Wild Sequence Of Events In Cubs' 5th-Inning Rally Had Never Happened Before
(CBS) The Cubs' four-run rally off Nationals ace and reliever-for-the-night Max Scherzer in the fifth inning of Game 5 of the Nationals League Division Series on Thursday night included a string of events that was unprecedented.
As in, it'd literally never happened before in recorded MLB history.
After Addison Russell's two-run double gave Chicago a 5-4 lead, an odd sequence began. Jason Heyward was intentionally walked. Javier Baez struck out swinging but reached on a passed ball, and then a run scored as everyone moved up a base on a throwing error. Tommy La Stella followed by reaching on catcher's interference to load the bases. Jon Jay was then hit by a pitch to plate another run.
The intentional walk/passed-ball strikeout/catcher's interference/hit by pitch sequence in consecutive order had never happened in MLB history, according to Baseball Reference's database. In fact, no half-inning had ever included all four of those events in any fashion, let along in order.
Baseball Reference's database includes more than 2.73 million half-innings in history.
None of the 2.73m half innings in our db have even had all 4 of these events. 22 w/ 3. Only 5 games had all 4.https://t.co/ntifpJIb6n
— Baseball Reference (@baseball_ref) October 13, 2017