Weird & Wild: Jose Altuve strikes again, The 22-Walk Game, and one after another for Reds

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A 5-foot-6 guy homered off a 6-foot-9 guy. … The Reds played more 1-0 games than the Brazilian soccer team. … And Eugenio Suárez summoned his inner Henry Aaron — just not how you’d think.

It all unfolded, before our eyes, over another week of Weird and Wild baseball. But our first stop in this column is even Weirder and Wilder than that … because that’s what we do around here.

Catch-22

This is normally a column about big-league baseball. But every once in a while, an event wells up in the weird-and-wild wilderness of the minor leagues that we can’t ignore. So …

Have you heard about The 22-Walk Game?

It happened Tuesday night in Jupiter, Fla., when the pitching staff of those Jupiter Hammerheads — the Low-A Florida State League affiliate of the Miami Marlins — lost all interest in, er, hammering the strike zone.

Jupiter Hammerheads walk a record 22 hitters in a game.

Announcers ROAST their team. 😂🔊 pic.twitter.com/SHELAt0NBf

— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) April 9, 2025

Facing the Dunedin Blue Jays, the Hammerheads somehow managed to walk 22 hitters — in a nine-inning game. And as grim as that sounds, trust me, it was worse. How ridiculous was it? We have some thoughts.

Here’s the box-score line of the millennium: 22 runs … on nine hits … thanks to 22 walks … and three wild pitches … and three hit-by-pitch debacles … plus two pitch-timer violations … and one E-1 (on a wild throw by the pitcher). So let’s recap: That’s 26 batters reaching base without a hit — before this staff got 27 outs. That went smoothly.

The first six Jupiter pitchers: threw 236 pitches to get 24 outs — and 103 of them were actually strikes! … All six of those guys allowed more walks than hits … and … threw more balls than strikes … and … walked the first hitter they faced. The first five of them also wound up with more walks than outs. That really happened.

The third inning: Want a sampling of how this game went? How ’bout this inning! It began this way: E-1 … wild pitch … walk … double … strikeout … walk … walk … pitching change … walk … strikeout … hit-by-pitch … triple.

The fifth inning: Hammerheads pitcher No. 5, Julio Mendez, arrived on the mound to start the fifth. Here’s the rundown on how that went: walk … walk … wild pitch … hit-by-pitch … walk … sacrifice fly … strikeout … pitching change.

The history: Of course, 22 walks in a game is a record. It’s the most in a game in any league in the history of the minor-league stats portal. It’s even more than the record of any major-league game of any length, in any century.

The Tigers walked 20 Red Sox in a 12-inning game in 1939 — and won. The Cleveland Spiders once walked 19 Louisville Colonels in a nine-inning game in 1887 — on a night when the ABS system apparently was on the fritz. So we don’t know of a single professional game, anywhere or at any time, with more walks than this one. And that’s actually the best news we’ve heard all day!

The perspective: Would you believe there were 53 big-league pitchers who faced at least 250 hitters last year and didn’t walk 22 all season? … Would you believe that Nick Martinez of the Reds faced 570 hitters last year … and walked only 18 all season? … Would you believe that Christy Mathewson once faced 1,195 hitters in a season (1913) … and only walked 21 of them all year?

And the Jupiter Hammerheads then walked 22 batters in one game. Seriously. Baseball. It can be a beautiful game. Just not always!

Jose can you see 

I’d like to thank Jose Altuve — for everything. For being a Weird and Wild kind of player for all these years, sure. But especially for being 5-feet-6. We’ve gotten a little material in this column thanks to that. And this past week was no exception.

The platinum sombrero! In 15 seasons (counting this one), the Astros’ mini-mite had only had two four-strikeout games. Then, last Thursday, he somehow became the first player in the American League to have a five-strikeout game. He swung at nine pitches in this game. He put none of them in play. As best I can tell, he’s the shortest guy to have an 0-for-5, 5-strikeout game in the wild-card era, which is as far back as I can check. Weird!

