carson Kelly hit for the cycle in their very first game in Sacramento. 

• Then again, what were the odds that somebody would hit for the cycle on Day 1 in any new park, under any circumstances? Ho-ho-ho. They were so long that according to my friends from STATS Perform, nobody had ever done it in the first game in any park.

• The previous record for quickest cycle in a new park, according to the incredible Kenny Jackelen of Baseball Reference, was set as recently as … 122 years ago! That one came in Game 3 at the late, great Mahaffey Park in Cleveland, courtesy of Buck Freeman, of the Boston Americans, who had himself a day against the Cleveland Napoleons on June 21, 1903.

• Oh, and the record for quickest cycle at a current park is Game 35, set by David Bell at Citizens Bank Park in 2004. For what it’s worth, after that, no Phillie hit for the cycle in that park again for another 20 years, until Weston Wilson broke that streak last year.

• But none of that is even my favorite part of this cycle recap. In the eighth inning of this game, Kelly arrived at home plate for his final shot to complete a cycle. “All” he needed was a triple (chuckle-chuckle). Not to suggest that was impossible. But heading into that game, here were all the active players with at least 1,800 career plate appearances, 10 big-league seasons and no more than two triples:

Austin Hedges — 2,359 PA, 10 seasons, 2 triples
Carson Kelly — 1,809 PA, 10 seasons, 2 triples

One of those two men needed a triple for the cycle — and then hit that triple. I love baseball.

The Cubs’ 18 wheeler — But Kelly sure wasn’t the only Cub who was letting it fly in Sacramento that night. The Cubs put up a four-run inning, a five-run inning, a six-run inning and 18 runs altogether — in an 18-3 blowout in the first big-league game ever played in Sacramento. And yeah, that was a thing, too.

• Shockingly, according to STATS, this was not the worst loss a home team had suffered in its first game at its new ballpark. But it makes the leaderboard. The only worse defeat in the modern era in a park’s debut belongs to Ozzie Guillen’s 1991 White Sox in their first game at what was then known as the “new” Comiskey Park — a 16-0 bashing by Rob Deer’s ’91 Tigers.

• And if you’d like to travel back to the beginnings of MLB in the 19th century, Kenny Jackelen dug up a 21-3 bludgeoning of Barney Gilligan’s 1885 Providence Grays in their first game on record at the Wright Street Grounds, not to be confused with the Ground Round.

• But you should also note that in the very first major-league game played in Sacramento, the Cubs put up 18 runs, 20 hits and 10 extra-base hits. How many times did any team have a game like that in the Athletics’ 56 seasons in the Coliseum in Oakland? Right you are. That would be none.

Save the best for last — Oh, and one more thing: A pitcher got a save in this game. Colin Rea wound up strolling out of the Cubs’ bullpen in the seventh inning — when it was “only” a 16-3 game. He stuck around so long, he actually got an at-bat (striking out against A’s catcher Jhonny Pereda) and pitched “effectively” enough that he got credit for a save. In an 18-3 game.

So yes, he owns more saves right now than Emmanuel Clase. And yes, he also owns the second save in history in an 18-3 game. Joel Pineiro scarfed up the other one for the Cardinals on Aug. 22, 2008. Gotta love the save rule — almost as much as we love baseball in Sacramento.

Strangest But Truest Injuries of the Week

Freddie Freeman was done in by the dreaded “shower mishap.” (Harry How / Getty Images)

THIRD PRIZE — Phillies reliever Matt Strahm had to be scratched from his last appearance in spring training … because of a packing malfunction. He told the Weird and Wild column he was packing his daughter’s toys in a box and jammed the cardboard between his nail and finger. He also revealed it was his second packing injury of the spring.

“I’m going to have to buy a house here (in Florida),” he said, “so I don’t have to pack.”

SECOND PRIZE — If you always thought of Freddie Freeman as the cleanest player in baseball, are you sure that’s a good thing? He just missed the Dodgers’ whole series with the Braves, then went on the injured list, because of a dreaded “shower mishap.” Which he said was actually a technical term for: slipping in the shower. Much to the amusement of his wife, Chelsea, apparently.

