A rain delay, a 1-4 popup, and 12 1/2 scoreless innings: Phillies and Pirates play full moon game
Phils-Pirates plays 12 scoreless with a 1-4 popup
The MLB season is 162 games long, which means there are more than a few opportunities for oddities, anomalies, rarities and other crazy, one-off happenings. They all occurred during the Phillies-Pirates marathon on Friday.
First, the game was delayed for 86 minutes because of rain in the Pittsburgh area. Then, once things got underway, it would be more than 12 innings before anyone managed to plate a run.
More than that, even the way they were getting the outs was weird. At one point, the Phillies turned a 1-4 popup when a line drive ricocheted off starting pitcher Kevin Correia's foot and up into the airspace above second baseman Andres Blanco:
A few innings after Correia's night had ended, Phillies reliever Ken Giles came in and was none to pleased to be told to intentionally walk Pedro Alvarez. That emotion spilled back into the dugout as he and manager Ryne Sandberg, um, discussed the matter.
Later, the Phillies were threatening in extra innings, but Josh Harrison charged a ball, played it with his bare hand and fired to first to get the Buccos out of a jam:
Phillies rookie Maikel Franco must have been taking notes because he followed suit in the bottom half of that same inning:
When Franco notched a hit in the following frame, MLB Network's Harold Reynolds remarked that Franco might be "the next Adrian Beltre."
More scoreless baseball ensued. Eventually the Pirates called upon former Phillie Antonio Bastardo to keep the zeros coming. Eventually, Starling Marte mustered a seeing-eye single to center field in the bottom of the 13th inning to give the Buccos the 1-0 victory.
Bastardo got the win. The game only took four hours and 23 minutes, the teams only stranded 40 runners on base and only used a combined 14 pitchers.
The game went 13 innings, the Phillies stranded 13 runners, the Pirates notched 13 hits despite Gregory Polanco and Andrew McCutchen going a combined 0-for-13 and the game ended on ... June 13.
Full moon game? Full moon game.