What a day! If you’ll recall, last week, we saw Kenta Maeda lose his no-hitter by a hair in the ninth inning. Well, this week, Lucas Giolito completed the feat. The first no-hitter of 2020!
Along with Giolito’s no-hitter, and all the great, heartwarming content from that game, we had some other fun things on Tuesday. We saw a base runner crawl down the third baseline, a great celebration from the Nationals, and much more. Let’s dig in!
Lucas Giolito’s Night
What an incredible performance from Lucas Giolito. 30 whiffs, 13 strikeouts and no hits allowed. Aside from watching Giolito’s dominance, we got to see him do a few other things on Tuesday.
It’s a pretty common thing for a pitcher’s teammates to leave him alone when he’s in the middle of an outing like this. They want them to stay focused on the next inning, which is exactly what the White Sox did tonight. Everytime they showed Giolito in the later innings, he was all by himself. What goes through a pitcher’s head when he’s throwing like this? Check out Giolito:
https://gfycat.com/bitterpossiblearachnid
He’s just as fidgety as any other person would be in a situation like this. It’s just nice to see that he’s human and wants to get back out there.
After the final out was recorded, Giolito’s reaction was fantastic, and he had an even better postgame interview:
Lucas + Jason Benetti is always great, but a few particularly great moments here in the post no-no interview pic.twitter.com/IjWyRoXV6z
— Céspedes Family BBQ (@CespedesBBQ) August 26, 2020
A very heartwarming, “I can’t feel anything,” response from Giolito. After an incredible night, he gave an incredible interview full of laughs.
However, the game didn’t go off without a hitch! The ballpark had a power surge and the broadcast went out.
An update, or something pic.twitter.com/y5BvFKGtw5
— Jason Benetti (@jasonbenetti) August 26, 2020
Jason Benetti was tweeting a play-by-play of the game. What a night on the South Side!
The Basecrawler
After Monday night’s incident with Kole Calhoun on the basepaths, it was hard to believe we’d have another memorable base running highlight the next day. Well, we did.
The Marlins were up 3-0 in the bottom of the sixth against the Mets in game two of their doubleheader on Tuesday. Jon Berti walked and subsequently stole second and third. Then, after Ali Sanchez threw the ball back to Jeurys Familia, Berti took off for home. Sanchez couldn’t hang on to the throw, and Berti was safe. While stealing all three bases is very impressive, Berti didn’t look, uh, great doing it:
presenting without context pic.twitter.com/rlIECxU3Og
— Cut4 (@Cut4) August 26, 2020
Do you think he was tired?
The Nats Go For A Drive
The Nationals are a fun team, and they love to celebrate. Earlier in the year, Juan Soto was dancing on the dugout after one of his teammates hit a homer. On Tuesday night, Adam Eaton hit his third homer of the year and he knew exactly how he wanted to celebrate. As soon as he crossed home, he signaled for teammate Howie Kendrick to go to the end of the bench. Eaton met him there, and gave us this gem:
We've missed this. pic.twitter.com/708cupKYE5
— Cut4 (@Cut4) August 26, 2020
The Nats are fun!
Tony Kemp’s Magic
More base running! This one is a little different, though. It’s not as head-scratching (see what I did there?) as Calhoun’s on Monday, or as funny as Berti’s steal of home. This one was just sort of jaw-dropping. Trying to get back to third, Tony Kemp was inches from being tagged out.
.@tonykemp is a MAGICIAN ✨ #RootedInOakland pic.twitter.com/z76wZSEY5F
— Oakland A's (@Athletics) August 26, 2020
He avoids it with a beautiful swim move. Brilliant stuff from Kemp there.
An Odd Stat
During Tim Lopes‘ at-bat in the sixth inning of the Mariners’ game on Tuesday, Seattle’s broadcast presented an odd stat about Lopes. Literally.
"if this [hilarious stat about Tim Lopes batting on odd-numbered days] isn't screen-grabbed and blasted out online then somebody isn't paying attention" – @heygoldy
don't worry, I'm paying attention pic.twitter.com/fMXCCpjfDG
— Céspedes Family BBQ (@CespedesBBQ) August 26, 2020
There are a couple of takeaways from this. One is that whoever found this stat on the Mariners research team must have been very dedicated. The second is, is this the oddest on-screen stat ever? If it’s not, it’s definitely close.
Have a great Wednesday!