WEDNESDAY WONDERS
16 FROM THE BILL CHUCK FILES
Aaron Judge and Kyle Schwarber lead the majors with 7 home runs in the 1st inning this season. Judge is hitting .351, and Schwarber is hitting .342. Since 2021, Judge has hit 72 1st inning homers in 634 AB; Schwarber has hit 67 in 593 AB; and Shohei Ohtani has hit 52 in 696 AB.
Joc Pederson is a name we don’t write about very frequently anymore. If you’ve lost track, the former Dodger, Cub, Brave, Giant, and Diamondback plays for the Texas Rangers these days. He’s rebounding from his .181 season with Texas last year and is hitting .223 this season. Pederson hit his third homer of the season, and it was the 27th leadoff homer of his career. Granted, 21 of them were with the Dodgers (2014-2020), but he has managed to do okay in his 13 seasons in the big leagues. It was his first o leadoff homer of the season. James Wood leads this season with three. Last night, Paul Goldschmidt hit the second of his season and the fourth leadoff blast of his career.
Since 2014, George Springer leads the majors with 64 leadoff homers. Mookie Betts is next with 52, and Kyle Schwarber has 46. Pederson’s 27 is ninth, one more than Shohei Ohtani.
Speaking about Ohtani, last night he went 2-4, with a homer. He led off with a single in the 1st inning, then went oppo with a 3rd-inning homer. He hadn’t homered in 11 games and had been in a 4-38 slump.
Similarly, Cal Raleigh broke out his 0-38 skid last night. The Big Slumper went 2-4 as the Mariners defeated the Astros, 10-2. Raleigh’s two hits boosted his average up to .166.
The M’s defeating the Astros is not groundbreaking news. Last night was Seattle’s ninth straight win over the Astros. The Astros are now 16-27, tied with the Angels for the worst record in baseball.
Teams with fewer than 18 wins one-quarter of the way through the season: The Astros and Angels are two of the four teams with 16 wins. The other two are the 16-26 Rockies and the 16-25 Mets. The Red Sox dominate this group with their 17-24 record.
Boston is 7-7 under interim manager Chad Tracy. Philadelphia is 11-3 under interim manager Don Mattingly.
The Dodgers are currently experiencing their second four-game losing streak of the season. The Dodgers have lost all of their games by at least four runs, tying their longest such streak in a single season since 1901. At the end of May in 1935, they lost to the Cardinals, 10-3; the Cubs, 8-3, and then dropped a double-header to the NY Giants, 8-3 and 6-0. Even worse, it’s their second four-game losing streak since April 28th. Since April 28th, the Dodgers, Tigers, and Angels are all 4-9. The Reds are 4-10 and the Rockies are 3-10 (at least that’s expected).
