Tuesday night’s game was packed with, well, stuff.
Some of it obviously bad: Roman Anthony leaving the game.
Other pieces were in the middle: Garrett Crochet losing it for an inning and tying one of his worst career starts in the process.
But then there were the good parts. First, the offense looked alive. And then, when they needed to pick up their ace, the Red Sox bats ordered up a comeback. And they didn’t even need a walkoff! Walkoff wins are great and exciting, etc. But saving one night of Aroldis Chapman counts for something too. Especially if he’s now part of the future. He’s excellent in his role. And pitching three straight days as a “break glass in case of emergency” is a situation you want to avoid.
Where things get interesting though is the game as a whole.
There were a lot of runs scored — 18 to be precise. The Red Sox had 18 hits and the Guardians had 11 to put the game total at 29. The Guardians hit four home runs. Boston hit two. But you know what neither team did? Walk.
Zero walks were issued, and zero intentional walks were granted. And this happened in a game where 29 batters got hits and 10 pitchers (4 for Boston, 6 for Cleveland) were used.
In games with at least 18 runs scored — in the combination of at last 11 and at least 7 — like Tuesday’s, this has happened only 43 times since 1901. That’s a really small total considering that we’re going back before the World Series even existed. We’re going back before the Red Sox were known by that nickname. The first time it was recorded, Connie Mack was just 39 years old. He was born in 1862!
This is definitely not an important statistical achievement or milestone. But it is interesting, especially with what we know about three true outcomes now and the relationship between home runs, walks, and strikeouts.
There’s a slight caveat here. Because of the way Baseball Reference pulls the data through Stathead, all of the numbers here are based on the team listed in the second column. Runs allowed is, of course, the referring to runs scored by the opponent. So yes, in the 2012 game between the Rockies and Rangers, Colorado did walk two batters. So this list, if we were to check all the rest of the box scores, gets winnowed down even further. Luckily I did check the box scores. It happened just two more times: May 18, 1958 in a game between the Milwaukee Braves and the Cincinnati Redlegs. And on October 7, 1915 in a game between the Boston Braves and the New York Giants.
Looking at the list, the Red Sox appear three times since 1997, which makes some sense in terms of offensive powerhouses. Then they also appear in 1901 and 1903. Notch two more trivia answers for the Boston Americans.
Is this meaningful in any way? Almost certainly not. And if I’d had more time I would have looked at all permutations of 18 total runs, but for today, this was it. You can see something almost singularly unique in a lifetime any day at the ballpark.