When I wrote about Ramon Santiago’s walkoff triple for Tuesday’s Digest, I thought I’d hit the jackpot of unusual game endings. Then DJ Carrasco balked in a winning run on Thursday night. Carrasco’s balk came runners on first and third with two outs in the bottom of the tenth when he apparently lifted his left elbow, but failed to start his delivery to the plate. I say apparently, because even the MLB.com highlight doesn’t catch the balk on film and I’m going by the written account.
So how often do games end on balks? My first instict, as it always is, was to go to Baseball-Reference’s Play Index, but when I got there all I found was a blog post asking for anecdotal accounts of balkoffs (as they called it) as apparently the PI can’t index bunts. The commenters there take over, finding a six-year old blog post on Blogger that details six balkoffs between 1989 and 2005. After some more digging through Retrosheet, one of the B-Ref users gives us what he says is a comprehensive list of all 12 balkoffs between 1954 and 2008, starting with Ernie Broglio’s 14th inning balk to give the Cubs a win over the Reds in 1965 and ending with Taylor Buchholz’s 10th inning 2008 balk to give the Braves (again!) a 10 inning win over the Rockies. There’s been at least one more balkoff since then; May 31st of last year when the D’Backs Esmerling Vasquez balked in the Dodgers’ Casey Blake.
Here’s where things get weird, though. If we accept that there have been 14 balkoffs since 1954, the Atlanta Braves have been involved in four of them. As near as I can tell, that’s twice the amount of balkoff inolvement of any other team. The Pirates, Astros, Mets, and Marlins have all been involved in two, and weirdly enough, both of the balkoffs including the Marlins have come against the Braves. The clubs split the balkoffs evenly with the Braves winning in 1993 and the Marlins winning the famous John Rocker balkoff in 2000, when Rocker dropped the ball behind his back while in the stretch.
Even weirder? The other balkoff involving the Mets was on May 28, 1989 when a Dodger reliever balked with the winning run on third base in the tenth inning. That Dodger pitcher? Braves’ current pitching coach Roger McDowell! None of this is anything more than coincidence, of course, but it is all kind of weird when you put it in one place.
Also yesterday: The Pirates finished their sweep of the Astros and with losses by the Cardinals and Brewers are within 2 1/2 games of a playoff spot in mid-June, Cliff Lee shut out the badly skidding Marlins, Nick Blackburn and Matt Capps shutout the White Sox for the suddenly red hot Twins, Brett Gardner helped the Yankees beat the Rangers on a more traditional walkoff with a single. Full results here.
Today: Interleague play returns. You still can’t make me like it. The more intriguing matchups of the weekend are the Red Sox and Brewers (tonight: Shaun Marcum vs. John Lackey), Rangers and Braves, Phillies and Mariners, Tigers and Rockies, and Pirates and Indians. Tonight’s full schedule is here.
