The 2022 Season Had Some Unique Moments
David Richard-USA TODAY Sports
It’s about that time of the offseason when baseball fans get a little antsy. The winter meetings have been over for about a month, and player movement across Major League Baseball has slowed to a trickle. Spring training is still over a month away, so we (patiently?) wait for the crack of the bat and the pop of the glove in Arizona and Florida. To help pass the time, let’s take a look at some of the more unique happenings in baseball during the 2022 season.
August 17
The Mets had an amazing comeback win with seven runs in the ninth inning at Philadelphia on May 5, but the Guardians’ feat on August 17 may have outdone that. The Tigers were in Cleveland that night, and Andrew Chafin took the mound for Detroit to start the eighth inning. He struck out the side. What’s so unique about that? Well, the third strikeout came on a passed ball, allowing the batter to reach first base and extend the inning. Then, as Jayson Stark notes in The Athletic, single, double, single, double, double, intentional walk, and single. Six runs crossed the plate, while the scorebook showed three strikeouts to open the inning. You can’t make that up.
July 6
The White Sox trailed the Twins five different times in the game and ended up winning the game 9-8. The last time that happened was in the 2011 World Series, in Game Six, when David Freese won the game for the Cardinals to force Game Seven. Weird, right? How about this? As Stark points out, the winning manager in both games was Tony La Russa.
May 9
The White Sox took on the Guardians (Cleveland had quite a season in 2022) in Chicago. Terry Francona‘s team trailed 8-2 going into the ninth, and ended up winning the game 12-9 in extra innings.
Baseball became football a couple of times last season. On April 23, the Cubs pasted the Pirates by a 21-0 score. On July 22, the Blue Jays used the running and passing games effectively to drub the Red Sox 28-5 at Fenway Park. One more note from Stark on that Cubs win over the Pirates. That was a four-game series, during in which the Pirates won three of four, with a run differential of -17!
On May 1, first base umpire Sean Barber had four calls challenged in the White Sox/Angels game. All four calls ended up being reversed. It’s safe to say that Barber has had better nights.
On June 17, in a game between the Phillies and Nationals, there was a 28-pitch inning. Why is that noteworthy? Because there was not a single ball put in play and no runs scored. There were three four-pitch walks, and three strikeouts with no swings.
This is a small sample of some of the odd moments that dotted the 2022 season. We also saw 18 instances of position players pitching in games that their teams were winning. In the not-too-distant past, doing this would have been considered poor sportsmanship. It’s a new era in baseball, and things will be changing even more in 2023 with the upcoming rule changes.
One thing we know for sure. No matter what the rules are or may be, the very nature of baseball lends itself to uncommon occurrences. As the cliché goes, watch a baseball game and you may just see something you’ve never seen before.
The 2023 season can’t get here fast enough so we can begin living that cliché once again.
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