The 10 Oddest Box Score Lines in Baseball History—Pitchers Edition

Innings. Hits. Runs. Earned runs. Walks. Strikeouts. These are the six basic ingredients that make up a standard pitching line in a box score. Anyone who’s studied the game will look at the combination of numbers and understand what constitutes a pitcher’s excellent day (i.e., 8-3-0-0-1-12), average day (6-8-3-3-3-6), or really bad day (3-6-7-7-4-2). There are other additives certain sources will add to the box score to better detail a pitcher’s effort (pitches thrown, home runs allowed) but by and large these six numbers are the core people follow.

Sometimes, however, you’ll come across a pitching line that just doesn’t make sense. What happened? How did that happen? Surely, there must be a typo, right?

The following 10 pitching lines defy common baseball sense, but not explanation.

26-15-1-1-5-7 and 26-9-1-1-4-7

Leon Cadore, Brooklyn Robins, and Joe Oeschger, Boston Braves, May, 1, 1920

The one number that obviously jumps out here is 26, as that’s the number of innings both Cadore and Oeschger pitched in the longest contest in major league history—yes, they both went the distance in a game that wouldn’t even in the standings, because it ended in a 1-1 tie. Both the Robins and Braves should have been warned that this might be coming; just 11 days earlier, the same two pitchers faced off against one another and took a scoreless duel into the 11th inning before Oeschger caved and surrendered the game’s only run. In this marathon, both Cadore and Oeschger gave up their lone runs by the sixth; they then settled in. Boy, did they ever; past the ninth, 10th, all the way to the 26th, not allowing another run. Oeschger didn’t even allow a hit over his last nine innings; Cadore retired 19 in a row going into the final frame. Other numbers not in the basic line score heavily underscored the exhaustion both pitchers must have gone through; Cadore faced 96 batters and threw an estimated 300 pitches, while Oeschger faced 90 on roughly 250. Astonishingly, the game lasted just three hours and 50 minutes—again, this was a 26-inning game—before being called on account of darkness with the score tied.

Oeschger sat out the next 10 days before making his next appearance, the first of three starts in which he got collectively pummeled for 19 runs over 19 innings—but he would recover to win 20 games the next season. The postmortem would be worse for Cadore; he claimed he couldn’t lift his arm for the first few days after working the 26 innings, would only make one start over the next 19 days (an ineffective 4.1-5-4-3-1-3 against the Philadelphia Phillies) and faltered over what would be his final four years as a major leaguer, going 21-31 with a 4.27 earned run average.

9-14-0-0-2-2

Milt Gaston, Washington Senators vs. Cleveland, July 10, 1928

It seems ironic that a pitcher like Gaston, who routinely had the runs rack up on him (career ERA: 4.55) over 11 major league seasons during the height of the live-ball era, managed to throw one of his 10 career shutouts despite allowing 16 batters to reach base. Two other pitchers—Howard Ehmke in 1917, and Lefty Gomez in 1941—also gave up that many baserunners while tossing a nine-inning shutout, but those two pitchers gave up only singles and walks. Gaston had to absorb two doubles and a leadoff triple among the 14 hits he surrendered; in fact, practically every inning was full of stress for the right-hander. Cleveland’s leadoff batter reached base in six of the nine innings; the Indians loaded the bases in the first and ninth innings; and of the 14 men left on base against Gaston, 10 of those were in scoring position. Only once did Gaston face the minimum three batters in an inning, but that was made possible thanks to an inning-ending double play after Johnny Hodapp had reached on a leadoff single.

9-13-15-8-16-4

Bruno Haas, Philadelphia A’s vs. New York Yankees, June 23, 1915

Here’s a pitching line that’s all over the place. It happened one year after the A’s won the AL pennant, followed by a fire sale of the team’s talent as Hall-of-Fame manager Connie Mack couldn’t afford to retain his star talent in the face of poaching from the upstart (but ultimately short-lived) Federal League. One day in June, Mack got a tip from his son, a business manager at Worcester Academy, about a star athlete who excelled in almost every sport. What the hell, Mack thought—nothing else was going right for a team on its way to a 43-109 record; bring the guy in.