“Chelsea actually made the joke: ‘I thought I was going to deal with this when you’re 70, not when you’re 35,’” he reported this week.

FIRST PRIZE — The good news for Pirates second baseman Nick Gonzales is, he hit the Pirates’ first home run of the season on Opening Day.

The bad news is, everything else about that. Check out the most painful home run trot of 2025.

First home run of 2025 goes to Nick Gonzales  pic.twitter.com/uIkSoM3o4c

— Pittsburgh Pirates (@Pirates) March 27, 2025

No, he didn’t twist something or pull something, despite Greg Brown’s best on-air medical diagnosis. This guy managed to fracture an (already sore) ankle somewhere in between unleashing that mighty swing and gingerly working his way around the bases. And, well, he’ll be out for a while. It would almost be funny — if it wasn’t the most Pirates thing ever.

The Week in Useless Info

Skubal and Sale? No problem for the Dodgers, apparently. (Steph Chambers / Getty Images)

EIGHT WINS AND TWO CYS — Not only are the Dodgers undefeated, but also they’ve faced (and beaten) both reigning Cy Young Award winners in their first seven games. That seems hard.

They beat the AL Cy Young, Tarik Skubal, in Game 3. Then they turned around four days later and did the same to the NL Cy Young, Chris Sale. So of course I had to know if that was as rare as I thought it was.

I asked my friends from STATS to dig into this. If we don’t count relievers who won the Cy Young (yeah, that actually used to happen), then the Dodgers became the third team to face both reigning Cy Young starters within their first 10 games of a season:

2013 Indians — faced David Price and R.A. Dickey in their first six games.

2013 Red Sox — faced Dickey and then Price in their first 10 games.

So if the category is “facing” both Cy Youngs, that 2013 Cleveland team holds the record. But only one team has ever “beaten” both reigning Cy Youngs that early in a season. And that team would be … who else … the 2025 Dodgers.

LIFE IS A BREEZE — I keep looking for ways to put Rafael Devers’ wild, swingin’-and-missin’ start in perspective. Would this do it?

Steven Kwan swung and missed at 69 pitches all last season. At this pace, Raffy (41 whiffs in seven games) will pass him next Tuesday!

INTERNATIONAL MAN OF MYSTERY (PITCHING) NO. 1 — Jake Bauers isn’t an actual pitcher. But that didn’t stop the Brewers from sending him to the mound twice last weekend to mow down the otherwise-unstoppable Yankees on Saturday and Sunday.

So what’s so Weird and Wild about that? According to Baseball Reference’s Jessica Brand, he’s the first true position player to pitch twice in his team’s first series of the year. But also …

The Brewers’ real pitchers against the Yankees last weekend: 22 IP, 34 ER, 15 HR

Jake Bauers (not a real pitcher) vs. the Yankees last weekend: 2 IP, 0 ER, 0 HR

Take a bow, Jake Bauers. (Mike Stobe / Getty Images)

INTERNATIONAL MAN OF MYSTERY (PITCHING) NO. 2 — Here’s something else you don’t see every year: A position player pitching on Opening Day!

But a well-rested Opening Day staff — and even an off day the next day — didn’t stop Angels manager Ron Washington from waving in utility dude Nicky Lopez to pitch in an 8-0 game in the opener. So of course, our question of the day was: Has that ever happened?

The official ruling of the Weird and Wild column: No!

A handful of other “position players” did turn up in a Baseball Reference/Stathead research project. But they were all guys who pitched way too much to be considered “true” position players. Our closest call was Christian Bethancourt, for the 2017 Padres. But ignore the rest of his career profile. He pitched 24 times that year between the big leagues and Triple A. So Nicky Lopez, you’re now a true Opening Day legend.

