Game Notes – 04/06/2025

It’s been more than a decade since the American League saw the same player capture the batting crown, on-base title, and slugging belt.  A year after he claimed the traditional Triple Crown in 2012, Detroit’s Miguel Cabrera took home the rate-stat version, slashing .348/.442/.636.  Minnesota’s Joe Mauer – in 2009 – had been the previous claimant and before him, it was George Brett during the MVP’s bonkers season in 1980.  The year before Brett ascended to the top floor, Boston showcased their most recent representative when Fred Lynn slashed .333/.423/.637 to pace the AL in all three.  This little stroll down Triple Crown Slash Line Memory Lane has been sponsored by Red Sox right fielder Wilyer Abreu, who owns a .483/.595/.897 line and has the league’s top mark in all three categories.  

In the second game of a doubleheader, the Red Sox pummeled the Cardinals, 18-7.  A few notes:

~Alex Bregman and Rafael Devers each collected four hits, each produced a pair of doubles (Bregman added a homer) and each drove in three (Bregman actually doubled that tally).  All the box scores dedicated to Red Sox games show only two other instances of teammates producing those specified lines.  The other two:

August 2, 1901:  Jimmy Collins (4 H, 2 2B, 3 RBI) and Buck Freeman (4 H, 2 2B, 4 RBI)

August 15, 2015:  Jackie Bradley, Jr. (5 H, 3 2B, 7 RBI) and Blake Swihart (4 H, 2 2B, 3 RBI)

~Six different starters doubled and overall, the team collected nine two-base hits (ahhh, Fenway).  The nine fell three shy of the franchise record, set in 1990 (that game was on the road!).  In late September of 2018, the team saw nine of its players produce a double, the most for this franchise (and that performance did come at Fenway).  

~Wilyer Abreu – after producing a walk-off single in the first game of the doubleheader – added another three RBI and a double to his seasonal tallies in the nightcap.  In addition to his team-leading 12 RBI, he has six extra-base hits.  Bregman is at 10 RBI and a team-best seven extra-base hits.  Before this duo, 2003 had been the last time a pair of Red Sox teammates reached six extra-base hits and 10 RBI through 10 team games.  That year, it was Shea Hillenbrand and Kevin Millar.  

~Devers opened his season by going 3-for-27 with a double, two RBI and 16 strikeouts against five walks.  Then he came home.  In his first three games of the year at Fenway Park, he’s 7-for-11 with two doubles and a homer, has six RBI and has drawn four walks against one strikeout.  

Bobby Witt, Jr., who led the Majors with 211 hits in 2024, posted his first three-hit game of this campaign as the Royals took care of the Orioles.  The shortstop had a single, double and triple but couldn’t get all the way there in a bid for the seventh cycle in the franchise’s history.  Relative to the rarity of cycling with the Royals, coming up just a longball short is fairly common:  124 instances in the team’s 57-year history.  George Brett had 12 of these lines for Kansas City (including three in 1979), the most for the franchise.  Unsurprisingly, the top five in the modern era is exclusively populated by players from long ago.

1901-2025:  Most Games With 1B, 2B, 3B But No HR

27    Paul Waner

25    Sam Crawford

21    Ty Cobb

20    Tris Speaker

20    Stan Musial

Andrew McCutchen and Amed Rosario share the crown for the most such games among active players, with six.

Detroit’s Spencer Torkelson roped a two-run double in the bottom of the ninth to morph a 3-2 deficit into a 4-3 walk-off win.  The two-base knock gave the first baseman an extra-base hit in five of the club’s first nine games, a numerical start shared by his teammate Riley Greene.  The Tigers last saw a pair of players greet the early season like this in 2010, when Brandon Inge and Magglio Ordóñez each had five.  

Of the 15 games played on Sunday, nine of them were decided by a run.  There have been 41 one-run outcomes this year, with teams now having played between nine and 12 games.  Since expansion to 30 clubs for the 1998 season, 2013 saw the most one-run games – 754.  That year reached 41 on April 13, when clubs had between 10 and 13 games played.

Colorado’s Chase Dollander picked up a win on Sunday, allowing four runs in five innings in his Major League debut.  He’s one of a dozen Rockies starters to record a victory in their first big league game and the first to do this since Peter Lambert in 2019.  The standout representatives here come via a pair of shutouts:  Mark Brownson’s four-hitter in 1998 and Jason Jennings’ five-hitter in 2001.

Pete Alonso drove in a run in the Mets’ 2-1 victory over the Blue Jays and leads the club with 11 RBI for the year.  This is the third time in the past seven seasons Alonso has produced at least 11 RBI through the club’s first nine games (he had 12 in 2022 and 11 in 2019); no other Met has reached this tally at this point since John Buck drove in 15 in 2013.