From platinum to Schwarbino-esque! So what did Altuve do in the next game after his five-K special? What else? He launched a leadoff home run. You don’t see that much. In fact, according to Baseball Reference’s Katie Sharp, he’s only the second player in the entire Baseball Reference database to do that in back-to-back games!

The other: Cleveland icon Rick Manning, who followed a five-whiff game with a leadoff bomb off Geoff Zahn, on May 15-16, 1977. It took nearly 50 years for anyone to do that again.

He went all David vs. Goliath on us! But what really made Altuve’s leadoff homer last Saturday fun was the guy he hit it off … if only because that guy (Bailey Ober) is 6-foot-9.

So how often do you ever see a man go deep off a pitcher who is 15 inches taller than he is? I also ran that question past Sharp. The bad news was, this wasn’t a record. The good news was, Altuve already held that record!

16 inches: Altuve off Chris Young (6-10) on June 25, 2016.

15 inches: We have a three-way tie. Altuve had already homered off Ober in 2021. There was also Tony Kemp (5-6) vs. Lane Ramsey (6-9) on Aug. 24, 2023. And there was one I saw with my own eyes: Jimmy Rollins (5-7) off Randy Johnson (6-10) on May 16, 2002.

Short people can rake, too! Then came Monday, when Altuve unloaded another home run in Seattle. What made this one fun was that Ryan Bliss, all 5-7 of him, also got to make a trot that night for the Mariners.

Hey, it’s not as if two guys that short have never homered in the same game before. Heck, it happened as recently as … 85 years ago! According to MLB Network’s trusty research department, Tony Cuccinello (5-7) and Emmett Mueller (5-6) both homered in a Phillies-Giants game on Aug. 18, 1940.

Jose Altuve, man. He can be singlehandedly responsible for cramming Tony Cucinello, Tony Kemp and Randy Johnson into the same Weird and Wild note. That’s what we’re here for!

We’ll always have Paris

April 9. Mark down the date. It’s one for the Weird and Wild history books. But you’ll need your passport. Want to guess why?

Because it was the first day in baseball history that Paris (Kyren) and France (Ty) hit home runs on the same day. Viva le coup de circuit!

And as Kyren Paris, in his first full season with the Angels, keeps raking up a storm, it got me to thinking. He already has five home runs this season (and six in his career). So where would that rank him among players with the same name as the most famed cities in Europe?

C’mon, admit it: You’ve been wondering this yourselves, haven’t you? Here’s that leaderboard for each city — not to be mistaken with the board showing all the flights in Frankfurt:

Milan — 17 (Clyde)
Paris — 6 (Kyren)
Hamburg — 3 (Charlie)
Florence — 2 (Paul)

Shockingly, those were the only city/homer combo platters I could find. But if we allow for some slight spelling discrepancies, we could add …

Stock(holm) — 22 (Milt)
Lyon(s) — 19 (Steve)
Roman — 8 (Quinn)
Moskau — 2 (Paul)
Colo(g)n(e) — 1 (Bartolo)

All right, so I went down that spelling-flexibility lane just to get Bartolo Colon in there. How could I not? Sue me if you don’t approve. Just be aware that’s a case no international tribunal in the world would dare to take!

The Week in Useless Info

Jackson Chourio has already had two 5-RBI games this season. (Mark Hoffman / USA Today Network via Imagn Images)

GIMME FIVE … AND FIVE MORE — It’s somehow Platinum Sombrero Week here at the Weird and Wild column. So let’s look in on another guy who had one of those this year, totally out of character by the way — and how it’s gone since.

How it started: Brewers dynamo Jackson Chourio on Opening Day — 0-for-5, five strikeouts.

How it’s going: Nine games later, on April 6, Chourio put up another “5” in the old box score — but this time it was a five-RBI game against the Reds.

What’s so weird and wild about that? Oh, no big deal, except for this: According to Katie Sharp, only one other player in the entire Baseball Reference database has spun off both a five-strikeout game and a five-RBI game (or greater) in his team’s first 10 games of the season. A man named …

Bo Jackson! That was on April 14 and April 18, 1987.