FIRST CONTACT — As you may have heard, we have two new ballparks in MLB this season. There’s George M. Steinbrenner Field in Tampa, proud home of the Not Yankees (aka the Rays). And there’s Sutter Health Park in Sacramento, new home of the Team with No First Name, the A’s.

So how ’bout this thing that happened, that caught the eye of all of us here at Weird and Wild World HQ.

First homer by a Ray in Tampa — Kameron Misner.

First homer by an A in Sacramento — Jacob Wilson.

What do they have in common? Not only was it the first home run by the home team in both parks … it was also the first home run in the big-league life of both guys who hit them.

So how many of the other 28 parks have had their first home run hit by players who had never hit any other big-league home runs? That, says our friends at STATS, would be exactly … none!

BOX SCORE TAG TEAM OF THE WEEK — You’d think we’d run out of wacky tidbits on that nine-homer game in Yankee Stadium, wouldn’t you? But guess what? You’d think wrong. How about these two box-score classics from a pair of Brewers hurlers that day:

Nestor Cortes — 2 IP, 6 H, 8 R, 8 ER, 5 HR

Connor Thomas — 2 IP, 6 H, 8 R, 8 ER, 3 HR

So maybe you’re wondering: How many teams in the live-ball era have had two different pitchers give up eight earned runs and at least three homers in the same game?

That answer, according to Baseball Reference, is: Not a one … until last Saturday in the Bronx.

HERE COMES THE JUDGE — There’s only one thing that could possibly be more magical than watching a feared slugger walk to home plate with a chance to hit his fourth home run of the game. And that would be …

Watching that feared masher dig into the box … and finding a position player on the mound.

So yes, that happened last Saturday, when Aaron Judge had to take his shot at a four-homer game … against Brewers multi-position threat Jake Bauers.

It didn’t result in any four-homer history.

Jake Bauers stops Aaron Judge from getting four home runs pic.twitter.com/E52BsX0xb0

— Talkin’ Yanks (@TalkinYanks) March 29, 2025

But it did make me think:

How many times in history could that have happened? Thanks to Katie Sharp, we can now answer that! Here are the only four other men to bat against a position player with their fourth homer on the line.

Lawrence Butler vs. Garrett Stubbs — Butler went deep three times for the A’s against the real pitchers, but flied out against the Phillies’ intrepid backup catcher, on July 14, 2024.

Adolis García vs. Jace Peterson — García didn’t homer again, but he at least doubled off the A’s utilityman on April 22, 2023.

Alex Dickerson vs. Drew Butera — Yes, Dickerson really did hit three homers in one game for the Giants, in one of those Coors Field specials, on Sept. 1, 2020. But Butera held him to a double in the ninth. Good relief work!

Gary Sánchez vs. Hanser Alberto – The then-Yankees catcher hit three bombs in this game at Camden Yards on April 7, 2019 — but he hadn’t faced the fearsome Hanser Alberto, who held him to a fly-ball out in the ninth. No wonder Dave Roberts pitched Alberto 10 times in 2022!

Five things I loved this week

1. The Diamondbacks gave up their DH on Sunday — which allowed this wild thing to happen: Ryne Nelson (he’s a pitcher) got a hit this year before the NL batting champ (Luis Arraez). Not to mention before José Ramírez, Francisco Lindor, Carlos Correa, Rafael Devers and Willson Contreras (all definitely not pitchers).

2. Juan Soto has now played on Opening Day in Houston two years in a row (last year with the Yankees, this year with the Mets). It still feels Strange But True to me that Alex Bregman hasn’t!

3. The MVP award has been around for more than 90 years. For nine decades, we never saw a game in which three former MVPs hit back-to-back-to-back homers. So naturally, it’s now happened twice since last Aug. 31. The Dodgers did it then (Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman). The Yankees did it Saturday (Paul Goldschmidt, Cody Bellinger, Judge). And as the great Sarah Langs of MLB.com observed, both were leading off the game.

