Tuesday, July 01

It’s National Screen-Free Week, so please print this out and then get offline. Savor the latest edition of this edition of the Baseball Traveler newsletter in the great outdoors, surrounded by the beauty of nature, realizing that this is a better way to live. I should try it myself sometime. Let’s talk about Minor League Baseball.  

From May 1-4, I visited the Omaha Storm Chasers, Iowa Cubs, Cedar Rapids Kernels and Peoria Chiefs. It was great to be back at these locales for the first time in a decade, reconnecting with many people and meeting many more (if you see me at a ballpark, please say hello). Stay tuned in the coming weeks and months for much more from the trip. For now, here’s a picture of me illustrating just how much my first pitch for the Iowa Cubs missed the strike zone. 

Meanwhile, I’ve got another trip coming later this month. If you want to be a Designated Eater on this trip email me now because I’ll make all the selections by Monday. Greenville Drive, Columbia Fireflies, Carolina Mudcats, Myrtle Beach Pelicans and Charleston RiverDogs, here I come! 

Finally, please be informed that my trip to the Somerset Patriots on June 11 is for the team’s “The Show Before the Show” theme night! I have been a part of “The Show Before the Show” -- the official Minor League Baseball podcast -- since it launched in 2015. 10 years and more than 500 episodes later, here we are. Thanks to the Somerset Patriots for making this happen! 

Join Sam Dykstra, Tyler Maun and me at TD Bank Ballpark! We’d love to see you there. Let me know if you plan on attending. Tickets »

P.S. Did you see Sunday night’s episode of “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.” If not, and you have the means to do so, please check it out forthwith. Oliver heaped praise upon Minor League Baseball in general and on a number of promos in particular before offering his show's resources to rebranding a Minor League team.

P.P.S All of my 2025 road trip itineraries can be found HERE.

Enough about me, now it’s time to get weird(er).

Welcome to Crooked Numbers, a monthly column dedicated to Minor League Baseball on-field oddities and absurdities. Keeping track of this type of thing is a team effort, so get in touch if you’ve witnessed something weird at a Minor League game (benjamin.hill@mlb.com).

Doesn’t hit, half a dozen steals
Remember last season, when Eduarqui Fernandez of the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers stole five bases without recording a hit? Or in 2023, when Ian Lewis did the same? Of course you do.

Emaarion Boyd did them both one better on April 9, when he stole six bases for the Beloit Sky Carp (High-A MIA) without the benefit of a hit. The expeditious Marlins prospect reached on a fielder’s choice in the first, walked in the fifth and was hit by a pitch in the seventh. On all three of these occasions he went on to steal second and third. Not bad for a night in which he went 0-for-1!

Please note that Boyd also stole six bases on June 6, 2023, as a member of the Clearwater Threshers. On that night, however, he went a whopping 1-for-3.

And speaking of speed
No matter how many times I watch the video of the Rays' Chandler Simpson turning this grounder to first base into a single for the Triple-A Durham Bulls, I still have the same question: How is it even possible? 

Take your base (x22)
There’s small ball, and then there’s whatever the Dunedin Blue Jays did to the Jupiter Hammerheads on April 9. The Blue Jays won, 19-5, on the strength of 22 (!) walks. This is a Florida State League record, and the most walks recorded in a Minor League game since at least 2005 (when Minor League-wide online recordkeeping began). Yhoangel Aponte, who was issued one free pass, was the only hitter in the Dunedin lineup who failed to walk at least twice.

But would you believe that the player who walked the most in this game was a member of the opposing Hammerheads? Leadoff man Starlyn Caba walked five times! As Michael Avallone noted in the game recap: “All told, the two teams combined for 437 pitches, 32 walks, four hit-by-pitches, three pitch-clock violations and a balk during the 3:39 game.”

