Friday, July 10, 2009

You don't see THAT very often

Two amazing occurrences in baseball this past week:

1. A pitcher got a win without throwing a pitch.

2. The Nationals won a game with a player who wasn't on their team, and the win went to another player who isn't on their team.

So how did these things happen?

Alan Embree came on in relief in a tie game against the Nationals and immediately picked Austin Kearns off of first. The Rockies then took the lead and won the game in the following inning, giving Embree the win in a game in which he didn't throw to home plate. Yet another reason that pitchers' wins and losses are severely overrated in baseball.

But the more interesting story came out of Houston on Thursday, where the Nationals won the continuation of a game that was suspended by rain earlier in the year. The continuation was played in Houston even though Washington was the home team, and since the Nationals won the game without having to take the field defensively, the win went to Joel Hanrahan, who threw the last pitch in the original game. Only problem is, Hanrahan was traded to the Pirates on June 30. The win was his first of the season, and he was over 1,000 miles away from the action when he earned it.

To make things even more ridiculous, the winning run was scored by Nyjer Morgan, who was on the Pirates when the original game was played on May 5. So it goes in the books as a win on May 5, but the player who scored the winning run for the Nationals was a Pirate on that day (and went 1-for-5, by the way). So the winning run was scored by a player who wasn't on the team when the game was technically played, and the win goes to a pitcher who wasn't on the team when the game was finished.

Just another day at the ballpark.

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