4. Padres reliever Wandy Peralta should have played 1-1-1 in the lottery last Thursday. It was Opening Day (aka Game 1). He threw one pitch. And he collected Win No. 1! A big hat tip to Braves broadcast Weird/Wildness aficionado C.J. Nitkowski for not letting that one slip past us. Thanks to him, we know the only other pitcher in the pitch-counting era with a one-pitch win on Opening Day was Dan Naulty for the Twins in 1997 — with a one-pitch double play!

5. So has any team had a more bizarre first week than the Reds? Luckily, Reds TV research genius Joel Luckhaupt was all over it.

Opening Day — Reds pitchers strike out 17 Giants … and lose.

Game 2 — Reds pitchers strike out one Giant … and win.

Games 4-5-6 — the Reds score 14 runs against the Rangers, then lose back-to-back-to-back 1-0 games … for the first time in franchise history.

Oh, and you know how hard it is to score 14 runs in one game and then lose three straight 1-0 games? So hard that no team has ever pulled off that Weird and Wild trick.

Heck, you know how hard it is to score 14 and then just get shut out (by any score) in even two games in a row? It’s so hard that no team has done it since July 2018, when it was done by Cleveland, a team managed by … yep … Terry Francona!

This Week in Strange But Trueness

The A’s honor the Man of Steal. (Ezra Shaw / Getty Images)

RICKEY BE WONDERING ABOUT THIS! The coolest thing the A’s did Monday in their first game in Sacramento was to have every player honor the late, great Rickey Henderson by wearing No. 24.

The only not-cool part of that tribute: Want to guess the only team in baseball that hadn’t even attempted a stolen base yet? Yup. That would be that team trying to honor Rickey!

HEY 19 — There are many other teams besides the Phillies that have perfected the art of swinging-and-missing. But here’s what those other teams haven’t perfected:

The art of whiffing … and still winning!

 So on Opening Day, that Phillies offense — the same dudes who won three different nine-inning games last season in which they struck out at least 16 times — spent their day battling MacKenzie Gore and the late-afternoon shadows … and struck out 19 times (in 10 innings)!

And how’d that work out? They did what they always do in games like this: They won. Here’s how Strange But True that was:

• Games won by teams that struck out at least 19 times last year (in a game of any length): none!

• Record of all teams that had struck out that many times in games of 10 innings or fewer in the wild-card era: 2-28!

• Record of all teams that had struck out that many times in games of 10 innings or fewer in the live-ball era: 3-30!

• Games won by the Phillies in all their previous games since 1901 in which they punched out 19 times or more (in games of any length) — uh-huh, none! As in 0-6.

Strikeouts. They’re just outs!

CATCH THIS — It was a big week for catchers. They went cycling. They got to pitch. And they got to do what the Cardinals’ Iván Herrera did Wednesday:

Smoke three home runs in one game.

That would be cool no matter what. But it was more Strange But True than you think.

• Ted Simmons, Joe Torre, Tim McCarver, Darrell Porter and (lest we forget) Willson Contreras have all caught for the Cardinals over the last century. Yet somehow, Iván Herrera became the first Cardinals catcher who has ever hit three homers in a game.

• But that’s not all. Johnny Bench, Mike Piazza, Gabby Hartnett and Buster Posey are among the hundreds of catchers who have played baseball in St. Louis over the last century. Yet somehow, the entire list of catchers who have had a three-homer game in St. Louis, for or against the Cardinals, consists of … Iván Herrera.

• And that’s still not all. Because to find the last catcher to hit three home runs in a game anywhere for or against the Cardinals, you would need a time machine. Because it happened 103 years ago — when a guy named Walter “Butch” Henline did it for the Phillies, on Sept. 15, 1922, at one of the all-time band boxes, Baker Bowl.

Since then, Reds catchers (not all of them named Bench) have had five three-homer games. … And Texas has allowed four of them to opposing catchers just in the 2000s. But the Cardinals? They were a trifecta-free zone … until they weren’t. Finally.