Cool club to be in, huh? Two footnotes: 1) In 2023, Max Muncy also did this, but in the first 10 games he played in that year, not his team’s first 10 games. And 2) two games after Chourio’s five-RBI game, he had another one. So take that, Bo!

HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEMATIC WEEK — The good folks of Houston might recognize the names of the two winners of the Player of the Week award last week. That would be:

Alex Bregman (AL)
Kyle Tucker (NL)

Gee, didn’t they used to play in … OK, sorry!

• Total number of Player of the Week awards they won in their 16 combined seasons with the Astros: two (both by Bregman).

• Total number of Player of the Week awards they won in their first full regular-season week after leaving the Astros: two. 

The baseball earth turns in mysterious ways, friends.

DON’T SINGLE OUT EUGENIO — I don’t know if anyone else is following the wild tale Eugenio Suárez is writing for himself in Arizona. But in case you’re not, here’s what you should know: He’s allergic to singles!

Jose Altuve is already up to 15 singles this season. Eugenio has … zero!

Two weeks and 13 games into this season, Suárez has thumped five homers … and two doubles … but no singles. In 54 trips to the plate.

What’s so weird and wild about that? This doesn’t happen much! Only one other player in the modern era had that many homers — but zero singles — in his team’s first 13 games. That was Eric Chavez, for the 2002 Oakland A’s (six homers, three doubles and a triple). But …

Chavez had also missed three of those games. So in the 12th game he played in that season, he singled twice — off Jamie Moyer and Arthur Rhodes. Which means … he’s off the list!

And that leaves us monitoring a very weird and wild development:

This season, two players have at least four homers but no singles. One is Suarez, obviously. The other is Dodgers specialist Kiké Hernández (four homers, but no other hits).

But here’s the weirdest/wildest part: Did you know that before this year, only one other player in the modern era got 13 games deep into his season with at least four homers but no singles. And that was a guy named …

Henry Aaron … in 1973 (four homers, three doubles and a triple). Eugenio will be stoked to hear that Aaron finished that season with 65 singles — and 40 homers (at age 39)!

CLAYMATION — Clay Holmes in 2024: saved 30 games for the Yankees.

Clay Holmes in 2025: just spun off a 10-strikeout game for the Mets.

Does that seem rare? It did to me. Katie Sharp reports that since the dawn of the modern save rule, only eight other pitchers have had a 30-save season and a double-digit strikeout game in back-to-back seasons (in either order). And none of them were named Dennis Eckersley. Here they come:

Miguel Batista (2005-06), John Smoltz (2004-05), Dustin Hermanson (2004-05), Kelvin Escobar (2003-03), Tom Gordon (1997-98), Rick Aguilera (1995-96), Doug Jones (1990-91 and 1992-93) and Dave Righetti (1984-85).

18 AGAIN — The Red Sox scored 18 times against the Cardinals last weekend on “Sunday Night Baseball.” But that wasn’t the weird and wild part of that game. The weird/wild part was: Cooper Criswell!

He collected a save … in an 18-9 game. And I’m sure he’d love to know that since the dawn of this version of the save rule, only one other Red Sox reliever collected a save at Fenway Park in a game in which his team scored 18-plus runs.

That was Bob “Steamer” Stanley, on April 13, 1983, in an 18-4 win over Kansas City. Jim Rice had a homer and triple. And Glenn (Brother of Trevor) Hoffman went 5-for-6.

 50 SHADES OF BRYCE — Wednesday night in Atlanta, noted NASA fan Bryce Harper launched a rocket.

Bryce Harper rocket for the lead! 🚀 pic.twitter.com/I9KG8TY9m2

— MLB (@MLB) April 10, 2025

I mention that not just because it left the park in about half a second, but also because it was Harper’s 50th career homer against the Braves (counting the postseason) — and he’s only 32! That felt like a big number to me. I wasn’t wrong. Here’s your leaderboard for most homers by any player against any opponent by his age-32 season:

 Most by any active player vs. any team — 54, by Mike Trout against Seattle

 Record in the expansion era — 62, by A-Rod vs. the Angels

 Record vs. an NL team — 56, by Mike Schmidt vs. the Cubs

 Only other active player with 50 — just Bryce!