Free pass, three runs
In what was perhaps the most chaotic play of the Minor League season thus far, the Albuquerque Isotopes somehow managed to score three runs on a bases-loaded walk. Austin Nola was the first to score on the play. Aaron Schunk, upon reaching third, broke for home when El Paso Chihuahuas catcher Luis Campusano threw the ball back to pitcher Omar Cruz. Jordan Beck, who was on first when the play began, then raced for third and scored after Cruz threw the ball down the left-field line. Make sense? Maybe? Eh, just watch it: 

Seeing double
What are the odds of two 5-6-3 putouts occurring in both halves of an inning, and in each instance happening with one out, an 0-1 count and a pitch that was thrown at 83 miles an hour?

Astronomical, right? Perhaps incalculable. But here we are. This really happened:

Broken bat leads to holy cats
You know the old cliché: You never know what you’ll see when you go to a baseball game. Take April 23’s tilt between the Columbus Clingstones and Chattanooga Lookouts, in which Chandler Seagle recorded a broken-bat single in which the ball hit the bat twice. “I have never, ever seen that in my 45 years of calling baseball," said Lookouts broadcaster Larry Ward. “Holy cats!”

“Holy Cats” T-shirts are now available in the Lookouts team store, and it’s all thanks to this insanity:

Smoking the ball
On June 10, 2019, the D-Backs and Phillies combined to hit 13 home runs in a game, the most in Major League history. The Charlotte Knights and Nashville Sounds matched this feat on April 20, in which 10 of the homers were hit over the first four innings.

The Sounds, who outhomered the Knights 7-6, won by a score of 14-11. It was the most home runs hit in a Minor League game since Rochester and Lehigh Valley combined for 15 on April 13, 2019.

Rockies walk-offs mount
The Colorado Rockies lost on April 4, but the silver lining on this Friday night was that three of their four Minor League affiliates won via walk-off.

Triple-A Albuquerque scored three runs in the ninth, winning, 5-4, over Salt Lake on the strength of a Braxton Fulton two-run dinger. Double-A Hartford defeated Somerset by the same score, as Kyle Karros’ second homer of the game broke a 4-4 tie with one out in the ninth. Single-A Fresno toppled Stockton, 4-3, thanks to an 11th-inning sac fly from Felix Pena. High-A Spokane “didn’t get the memo,” as they wrote on Instagram, mounting a ninth-inning comeback but ultimately losing to Everett, 4-3.

This marked the first time three Minor League teams in the same system enjoyed a walk-off on the same night since Aug. 21 of last season, when Cardinals affiliates accomplished the feat on an evening in which parent St. Louis also walked it off.

Reyes-ing the bar
Luis Reyes is an infielder for the Daytona Tortugas, but when he toed the slab on April 11 he didn’t get shelled. Far from it – he earned a save! The moonlighting moundsman entered the game with two outs and two runners on in the bottom of the eighth inning, with his Tortugas clinging to an 11-10 lead. He got out of that jam, and then the Tortugas scored four in the ninth to take a 15-10 lead. Reyes, who walked and scored in the ninth, didn’t need the insurance runs as he then tossed a scoreless frame to close out the game. 

CROOKED NUGGETS

Even more Minor League madness, described in two sentences or less.

Kick save and a beaut: And a double play! The best thing about this unlikely DP is the reaction of Dayton third baseman Ricky Cabrera.

Off to an early lead: Every batter in the starting lineup scoring a run is a great accomplishment. Syracuse accomplished this before Worcester got a chance to bat.

Wardrobe Malfunction: In which Michael Sansone had everyone seeing red.

Sting operation: “The Hillsboro bullpen was under siege! An invading force!” 

The Comets’ Comet: Hyeseong Kim was signed by the Dodgers this offseason and began his stateside career with the Triple-A Oklahoma City Comets. Hyeseong, in Hanja Korean, translates to “comet.”

OK, Mr. Burns, what’s your first name? Connor and Chase, the best same-surname battery of the 2025 season.

Get in touch anytime and thank you, as always, for reading. And thanks to Josh Jackson for producing this beast of a newsletter. He may be on an Interruption hiatus, but his fingerprints are all over this thing. Maybe he should start wearing gloves.

Contact Benjamin Hill

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