After Chris Sale and Tarik Skubal made the 2024 season the first ever in which left-handed Triple Crown winners emerged from both the AL and NL, the pair have contributed to sculpting this current campaign into another celebration of those who deliver pitches from the port side. This year provides extensive company for the defending Cy Young Award winners. To wit, there are five southpaws – Sale, Skubal, Garrett Crochet, Max Fried and Kris Bubic – who can currently take account of their lines and showcase an ERA+ of at least 150. Is that a lot, you may wonder, for a season? It is.
No year has ever finished with the AL & NL activating their Wonder Twin powers to produce as many as five qualifying lefties with an ERA+ of at least 150. Yes, this season is not yet at the halfway point. But, who knows – there couldn’t have been too many followers last year who, near the end of June, imagined that a pair of Triple Crown slingers from the left side were about to ride into town.
Making his 307th career start (and 387th career appearances), Chris Sale fell one out away from a five-hit shutout but did pocket a win as the Braves blanked the Mets, 5-0. The effort ticked Sale’s career ERA down to 3.02 – ever so close to the exclusive sub-3.00 club for all Liveball Era hurlers. Since 1920, there are 10 pitchers with at least 300 starts who called it quits* possessing an ERA starting with a two. The 10, divided by the arm that produced all the magic:
Lefties: Carl Hubbell, Whitey Ford, Sandy Koufax
Righties: Don Drysdale, Bob Gibson, Juan Marichal, Mel Stottlemyre, Jim Palmer, Tom Seaver, Pedro Martínez
*Clayton Kershaw – he of the 2.51 career ERA – hasn’t yet called it quits.
While Sale owns the ninth lowest ERA (2.52) among qualifiers in 2025, his fellow southpaw Garrett Crochet claims the seventh lowest at 2.20. His number got a boost (in the right direction) on Wednesday, as the 25-year-old went six and allowed a run in the Red Sox 3-1 win against the Mariners. A couple of different lenses to observe his work …
~Crochet’s 2.20 would come in as the fourth lowest ERA ever for a Red Sox pitcher (min. 15 GS) before an All-Star Break. Tex Hughson’s 1.79 in 1944 takes the pole, followed by Boo Ferriss’ 2.04 in 1945 and then Pedro Martínez’s 2.10 in 1999. Roger Clemens owned a 2.22 in 1991 and Sale posted a 2.23 in 2018 to round out the current top five.
~Crochet’s 2.20 converts to a 187 ERA+. For all Red Sox southpaws who qualified for an ERA title, that value has been produced over the course of a full season by two different players. In 1914, Dutch Leonard authored a 279* while Lefty Grove produced a 189 in 1936.
*Leonard’s 279 is the best for any AL or NL left-hander ever.
Kris Bubic (5.1 IP, 3 R) saw his ERA rise, but the Royals lefty still owns the Majors’ fifth lowest mark, at 2.12. Along with Sale and Crochet and Tarik Skubal (1.99 ERA) and Max Fried (1.89), the Majors’ top-10 in the category offers a quintet of left-handers. To locate a first half of a season (as defined by the All-Star break) that concluded with as many as five left-handers sporting an ERA below 2.60 and at least 15 starts, a lot of years have to be discarded. 1985 is the one to pinpoint, thanks to these five:
Dave Dravecky (2.17)
John Tudor (2.27)
Fernando Valenzuela (2.30)
Joe Hesketh (2.57)
Ron Guidry (2.58)
Ronald Acuña, Jr. connected for his 36th career home run to lead off the game, tying Shin-Soo Choo for the 14th most ever. For his age, the 36 at this point in a career elevates the Braves outfielder to an entirely reshuffled leaderboard.
Most Leadoff HR Through Age-27 Season
36 Ronald Acuña, Jr.
28 Bobby Bonds
28 Rickey Henderson
25 Hanley Ramírez
22 Mookie Betts
Brandon Lowe’s pinch-hit, two-run homer in the fifth inning brought the Rays all the way back to even after falling in an early 8-0 deficit; Tampa Bay went on to defeat Baltimore, 12-8. Lowe’s mid-game heroics also extended his streak of contests with at least one hit and one run scored to seven straight. The Tampa Bay franchise high mark for this combination of performance comes in at 10, courtesy of Álex Sánchez in 2005. Lowe himself shares a medal for the second longest, a nine-gamer that played out earlier this season. For all teams In the Tampa Bay era (since 1998), Johnny Damon’s 14-game streak for the 2000 Royals is the longest.
Jose Altuve singled twice and homered once as the Astros pummeled the Athletics for 20 hits and 11 runs. The nine-time All-Star has produced 212 box scores featuring at least three hits – second in Astros annals to Craig Biggio and his 225. Altuve’s three-hit night also moved him closer to that other Astros icon, Jeff Bagwell, in the all-time hits department; Bagwell now leads Altuve, 2,314 to 2,309.
Pinch-hitter Will Smith drove one into the seats in the bottom of the ninth to give his Dodgers a 4-3 walk-off win against the Padres. The Majors’ first game-ending home run from a pinch-hitter this season also marked the first from a Dodger since Smith produced one on July 20, 2021. Before that, the last one had been delivered by … Smith, on June 23, 2019. Smith’s three are the most for the franchise in the Division Era, with only Rick Monday having more than one. Corralling Dodgers and non-Dodgers alike, here’s the entire list of pinch-hitters with at least three walk-off jacks since 1969:
6 Jason Giambi
3 Larry Sheets
3 Charlie Culberson
3 Will Smith
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.