Stats of the Week: An MVP-filled 1st inning, brotherly love and a historic debut

Here’s our weekly look at 10 mind-blowing notes from the last week in baseball (July 31-Aug. 6).

Rolling: With his start on Sunday, Gavin Williams has now struck out at least 10 batters and issued no more than one walk in five straight outings. That’s tied for the second-longest such streak since at least 1900 with 2018 Chris Sale, and behind only 2016 Clayton Kershaw, with six straight.

Statcast superlatives: Carson Benge had quite a day on Tuesday, with a 96.3 mph assist and a 451 ft home run. Benge became the fifth player with a 450-plus foot home run and a 96-plus mph outfield assist in a game under Statcast (2015), per MLB’s Jason Bernard. He joined Oneil Cruz (8/1/25), Nolan Jones (7/16/23), George Springer (8/13/19) and Starling Marte (5/26/18).

Baseball is the best: Tuesday was an amazing day for the Lombard family. George Lombard Jr. hit a homer with a launch angle of 33 degrees and exit velocity of 100.2 mph. His brother Jacob hit one at 33 degrees and 99.9 mph. Both came in their second plate appearance, off a breaking ball, hit to left-center, against a Cardinals affiliate — in their respective MLB/MiLB debuts. I love baseball.

Shotime: Shohei Ohtani hit a leadoff home run on Wednesday, his 29th since joining the Dodgers. That broke a tie with Davey Lopes for the second-most in franchise history, behind Mookie Betts’ 32. He’s up to 135 homers with the Dodgers total. That’s the fourth-most home runs by a player in his first three seasons with a team, behind Mark McGwire (STL: 159), Alex Rodriguez (TEX: 156) and Babe Ruth (NYY: 148).

PCA: Pete Crow-Armstrong countered with a leadoff homer of his own in that same game, his 25th of the year. Crow-Armstrong became the sixth player to reach 25 home runs and 25 stolen bases in his team’s first 115 games of a season multiple times (2025, 2026), joining José Ramírez (2018, ‘24), Ronald Acuña Jr. (2019, ‘23), Alfonso Soriano (2002, ‘06), Jose Canseco (1988, ‘98) and Bobby Bonds (1973, ‘77). He’s the first in consecutive seasons.

Showdown: With Ohtani and Crow-Armstrong, Wednesday’s game was the first time in MLB history that both teams led off a game with lefty-on-lefty homers, per Elias. There’s never been an MLB game where two players who went on to finish top-10 in MVP in the same league that year — let alone top-two — both hit leadoff home runs. We’ll know officially in November, but it’s pretty fair to assume this was the first. It was also the second game in Wrigley Field history where both teams hit a leadoff homer, joining May 1, 2018 — Charlie Blackmon and Anthony Rizzo.

What a debut: Angel Genaomade his MLB debut on Wednesday and tallied four hits. He became the 22nd player since 1900 with at least four hits in his MLB debut and the first in Cleveland franchise history. He’s the second player to do so this year, joining Kevin McGonigle. This is the third season in that span with multiple such debuts, along with 2010 (J.P. Arencibia, Wilson Ramos) and 1933 (Cecil Travis, Russ Van Atta).

On a roll: Kyle Harrison struck out the final eight batters he faced on Wednesday. That tied Ron G. Davis on May 4, 1981, for the second-longest streak of strikeouts to end an outing in at least the expansion era (1961), per Elias. Only Tom Seaver had more, when he set the MLB record with 10 straight on April 22, 1970.

Royalty: With another stellar start on Wednesday, Noah Cameron has gone at least seven innings and allowed two or fewer hits in three straight outings. That’s tied for the longest such streak since at least 1900, with 2019 Justin Verlander, 2002 Damian Moss, 1997 Randy Johnson and 1911 Rube Marquard.

Current Ironman: Matt Olson has played 897 consecutive games entering Friday, dating back to May 2, 2021. His streak is the 8th-longest in MLB history. The only other streaks of at least 700 consecutive games to begin in the divisional era (1969) are, of course, 1982-98 Cal Ripken Jr. (2,632 games), as well as 1975-83 Steve Garvey (1,207), 2000-07 Miguel Tejada (1,152), 1978-83 Pete Rose (745) and 1981-86 Dale Murphy (740).