Crooked Numbers: Putting up zeroes

Crooked Numbers is a monthly feature on MiLB.com that attempts to find the weirdest baseball around the Minor Leagues from the previous month. We put these strange baseball moments -- which often come out of nowhere -- in some context as we take you around the strange, quirky and unlikely between the lines.

Offense was placed at a premium in Springfield on Tuesday, May 19, when pitching reigned supreme and an unlikely hitter played the role of hero on the mound.

The game between Tulsa, which entered with a 16-20 record, and the host Cardinals, 12-25 on the season, was scoreless after nine innings. And 10. And 11. You get the idea.

Four hours and 48 minutes after it began, and with a hardcore smattering of the 3,311 fans still left in attendance, the Drillers came out on top, 1-0, in 17 innings.

Tulsa plated the only run of the game on Jeremy Rathjen's two-out RBI double to right field to plate Adam Law, who had led off the frame with a single back up the middle.

The contest saw 18 combined hits. Tulsa -- who also played in the most recent 17-inning Texas League game when it defeated Arkansas, 7-2, on July 14, 2012 -- collected eight singles and one double. Springfield accounted for five singles and four doubles. In total, the two clubs combined to go 18-for-117 (.154) with nine walks and 31 strikeouts. Together, the clubs were 1-for-16 with runners in scoring position with 22 men left on base.

A few more tidbits from the game: there were three intentional walks, two double plays, two pickoffs, one stolen base, one balk and one caught stealing. There were 470 pitches thrown, 312 for strikes.

Several starters went hitless, including Tulsa second baseman Brandon Dixon and Springfield center fielder Charlie Tilson. Cards third baseman Patrick Wisdom struck out four times. Tulsa first baseman Lars Anderson also went 0-for-7, but he got the last laugh by pitching two scoreless innings of relief to earn the victory in his first appearance on the mound.

Per Texas League president Tom Kayser, "the game was just the fourth time in Texas League history that a game has lasted as long and ended with a 1-0 score. The record 1-0 contest in the league was started on July 14, 1988, suspended in the early hours of July 15 and completed on July 16 with San Antonio finally prevailing over Jackson in 26 innings."

Happy Plunkiversary

On May 4, Pat Misch did something unprecedented, something that had never been accomplished in the 112-year history of the Pacific Coast League: He hit four batters in one inning.

And not only did Misch hit four batters in one inning, he did it to start the game. Taking the mound for the New Orleans Zephyrs, Misch plunked each of the first four batters he faced -- 13 pitches was all it took to give him Pacific Coast League immortality. 

Each of the four batters that Misch hit would later score. The 33-year-old veteran soon settled down, allowing one run over his next five innings of work. He hit one more batter, however -- Kyle Jensen in the fourth inning -- thereby becoming the first PCL pitcher to hit five batters in one game.

Oklahoma City RedHawks broadcaster Alex Freedman, a longtime Crooked Numbers contributor, was on hand to witness the carnage. He notes that Misch tied the PCL team record for most hit batters in a game. This had last happened when three Salt Lake Stingers hurlers combined to hit five Portland Beavers on May 4, 2005.

10 years later - to the day! - Misch tied the mark on his own.  

An early substitution

Strange things can happen in blowouts, especially when they combine with other unusual occurrences, such as first-inning injuries.

On May 21, the host Lancaster JetHawks scored 18 runs in the first three innings against High Desert. In that first inning, third baseman J.D. Davis was hit by a pitch and came around to score.

Davis was replaced in the field in the top of the second inning by Jose Fernandez, who proceeded to collect five plate appearances off the bench. Despite going hitless and striking out once, Fernandez came round to score three times on three walks.

Trouble with the bunt

It's rare that both corner outfielders touch the ball on the same play. It's almost impossible to conceive a situation where that play begins with a bunt. But that's exactly what happened on May 23 in Harrisburg when a sacrifice turned into a comedy of errors.

With runners on first and second base and no outs in the bottom of the fifth inning, Senators catcher Pedro Severino dropped down a sacrifice bunt that should have advanced both runners 90 feet and resulted in an out.