(Source: Baseball Reference / Stathead)

WHAT A PITTS STOP — So here comes the perfect segue — from the home runs you see over and over to, well, the opposite!

The Yankees rocked into Pittsburgh last Saturday. Where (of course) the offensive hero of the day was the only guy in baseball whose batting average has stayed beneath the Mendoza Line for the last three seasons in a row.

 Trent Grisham, everybody!

TRENT GRISHAM 2 HOME RUN GAME pic.twitter.com/zmKL1hOVLJ

— The Yankee Report (@YankeeReport_) April 5, 2025

But that wasn’t even the weird and wild part. Here it comes.

YANKEES WITH A 2-HR GAME IN PITTSBURGH 

• Trent Grisham — last Saturday
• Mickey Mantle — Game 2, 1960 World Series

Just two Yankees center fielders with so much in common.

MY OH MIZE — Not many No. 1 picks have duplicated the roller-coaster ride of Casey Mize (No. 1 by the Tigers in 2018). I’m sure you’ve noticed.

He just collected two wins in a week (April 1 and 7). So what a difference a year makes. When he beat the Twins last April 21, it was his first win in 971 days (since Aug. 24, 2021). And did you know that, according to STATS Perform, only four other No. 1 overall picks have gone longer between wins than that?

ONE AFTER ANOTHER — If Terry Francona had known the Reds were planning to play a 1-0 game every freaking day, whether they needed to or not, would he have come out of retirement?

 Here’s how their April started out:

April 1 — lose, 1-0, to the Rangers
April 2 — lose, 1-0, to the Rangers
April 3 — lose, 1-0, to the Brewers
April 8 — win, 1-0, against the Giants

So that’s four 1-0 games in their first 12 games of the season. That’s not only absurd, it’s historic. According to the Elias Sports Bureau and the great Sarah Langs, the Reds are the first team to jam that many 1-0 games into the first 12 games of a season in a mere 112 years!

The 1913 Phillies and the Brooklyn Superbas are the only other teams to do that in history — but they kind of cheated … by playing three of those four against each other, in the dead-ball era.

But that’s not even the weird and wild part. The weird and wild part is, back when he managed in Cleveland, leading a team built around its pitching, Francona went eight straight seasons (2015-22) without playing four 1-0 games (or more) in any season. And then he did it in the first two weeks of his first season in Cincinnati. But you know why. That’s just …

Baseball!

This Week in Strange But Trueness

Royals speedster Tyler Tolbert made stolen base history against Baltimore. (Peter Aiken / Imagn Images)

THE FANTASTIC FOUR — Once upon a time in Kansas City, there was a man named Terrance Gore. Here at Weird and Wild World HQ, he was our kind of player. His entire career as a Royal: 16 runs scored, zero hits. It was awesome.

So now behold the next Terrance Gore: Tyler Tolbert. He has stolen 213 bases in the minor leagues over the last four years. We’re not here to tell you about that. But he just stole the first four bases of his big-league career. And we’re all over that.

Why? Because the steals happened last weekend in a series against the Royals — a series in which he never started a game … but stole four bases. All as a pinch runner. All off the same pitcher (Orioles reliever Seranthony Domínguez). 

So what’s so Strange But True about that? That’s what the voice of the Orioles on MASN, Kevin Brown, wanted to know. And here with the answer is Baseball Reference’s amazing Kenny Jackelen.

Who else in history ever stole his first four bases against the same pitcher? That, of course, would be … absolutely nobody. And no one has even stolen his first three off the same pitcher since 1996, when Chris Stynes singled in the first inning against Randy Johnson … and then stole second, third and home!

That was so Strange But True, even back then, that Stynes stole exactly one more base all season!

DO THE WALK-OFF LIFE — Is Tommy Pham a walking Strange But True nugget waiting to happen, or what? He keeps roaming from team to team, doing stuff that works its way into this column. And apparently, he’s not through!