GIMME-SIX — We’ve seen walk-off homers … and walk-off walks … and walk-off caught-stealings … and walk-off inside-the-parkers. But I’m pretty sure we’ve never seen this.

Check out this “walk-off” in the Cubs’ 4-3 win in Arizona last Saturday.

Technically, that’s not a walk-off 6-unassisted moment of inspiration from Cubs shortstop Dansby Swanson — because that term, walk-off, is supposed to be for hitters. But that’s what Swanson called it. So we’re going with it.

Except then I decided I absolutely, positively had to know the answer to this question: Could that have ever happened? It took Katie Sharp way too many hours of her valuable life to figure that out. But she did it!

We decided that stuff like popups and 6-unassisted force-outs at second didn’t count. They had to at least vaguely resemble this play, which was ruled a 6-unassisted out “at home” since the base runner, Garrett Hampson, had rounded third and couldn’t get back. So here’s what you need to know:

The Baseball Reference play-by-play database goes back more than a century. Want to guess how many other games in that time have ended on a 6-unassisted ground-ball out “at home”?

None would be an excellent guess.

Katie did find two very different 6-unassisted ground-ball “walk-offs.” One was turned by Astros shortstop Roger Metzger on May 15, 1972, in which he tagged out a runner going from second to third. The other was a 6-unassisted double play pulled off by Giants shortstop Hal Lanier on Aug. 25, 1970, in which he ran down runners trying to advance to third and second.

But that’s all pre-video. So what was the coolest, most innovative, most baseball-I.Q.-ey 6-unassisted walk-off that we can actually see with our own eyeballs? You just watched it!

CENTRAL CASTING — Hey, let’s look in on the AL Central. Wait. What?

Was that The Onion? Or some kind of misprint? Or did we really see five teams in one division — all tied for first place — a week into the season?

OK, it’s 100 percent real. So yeah, I know what you’re thinking before you even … um, too late!

@jaysonst What is the latest into a season that all 4 teams had the same record like the AL Central’s 2-4?

— Mike Peterson (@Tnut10) April 3, 2025

So Mike, by popular demand, I asked Kenny Jackelen to look into this, with the caveat that it’s actually five teams tied, not four. As always, he worked his magic.

• In the divisional era, this ties the record for most games into a season in which the entire division was tied. The 2002 NL East was also ensnarled in a five-way tie after six games, at 3-3.

• But if we travel back deeper into the modern era, before divisions, there was a five-way tie (sort of) in the NL in 1961 after four of those teams had played nine games (5-4) but a fifth team had played 11 (and was 6-5). Of course, there were eight teams in that league. So all eight of them obviously weren’t tied.

• And if you’re a fan of the 1896 standings, you could peer back and find five teams virtually tied in the NL after either 21 or 23 games. That was in a 12-team league.

• But now here’s the answer to your biggest question: What’s the latest in a season that five teams were tied for first, all with losing records? Ha. You’re looking at it. Kenny reports that had never before happened after any number of games — not even one — until this week.

So welcome to the AL Central, where winning is optional … but somebody has to finish first. Or everybody.

DON’T WALK THIS WAY — Finally, it doesn’t seem that hard, in theory, to count to four. Even your 3-year-old can probably do it. But in baseball? It can be harder than it looks — as documented last weekend by our friends at Jomboy Media with this at-bat by Seth Brown.

Last night, Seth Brown saw FIVE pitches called balls before taking his walk and no one noticed pic.twitter.com/EHGSlnLAz7

— Jomboy Media (@JomboyMedia) March 30, 2025

What a world. We just finished a spring training where lasers could detect if a pitch was one-84th of an inch outside the strike zone. But back here in real life, if nobody remembers to count to four … do not take your base!

It’s just a reminder that humans still matter these days, even in the beautiful sport of …

Baseball!

GO DEEPER

Happy New Year, Baseball! 17 Weird & Wild ways the season’s first week surprised

(Top photo of Jazz Chisholm Jr.: Pamela Smith / Associated Press)