Game Notes – 05/15/2025

When 1-0 games speed into this particular mind, a couple of classics share pole position.  The first arrived when Fenway Park was but six months into hosting ballgames.  September 6, 1912 … Washington is visiting, Washington is bringing Walter Johnson.  Boston has Smoky Joe Wood.  An overflow crowd contributes to the lone run scored as an historic winning streak is stretched to 14 by the victorious hometown hero.

The second pulls in a half century later … July 2, 1963 on a Tuesday at Candlestick Park.  Juan Marichal and his Giants host Warren Spahn and his Braves.  The two Hall of Famers trade zeroes for the first 15 innings.  Marichal adds a 16th, a duel elongated and thus accepted by Spahn.  The southpaw gets one out before facing Willie Mays.  Mays takes Spahn deep, Marichal has his 16-inning shutout and perhaps never has a 1-0 game been polished to such a brilliance by a trio of brilliant ballplayers.  

Jacob deGrom and Hunter Brown threw down in a duel from past eras, with deGrom (8.0 IP, 5 H) getting the win and Brown (8.0 IP, 3 H, 1 R) the loss in the Rangers’ 1-0 victory over the Astros.

~For deGrom, this game marked the fifth time he’s started in a 1-0 team victory, but only the second of the five that’s seen him pocket a win.  For starters since 1901, Walter Johnson has the most wins in 1-0 games, with 38 (no one else has more than 17).  There are 34 pitchers with at least 10, with Clayton Kershaw the only active pitcher among these 34.

~deGrom is seventh in the AL with a 2.29 ERA, a position made less impressive by two of his teammates – Tyler Mahle at 1.47 and Nathan Eovaldi at 1.78.  That’s a lot of low numbers for one team at this stage of the year.  In the liveball era, there are four clubs who had – 45 games into their seasons – a trio of pitchers with at least nine starts and an ERA below 2.30:

1968 Indians         Luis Tiant, Sam McDowell, Sonny Siebert

1968 Mets            Jerry Koosman, Tom Seaver, Nolan Ryan

1989 Angels         Kirk McCaskill, Chuck Finley, Bert Blyleven 

2025 Rangers      Tyler Mahle, Nathan Eovaldi, Jacob deGrom

~Brown lowered his ERA to 1.43 (second in the AL) in nine starts.  His is the third lowest ERA through 43 team games for any Astros hurler with at least nine starts at this point.  Justin Verlander posted 1.21 in 2018 and Roger Clemens owned a 1.29 in 2005.

~Brown has now fanned exactly nine batters in five straight starts.

*For the Astros, Brown is one of five pitchers to have at least nine K’s in at least five straight outings in a season.   

9    Gerrit Cole (2019)

7    Justin Verlander (2019)

6    Randy Johnson (1998)

5    Gerrit Cole (2019), Hunter Brown (2025)

*Brown’s streak of five straight games with exactly nine strikeouts is the longest in a season for any pitcher in the modern era.  There are four who had four straight:  Christy Mathewson in 1901; Clayton Kershaw in 2014; Kenta Maeda in 2018; Spencer Strider in 2023.

Jake Burger gets thrown into the storyline too, for his sixth-inning solo homer that provided the only scoring in Texas’ win over Houston.  He’s the second Ranger this season to provide a home run in a 1-0 win, after Wyatt Langford against the Reds on April 1.  Before this year, no Rangers player had done this since Rougned Odor in 2016 and the franchise hadn’t seen multiple reps in the same year since 1977, when Ken Henderson and Willie Horton provided the big swings.

22-year-old AJ Smith-Shawver allowed one run (unearned) in six innings and improved to 3-2 on the year as the Braves took care of the Nationals.  The right-hander owns a 2.33 ERA in seven starts this season:  a notably low number for this stage in a Braves campaign when the lens closes in on young hurlers.  Since 1920, among Braves pitchers who were yet to turn 23 years old and had at least seven starts through the club’s first 44 games, only John Smoltz in 1989 had a lower mark (2.17).  If one applies this same criteria across all clubs, Smoltz’s 2.17 ranks as the 25th lowest and Smith-Shawver’s 2.33 sits in a tie with Ken Holtzman’s mark in 1967 for 31st lowest.  

The Twins defeated the Orioles 4-0 for the club’s 11th straight victory.  The streak is tied for the seventh longest in any season in franchise history and marks as the second in as many seasons to reach this long (the ’24 club posted a 12-game streak).  If arranging all streaks that ran at least 11 games from lowest to highest ERA during the winning, this 2025 club is right in the middle:

1933 Washington    13 games    1.83 ERA

2006 Minnesota      11 games     2.00 ERA

1991 Minnesota      15 games     2.17 ERA

1912 Washington    17 games     2.24 ERA

1980 Minnesota      12 games     2.42 ERA  

2025 Minnesota      11 games     2.43 ERA

2003 Minnesota      11 games     2.45 ERA

1921 Washington    11 games     2.55 ERA

1931 Washington    12 games     2.67 ERA

2024 Minnesota      12 games     3.08 ERA

Shohei Ohtani highlighted an 18-hit, 19-2 Dodgers rollover of the Athletics with a two-homer, six-RBI day from the  leadoff spot.  

~In his career, Ohtani has produced multiple games batting first that have showcased at least six RBI.  There are only five others since 1901 who can state this:

1901-2025:  Most Games With 6+ RBI While Batting Leadoff

3   Felipe López, Kyle Schwarber  

2   Rick Monday, Matt Carpenter, Mookie Betts, Shohei Ohtani

~Ohtani has 15 longballs this year – tied for the fourth most for any Dodger since 1901 through 44 team games.  Gil Hodges (1951) and Roy Campanella (1953) are tied for the most with 17.  Raúl Mondesi hit 16 in 1999, while Ohtani is now matched with Duke Snider in 1955 and Cody Bellinger in 2019.  

~Ohtani has a 1.082 OPS.  For all Dodgers since 1901 who had at least 130 plate appearances through the team’s first 44 games, that mark ranks as the 16th best.  It’s only slightly less than his own 1.108 in 2024 (which ranks as the 10th best).  Ohtani is the only double representative among the top 16.  Cody Bellinger’s 1.271 in 2019 is the highest mark.

In the Dodgers’ win, their number nine hitter – Hyeseong Kim – reached safely five times (three hits and two walks) and scored four runs.   In the modern era, he’s one of 11 number nine batters to produce a line with at least four runs and five (or more) times on base.  A couple of pitchers – George Uhle in 1923 and Billy Hoeft in 1956 – appear before the AL’s DH-era arrives in 1973.   This is the first time a Dodger has shown up.

Tampa Bay’s 1-2 hitters – Josh Lowe and Brandon Lowe – combined for six hits (three homers) and five RBI as their Rays took down the Blue Jays.  For Brandon, this game gave the 30-year-old his eighth career multi-homer line, third most in franchise history.  Evan Longoria had 17, while Carlos Peña had 11 playing for Tampa Bay.

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