However, New Britain pitcher Bryan Evans threw the ball into right field, allowing Matt Skole to score from second. Rock Cats right fielder Tyler Massey then threw wide of third base as he tried to nail Caleb Ramsey, giving Ramsey a chance to head for home. The Rock Cats still had a chance to record an out, but left fielder Mike Tauchman, backing up the play at third, air-mailed his throw to catcher Tom Murphy.

Score that as a sacrifice plus an E1, E9 and E7.

Calling the plays

As reported in the Midwest League notebook on May 15, South Bend public address announcer Jon Thompson was called into double duty on May 11 during the Cubs' game with the Lansing Lugnuts.

Per MiLB.com contributor Curt Rallo, Thompson was "moved to the field Monday as an umpire … to replace a regular Midwest League umpire, who suffered a concussion after being hit by a foul ball. Thompson, a local radio personality, has been a long-time high school and college baseball umpire in the South Bend area, and has been called on to fill in as an umpire at numerous Midwest League games in the past. "It's like that TV series, Upstairs, Downstairs," Thompson joked about working a Cubs game as the announcer one game and as an umpire the next."

Alone on the field

Also from the world of unusual umpire happenings in the Midwest League, first base umpire Andrew Chesnut was left on his own to arbitrate the May 5 contest between Quad Cities and Kane County on his own after home plate ump J.C. Velez left the game in the fifth inning. What makes the event even more unusual is that Chestnut also worked a game in Kane County last season when he was part of a three-man team that happened as a result of overbooking, according to Kane County sports editor Kevin Druley.

.@KCCougars umpiring fun fact: Andrew Chesnut resumes game working solo. In June, Chesnut was on rare #MWL 3-man crew here (overbooking)

- Kevin Druley (@KevinDruley) May 5, 2015

It's nothing personal

Tacoma's Stefen Romero has eight Triple-A homers this season, four of which have come against the Fresno Grizzlies. Romero also hit 12 homers in the Pacific Coast League last season, six of which came at the expense of Grizzlies pitching.

To put it into perspective, there are 16 teams in the PCL. Over the past two seasons, he has hit one homer against each of Las Vegas, Sacramento and New Orleans, two against Salt Lake and Round Rock and three against Albuquerque. He hasn't hit a single homer against nine PCL teams, but he's gone yard 10 times against Fresno.

Double (or triple) rarities

Fans in Clearwater witnessed a couple pieces of baseball history in the same game May 13 when the Stone Crabs topped the Threshers, 5-0.

Not only did Buddy Borden throw a seven-inning no-hitter but his defense turned a triple play. It was the first no-no in the Florida State League this season and just the second in franchise history. The triple play, in which shortstop Willy Adames snagged a line drive with runners at first and second off with the pitch, was the second triple play on the circuit this year.

Doubleheaders in the Minor Leagues are scheduled for seven innings each, and the only reason the teams needed to play a twinbill was because of a team-wide illness that swept through the Clearwater locker room.

After the way things unfolded on May 13, there's a chance they were sick to their stomachs again.

Put some ice on it

Lansing second baseman Tim Locastro is probably covered in bruises. In 44 Midwest League games this season, Locastro has been hit by a pitch a Minor League-high 16 times, including 10 times in May. Only twice this month has he gone more than four days in a row without being plunked.

Locastro was hit by a pitch in all three games of a series in South Bend from May 11-13. Only one other player in the Minors -- New Orleans' Derek Dietrich -- has been hit 10 or more times, and nobody else in the Midwest League has been hit more than seven times. On April 20 he was hit by a pitch three times in one game against Dayton.

No stranger to taking one for the team, Locastro was hit 32 times in 67 Northwest League games with Vancouver in 2014 and a further six times in 43 games with Bluefield in 2013.

Walk this way

On Saturday, May 30, the Myrtle Beach Pelicans scored five seventh-inning runs without the benefit of a hit.

The Pelicans sent 10 batters to the plate. The first six Pelicans walked -- including three consecutive bases-loaded walks to force home runs -- before Daniel Lockhart plated a fourth run on a sacrifice fly to center. The fifth and final run scored when Cody Davis uncorked a wild pitch that allowed Carlos Penalver to race home from third.

In total, Myrtle Beach scored five runs on no hits, seven walks, two wild pitches and a sacrifice fly. They stranded two on base.