Since 1994 when baseball structured each league to provide three divisional buckets for its teams, there have been two occasions where a single division – right from the start – turned into an extended, dueling banter of “Whatever you can do (in this case, win), I can do too.” In 2015, the Tigers – on the heels of four straight AL Central crowns – spun off six wins to open the year. Unimpressed, the defending AL Pennant winners, those Kansas City Royals, rocketed to seven victories in a row. The only other example of this is shaping before our eyes in 2025, where the Dodgers are now 7-for-7 when it comes to winning contests and the Padres sit a half-game back at 6-0.
Michael King struck out 11 in five innings and then handed duties off to a succession of relievers in San Diego’s 7-0 win over Cleveland. The two-hitter represents the third team shutout for the club through its 6-0 start, the most for the franchise at this stage in any season (the previous high – two – came in San Diego’s inaugural season in 1969). The six wins also represent the Padres’ best six-game start to any year since the club came to be.
King’s 11 strikeouts fell a couple shy of the high mark for any starter lasting no longer than five frames. Zack Greinke (2012), Alex Cobb (2013), Jacob deGrom (2022) and Shohei Ohtani (2023) all rang up 13 batters, with Cobb going four-and-two-thirds innings while the others maxed at five.
Speaking of Shohei Ohtani, the Dodgers leadoff hitter extended his season-long streak of scoring a run to seven games. The streak is tied for the second longest for any Dodger in the modern era, sharing a current shelf with Jackie Robinson in 1947 and Jim Gilliam in 1953. In 2021, Mookie Betts scored a run in his first eight games of the year.
Speaking of streaks, the Dodgers’ victory extended their winning streak to seven games, the longest for the club to begin the season since the 1955 Brooklyn team won 10 in a row. That winning streak in the World Series-winning campaign of ’55 is the longest ever for the franchise to begin the year.
In Texas’ 1-0 victory over Cincinnati, Nathan Eovaldi posted the season’s first shutout – a four-hit gem with eight strikeouts and no walks. Eovaldi’s effort marked just the second time this century a Ranger has come away with a shutout in a 1-0 contest, following Kyle Gibson in 2020. To find other “recent” franchise companions for this sort of work and outcome, there were five of them in between 1980 and 1990: three from Charlie Hough and one apiece from John Butcher, Bobby Witt and Nolan Ryan.
Eovaldi has opened the year with 17 strikeouts and no walks. He’s one of six pitchers to start a season with multiple games of no walks and at least eight strikeouts, all of whom did it this century. Corbin Burnes is far and away the supreme champion of this particular juggling act, having opened the 2021 season with five straight. These others ended with two in a row: Johnny Cueto in 2008, Aaron Nola in 2016, J.A. Happ in 2017 and Joe Musgrove in 2021.
Eugenio Suárez connected for a grand slam in the Diamondbacks’ 7-5 win over the Yankees. Suarez has homered in four of Arizona’s five games and leads the big leagues with five round-trippers. For the franchise, Suárez and Luis Gonzalez (2001) share the high mark for the most longballs through the team’s first five games; also, they are the only two Diamondbacks to have gone deep in four of the team’s first five games. For all teams in the modern era, this pair of Diamondbacks are among the 17 players to have at least five home runs through their teams’ first five games. A pair of Rockies – Larry Walker in 1997 and Trevor Story in 2016 – lead the grouping with six.
What do Lou Gehrig in 1933, Dave Winfield in 1983, Shane Spencer in 2000, Hideki Matsui in 2005, Mark Teixeira in 2011 and Anthony Volpe in 2025 have in common? They are the only Yankees ever to have homered in three of the team’s first four games (Volpe delivered his third on Monday night).
Kodai Senga made his season debut and allowed four runs in five innings as his Mets fell to the Marlins, 4-2. With the effort, the right-hander became the sixth Japanese-born pitcher to make a start in 2025, joining Tomoyuki Sugano, Shota Imanaga, Yusei Kikuchi, Roki Sasaki, and Yoshinobu Yamamoto. These six tie for the most in any season, joining 1999, 2002, 2009, 2014, 2023 and 2024 at the apex.
Rays right-hander Shane Baz delivered six innings of scoreless ball punctuated by 10 strikeouts and no walks as Tampa Bay blanked Pittsburgh, 7-0. A dozen Rays hurlers precede Baz in the category of “have a game in which you reach double digits in strikeouts while keeping the walks and runs columns unblemished,” with Chris Archer having the most, three.
Following Baz in this game, relievers Mason Englert and Mason Montgomery kept the relationship humming, adding five strikeouts and no walks to the team shutout. In its 28-year history, the franchise has now seen nine games in which its pitching line ended with at least 15 strikeouts and no walks, with the nine-inning high showing 18 strikeouts (on October 1, 2017) and the extra-inning peak showcasing 24 punchouts (August 17, 2019). This latter figure is the best for any team in any game ever.
George Springer authored his fourth multi-hit game of the year to aid the Blue Jays in their win against the Nationals. The four – which are tied for the most in the Majors – are one shy of the franchise high for any player through six team games. In 1984, George Bell had five such games and Shannon Stewart matched that level in 2001. On this season’s leaderboard in the multi-hit game category, Springer is matched with Lars Nootbaar, who compiled his fourth multi-hit line of the season in the Cardinals’ loss to the Angels. Nootbaar’s four through five team games represents the most for any Redbird since Paul Goldschmidt had four in 2023.
Thanks to Baseball Reference and its extraordinary research database, Stathead, for help in assembling this piece.
Roger Schlueter
As Sr. Editorial Director for Major League Baseball Productions from 2004-2015, Roger served as a hub for hundreds of hours of films, series, documentaries and features: as researcher, fact-checker, script doctor, and developer of ideas. The years at MLB Production gave him the ideal platform to pursue what galvanized him the most – the idea that so much of what takes place on the field during the MLB regular and postseason (and is forever beautifully condensed into a box score) has connections to what has come before. Unearthing and celebrating these webs allows baseball to thrive, for the present can come alive and also reignite the past.