In the second game of a doubleheader against the Yankees, Haas debuted for the A’s and quickly became an early incarnation of the Wild Thing. In an extended and tortuous big-league baptism, Haas walked 16 batters—the all-time record for a nine-inning game—and threw three wild pitches. The Yankees took advantage of the wildness and had a field day, romping to a 15-7 win. It could have been worse; Haas managed to have five baserunners either picked off or caught stealing, but two of those runners made it safely to the bag when fielders muffed the throws. Overall, the A’s committed seven errors—one of those by Haas, leading to two of his seven unearned runs. 

Haas pitched five more games for the A’s, with little improvement; in 14.1 total innings, he walked 28 and was tagged with a hideous 11.93 ERA. He never played in the majors again, but the athleticism that Mack’s son had bragged about was justified to a modest extent; Haas later featured as a star minor league hitter, frequently batting over .300—and in 1921 played a handful of games in the fledgling National Football League.

8.2-0-2-1-10-3

Steve Barber, Baltimore vs. Detroit, April 30, 1967

On the subject of walks, Steve Barber was one of those pitchers that threw hard, gave up few hits, and missed the strike zone quite a bit. Through his first seven years, he generated a 20-win record, made two All-Star rosters, and produced ERAs near or below 3.00. For his eighth season with the Orioles, Barber started in terrific form; he took a no-hitter into the ninth of his first start before settling for a one-hit shutout, then allowed a run over 5.2 innings in his second outing—albeit with nine walks. 

For his third outing, at Baltimore against the Tigers, the pattern remained the same. No hits allowed but, still, lots of baserunners—ultimately 10 by walk, two by getting hit, and one by an error committed by Barber himself. Yet he survived to the ninth with a 1-0 lead and the no-no intact—before running into bigger trouble. He walked the first two batters, then after a sac bunt threw a wild pitch that scored the tying run for Detroit. After another walk, Barber was removed for Stu Miller—who looked to induce an inning-ending ground out, except a force play at second was dropped by Mark Belanger, scoring the go-ahead run. The Orioles failed to respond in the bottom of the ninth, and Barber went down as the second starting pitcher to lose a game despite allowing no hits through eight-plus innings. His 10 walks are tied for the most by a major leaguer otherwise pitching hitless ball. 

11-5-0-0-0-0

George Uhle, Detroit vs. Washington Senators, June 5, 1931

At first glance, this pitching line looks to be a quite exceptional, but hardly odd-looking, effort for Uhle, who in the last good season of his 17-year major league career threw his lone extra-innings shutout. But take a good look at the end of the line. That’s right; Uhle faced 39 batters, and they all put the ball in play. No walks, no strikeouts, no batters hit by pitches. No pitcher, before or since, has thrown a longer shutout with zero K’s and walks. 

Uhle breezed through his 11 frames with little sweat, as he allowed multiple baserunners in only one inning—the first—due to the Tigers’ lone error. Only one of his five hits, a two-out double struck by Sam Rice in the eighth, went for extra bases; he retired 13 of the final 14 batters he faced.

8-1-6-6-13-1

Pete Schneider, Cincinnati vs. Philadelphia Phillies, July 6, 1918

We return to walkmania and another wild child in Pete Schneider, who like some of the aforementioned pitchers on this list had a nasty habit of handing out free passes. Through his first four years of major league play, the young right-hander managed to keep his control in check, leading to annual ERAs firmly in the 2.00s. But in 1918, his accuracy rate took a dive, walking twice as many batters as he was striking out. He was still prone to producing a solid start, and he looked very much in the midst of one against the visiting Phillies, taking a one-hit shutout into the ninth with the Reds comfortably ahead, 10-0. But he walked the first batter. Then the second. Then the third. Then the fourth, fifth and sixth. With the Phillies building up a late rally through no effort of their own, Schneider was removed; two relievers, including ace Fred Toney, finished out the inning but not before three more Phillies crossed the plate—with all runs charged to Schneider. 

Ironically, in his second start after this late off-the-rails effort, Schneider took the mound against the New York Giants and, instead of giving up just one hit and 13 walks, walked just two—and allowed 13 hits.

1-7-11-0-4-0

Pete Appleton, Cleveland vs. Washington Senators, August 10, 1930

Early in a 14-year career spent mostly as a reliever, Appleton was summoned from the bullpen to begin the bottom of the eighth with his Indians trailing the Senators, 7-5. Keep it close, his coaches told him. Appleton couldn’t—but it really wasn’t his fault. He did walk the first batter (Heinie Manush), but second baseman Johnny Hodapp next botched a Joe Cronin grounder. After a sacrifice bunt to move both runners forward, Appleton intentionally walked Sam West, hoping to set a double-play grounder and a quick exit back to the dugout. And he thought he had it when Ossie Bluege tapped a grounder toward third baseman Joe Sewell—but Sewell threw wildly past home, leading to the inning’s second error with two more runs crossing the plate. 