Brice Turang doubled and singled to extend his hitting streak to 10 games.  He’s one of seven players in Brewers history to have opened a season with a double-digit hitting streak:

13 games     Dickie Thon in 1993

11 games     William Contreras in 2023

10 games     Steve Hovley in 1970

10 games     Dale Sveum in 1987

10 games     Ronnie Belliard in 2000

10 games     Rickie Weeks in 2010

10 games     Brice Turang in 2025

In the Brewers’ 8-2 win over the Reds, Jackson Chourio homered twice and drove in five runs.  

~The 21-year-old leads the club with seven extra-base hits (and is tied for second in the NL) but is also at the bottom of the team’s leaderboards in walks because he doesn’t have any.  This profile – at least seven extra-base hits and zero walks through 10 team games – had been produced nine previous times this century, including by Josh Hamilton in 2012 when the Rangers’ All-Star finished the year fifth in MVP voting.  Some of the more notable dismissers of walks in the past 50 years – Andre Dawson, Dante Bichette, Andrés Galarraga, Alfonso Soriano – appear on the overall list, which now numbers 33 players since 1901.  Chronologically, the collection begins with Emmet Heidrick in 1901.  That year, the Cardinals outfielder drew his first walk of the season in the club’s 24th game, at which point he had 15 extra-base hits.  

~Chourio – who is 21 years and 27 days old – has played in 158 career games and has 61 career extra-base hits.  Since 1901, there are 28 players to have produced at least this many at this stage while being younger than 22 years old.  In a superb convergence, his fellow Jackson and fellow top-three finisher in 2024 NL Rookie of the Year voting, Jackson Merrill, also had exactly 61 (his 158th game arrived on March 28 this year, when Merrill was 21 years and 343 days old).  The list features some heavy names like Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams, Joe Medwick and Henry Aaron and Frank Robinson and Orlando Cepeda, Álex Rodríguez, Albert Pujols and Miguel Cabrera.  It also includes – aside from Chourio and Merrill – a large number of active players:  Giancarlo Stanton, Mike Trout, Bryce Harper, Manny Machado, Carlos Correa, Rafael Devers, Ozzie Albies, Ronald Acuña, Jr., Fernando Tatis, Jr. and Juan Soto.

23-year-old Tyler Soderstrom connected on his fourth homer of the year in the Athletics’ loss to the Rockies.  The first baseman is one of three players for the franchise to be younger than 24 and to have amassed at least four home runs so early into the year (10 team games).  José Canseco had five in 1988 and Carlos Peña collected four in 2002.

In a Cubs loss, Kyle Tucker posted another prominent line:  two runs on a single, a home run and a walk, three RBI.  The Cubs outfielder leads the NL in runs, hits, total bases, home runs, RBI, extra-base hits and times on base, and is second in doubles and walks.  Putting some of this production into some sort of historical context, Tucker has reached safely 27 times and amassed 35 total bases.  There are 76 others since 1901 to have reached those two bars through 10 team games.  There’s been nine others to do this since 2010 and there’s been one representative in four of the five most recent seasons:  Tucker in 2025, Mookie Betts in 2024, Matt Chapman in 2023 and Ronald Acuña, Jr. in 2021.  Tucker is one of two Cubs to appear, after Rick Monday in 1976.  There are three players who appear more than once here:  Hall of Famers Frank Thomas (1994, 1996, 2000), Jimmie Foxx (1939 and 1940) and Ted Williams (1948, 1957).  This century, five of the prodigious starts have ultimately led to a top-three in MVP voting:  winners Cody Bellinger (2019) and Barry Bonds (2004); runners-up Thomas (2000) and Albert Pujols in 2006 and third-place finisher Álex Rodríguez (2000).

Wilmer Flores delivered a pinch-hit, game-ending single to lift the Giants to a 5-4 win over the Mariners.  It had been a while since a Giants pinch-hitter ended a game with a hit; the last came from the bat of (yes) Madison Bumgarner on September 25, 2018.  This year, Flores leads the team with 12 RBI and four home runs – numbers last reached by a Giant through nine team games in 2002, when Barry Bonds was at 12 and five.  The other Giants that qualify for these bars and timelines:  Kevin Mitchell in 1989 and 1991; Willie Mays in 1964 and 1966; Orlando Cepeda in 1959; Walker Cooper in 1948; Mel Ott in 1941; Bill Terry in 1932; Travis Jackson in 1930; George Kelly in 1921.  

Angels catcher Logan O’Hoppe went yard for the fourth straight game to tie for the third longest home run streak in franchise history.  There are 16 Angels whose streaks stalled at four games, with only Mike Trout (seven straight in 2022) and Bobby Bonds (five straight in 1977) going beyond.  O’Hoppe is the only backstop for the franchise to produce a streak as stretched as four games.

Thanks to Baseball Reference and its extraordinary research database, Stathead, for help in assembling this piece.