@Tigers 6, Pirates 0: Conditions were good for a Verlander no-hit bid — he was at home, where his opponents have a .226 career BA (.240 away); Pittsburgh came in hitting .221; and just like last year’s May no-no, Detroit was scuffling along a couple of games under .500. He could smell it in the 8th, when he whiffed the side with a some 99-mph readings. But with 2 outs to go and a 1-2 count, Josh Harrison — the Pirate least likely to strike out this year — broke it up with a fine defensive swing.

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I was leafing through the ol’ Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract recently, when one of the “historical” reprints spoke to me in a way that it never had before. This passage about Wildfire Schulte is from a 1910 book co-authored by Johnny Evers:

Schulte proved to be … one of the rarest baseball treasures, a “third batter.” The third batter in any team is the most important. He must hit long flies, hit hard, bunt and run, because ahead of him in a well constructed team are two batters who are on the team for their ability to “get on,” and the third man must be able either to move them up or hit them home. — Johnny Evers with Hugh Fullerton, Baseball in the Big Leagues (Reilly and Britton, 1910). (emphasis added)

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@Indians 6, Mariners 5: A 2-out, 3-run Jake-jack by Jose Lopez tied it in the 8th, and a walk-fueled rally off Brandon League in the 11th culminated in Carlos Santana’s payoff/walk-off that produced Cleveland’s 4th straight win and a 4-game lead in the AL Central.

• League gave just 10 passes in 61 IP last year and hadn’t walked 3 in a game in over 4 years.
• Walks played a key role in all 3 scoring frames for the Indians, who drew 8 in all and are MLB’s runaway leaders in that category, averaging 4.6 per game; San Diego is 2nd at 3.8.
• Enjoy it while it lasts: The Tribe are 9-1 in one-run games, a big reason they’re in 1st place despite being outscored.

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@Blue Jays 8, Yankees 1: I confess — I did not pencil in Kyle Drabek for 7 strong IP against the Yanks. In 3 prior starts (13.2 IP), they pummeled him for 12 runs and 27 baserunners.

• Robinson Cano got his 300th double in game #1,090. In the game-searchable era, only 9 players got there faster. For all time, Cano is the 13th to reach 300 doubles within 8 seasons; one of those is his teammate, Mark Teixeira.
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Just a few notes tonight, alas. Feel free to fill in the gaps!

Indians 5, @Twins 0: Derek Lowe‘s improbable season reached an implausible extreme with a 6-hit shutout, his first since 2005 and first CG since ’08. Lowe began the night with 13 walks and 13 Ks in 43.2 IP, then walked 4 without a strikeout. Lowe got 19 groundball outs, 4 of them DPs, and 2 of the hits were infield singles.

• The last MLB shutout with no Ks and 4+ walks was in 1989 by Doyle Alexander, who (like Lowe) was 38 at the time. The odd whitewash left Alexander at 3-0, 2.01 (and 191 career wins), but he went 3-18 the rest of the way and then retired.
• Lowe’s current rate of 2.22 SO/9 would be the lowest by a qualifier since 2003 (and you don’t want to emulate Nate Cornejo). Only two others since 1961 have averaged fewer Ks. The last 4 qualifiers to average less than 3 SO/9 all had ERAs over 4.30 (ERA+ under 93)
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— Starlin Castro ranks 12th in MLB with a .333 BA … and 64th with a .349 OBP. Through 35 games, he has 48 hits and 4 walks in 152 PAs, putting him on pace for 222 hits and 18 walks. No Cub since 1937 has topped 210 hits. No one has ever had more than 212 hits with less than 22 walks. And just two players have had 200+ hits with 12 times as many hits as walks.

• Castro’s stats are extreme in other ways. He’s hitting .370 with RISP, 17 for 46 — with 16 singles and a triple. Of his 4 walks, 1 came with men on 1st & 2nd, the others with bases empty; he has no walks in 31 PAs with a man on and 1st base open.

— Ben Zobrist, the anti-Castro, has a .218 BA, but a .377 OBP and 6 HRs. He leads the AL with 30 walks. The highest qualifying OBP ever with a BA under .220 is .377, by Jim Wynn in 1976 (.207 BA, 127 walks).

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Nationals 2, @Reds 1: Jordan Zimmermann (HQS with 9 SO, 1 BB) trimmed his ERA to 2.14 in 7 starts and even got his 2nd win in the bargain. He has 33 starts since 2011, a season’s worth. Here are his numbers and where they rank out of 101 pitchers with 30+ starts in that span: 2.95 ERA (13th-tie), 130 ERA+ (13th-tie), 1.11 WHIP (14th), 1.7 BB/9 (8th) and 4.0 SO/9 (9th-tie).

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A few day-game notes and assorted leftovers, but first:

Happy 87th Birthday, Yogi! Number 8 usually enjoyed his day during his career, hitting .316 with .658 SLG and 3 HRs in 9 games. He struck out just once in 39 PAs — in his final birthday AB, against Frank “Yankee Killer” Lary. (By the way, Lary really deserved that nickname, going 28-13 against them from 1955-63. Against all other teams, Lary was under .500, at 100-103. In 1958, he beat the champs-to-be 7 times in 8 starts; no other pitcher beat them more than 3 times that year.)

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@Rangers 10, Angels 3: No foolin’ — at the exact moment that I flipped over from Mets postgame to the MLB Network, that man was up to bat. Five seconds and one pitch later, he had another HR — his 2nd of the game, 8th in 18 times up over 5 games, and 17th of the year. This is the Rangers’ 33rd game, Hamilton’s 30th.

• The Angels have 18 more games with Texas, and they may need to win ’em all to get back in the race. More likely, the ref stops this fight on cuts.
• Hamilton tied the mark for most HRs in the team’s first 33 games, set by Cy Williams in 1923 and by Frank Howard in 1968. Hondo had a similar barrage, homering in 6 straight games from #28-33 for a total of 10 HRs.
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[No, not this guy.]

In Baltimore Thursday, the Orioles hit 5 HRs in the first game of a doubleheader, accounting for all their runs in a 6-5 win over . All the runs and HRs came in 7 innings’ work by Colby Lewis, who allowed no other hits. Afterwards, Lewis said, “It seemed like one of those days where you have really good stuff and then you miss your spot or something and it’s just not a hit, it’s a homer. You can’t really look at it any other way. It was just kind of a weird game.”

I’ll say. This was one of the oddest pitching performances you’ll ever see.

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