Per scoring rules, the two errors and the earlier sac bunt suggested that, with clean defense, the inning should have already been over. But it trudged on, batter after batter—and Appleton was all part of it. He gave up seven hits and two walks, adding a couple wild pitches; by the end of the frame, the Senators had added 11 runs to turn the game into what would end up an 18-6 rout. Because of the two early errors, all of the runs were unearned. The 11 no-fault tallies charged to Appleton were the most ever by a pitcher in a game in which he otherwise allowed no earned runs.

0-0-6-4-4-0

Lefty Weinert, Philadelphia Phillies vs. Brooklyn, June 24, 1923

There have been plenty of cases in big-league history where a pitcher had the runs pile up on him without getting a single out. But what’s odd about Weinert’s day in 1923 was that the six runs he got tagged for, without recording an out, also came without the benefit of a single hit. 

Getting the start at Brooklyn, the left-handed Weinert walked the first three batters to immediately load the bases. Then he hit Jack Fournier, forcing in the game’s first run. Gene Bailey next hit a grounder to first baseman Walter Holke, who attempted a force play at home but threw errantly, scoring two more. After a fourth walk to the next batter, Phillies manager Art Fletcher—who knew great pitching, having played alongside the likes of Christy Mathewson—had seen enough and pulled Weinert. Two more runs scored after his departure, but they were all charged to him. Weinert thus went down in history as the pitcher who gave up the most runs (six, four of them earned) in an appearance with no outs and no hits allowed.

13-13-4-2-11-13

Bob Feller, Cleveland vs. Detroit, August 7, 1941

Show us a pitcher who hit double figures in innings thrown, strikeouts, hits surrendered and walks allowed, and we’ll show you the great Bob Feller. That it’s his name is no surprise; early in his career, the Hall-of-Fame ace was known for a tireless workhorse ethic, racking up both the strikeouts and the walks. 

Feller’s preponderance for box score lines full of abundant numbers hit its peak on a summer’s day at Cleveland’s cozy League Park. Through his first nine innings, Feller’s line red as 9-9-3-1-10-9—and he thought his day was done as the Indians trailed the Tigers, 3-0. But Cleveland’s Soup Campbell struck a mmm-mmm-good three-run, pinch-hit homer in the bottom of the ninth, sending the game to extra innings and Feller back to the mound. As wild as Feller’s final line would assume to have been, five of his 11 walks were intentional; in the 13th, the Tigers got the winning run not on Feller’s wildness, but a rally featuring three straight singles. Feller took the loss in a 4-3 defeat, setting career marks for innings pitched and walks allowed.

7-7-7-7-7-7

Billy Pierce, Chicago White Sox vs. Washington Senators, May 3, 1956

Jackpot! While this line might look great to the average slot machine addict, it didn’t bring a lot of luck to Pierce, one of the baseball’s more underrated pitchers. (The optics could have been worse; had he gone 6-6-6-6-6-6, the crazies would have come out of the attic and labeled him the Antichrist.) 

In his fourth start of a season in which he would register a fine 20-9 record and 3.32 ERA, Pierce opened the game by walking three of the first five Washington batters; four runs eventually scored as the Senators added two base hits. Pierce settled in, keeping the Senators off the scoreboard over the next five innings as a 4-4 game entered the seventh. That’s when Pierce fell apart again; he gave up a leadoff single, then got the next two batters out. With a runner at second and first base open, Pierce picked his poison, preferring to intentionally walk established slugger Roy Sievers and instead take on Jim Lemon, who over the previous three seasons had struggled to get everyday play with Washington. But Lemon was on the cusp of stardom, and he convinced the veteran ace he was for real by cranking out a three-run homer, ultimately serving as the game-winning blow. It was the seventh hit allowed by Pierce, bringing home the fifth, sixth and seventh runs to go with seven K’s and seven walks. And by the end of that inning—the seventh—Pierce was told to take the rest of the day off.

Also check out: The 10 Oddest Box Score Lines in Baseball History—Hitters Edition