He headed for the plate in the 11th inning of a tie game against the Yankees on Sunday. And then this happened.

 So what’s so Strange But True about that? Ha. Pham now has gotten a walk-off hit for five different teams — the Diamondbacks, Red Sox, Rays, Cardinals and his current employer, the Pirates. But here’s the important part:

He’s only gotten exactly one walk-off hit for all five of those teams.

So how bizarre is that? According to my friends from STATS, just two other players in the last half-century have gotten exactly one walk-off hit for at least five different teams:

Bill Almon (6) — Padres, Pirates, A’s, Mets, Expos, White Sox

Mark Whiten (6) — Indians, Yankees, Phillies, Mariners, Cardinals, Blue Jays

Pham-tastic.

WHAT DO YOU HAVE ON DROUGHT? One of my favorite things about baseball fits into this category:

It’s that stuff that never, ever happens — for hundreds, even thousands of games … and then it can’t stop happening. Here come two more examples just from the last week.

The Angels — They haven’t been good at a whole lot these last few years. But until last week, they’d gone five seasons — and 719 games — in a row without allowing a three-homer game to a single hitter they faced. And then …

They did it two games in a row — serving up three-spots to the Cardinals’ Iván Herrera and the Guardians’ José Ramírez last week. And how many teams in history have done that two games in a row, against two different teams? That would be precisely … none!

Jesse Winker — Some guys (Carl Crawford, Jimmy Rollins, Jose Reyes) are built to hit triples. Then there’s Jesse Winker.

The Mets outfielder rolled into his game against Toronto last Saturday with zero regular-season triples since April 21, 2021. Then, in the fourth inning, guess what happened.

And what do you think happened four innings later? That’s right.

So there you go. No triples for four years. Then two triples in four innings. How Strange But True is baseball? You just saw the longest triple drought in the modern era ended by a two-triple game. 

(Source: MLB Network Research) 

Beautiful.

EASY AS 1-2-3 — Some saves feel like a ride on Space Mountain. Then there’s the save that the Dodgers’ Tanner Scott unfurled against the Phillies last Saturday:

First pitch: Bryce Harper single

Second pitch: Alec Bohm 6-4-3 double play

Third pitch: Max Kepler liner to left

Ball game.

All right, sing along with me now. What’s so Strange But True about that? Geez, think about it, will ya?

That’s a three-batter, three-pitch save with a hit allowed in the middle of it. It’s not impossible. But it must be hard … since only one other reliever has ever done it (since the invention of this save rule in 1969).

That was Barry Jones, for the Mets, on Oct. 2, 1992: Don Slaught single, Gary Varsho fly ball, Alex Cole 1-6-3 DP.

ALL CAUGHT UP — Except that Tanner Scott save wasn’t even the Strangest But Truest ending to a game in that series. That coveted first prize goes to the Phillies’ 3-2 win on Friday, thanks to this:

Last Dodgers out of the eighth inning — Shohei Ohtani thrown out stealing

Last Dodgers out of the ninth inning — Chris Taylor thrown out stealing

So wait. A team sees an eight-game winning streak end how exactly? With the same catcher (J.T. Realmuto) nailing a runner stealing for the final out of the eighth and ninth innings? Was that as strange as I thought it was? I asked my friends from STATS to check.

Complete, reliable public play-by-play data only goes back to 1974. In all that time, no team with a winning streak longer than two games had seen a game end like that. And only three other one-run games, period, had ended that way — with a runner thrown out to end the eighth and then a caught-stealing walk-off to end the ninth:

June 27, 1994 — Mets/Cardinals (Todd Hundley nails Jeff Kent, John Cangelosi)

Sept. 5, 1984 — Dodgers/Mets (Mike Scioscia nails Randy Johnson, Albert Hall)

June 24, 1976 — Angels/A’s (Andy Etchebarren nails Bill North, Larry Lintz)

Just when you think you’ve seen every possible plot line, a game like that comes along to remind you of the truth. We never run out of bizarre sights in the one-of-a-kind sport of …

Baseball!

(Top photo of Jose Altuve: David Berding / Getty Images)

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