….courtesy of Jayson Stark, or his interns. I picked some of the best, and you can read the entire article here.
– The Rockies gave up eight runs to Arizona in the entire NLCS. They gave up nine runs just in a span of (gulp) 14 hitters Wednesday, on the way to a 13-1 mashing by the Red Sox.
– We can say that because this makes three straight postseason games now that these Red Sox have scored in double figures: 12 runs in Game 6 against Cleveland, 11 more runs in Game 7 against Cleveland, and another 13 runs in Game 1 of the World Series.
So let’s see now. How many other teams have ever rolled up more than 10 runs in three consecutive postseason games? That would be … exactly … zero.
– But over the last four games — games started by C.C. Sabathia, Fausto Carmona, Jake Westbrook and Wednesday’s innocent victim, Jeff Francis — the Red Sox have outscored the Indians and Rockies by the narrow margin of (yikes) 43-6.
– The all-time World Series record for extra-base hits in a game was nine — set 82 years ago by the 1925 Pirates (in a game started by Walter Johnson). The Red Sox not only tied that record. They’d tied it with two outs in the fifth inning.
– The most runs ever scored in Game 1 of any of the previous 102 World Series was 12. The Red Sox racked up 13 before they’d even made their 15th out.
– And no team had ever staged a two-out rally in which it went an entire turn through its lineup — all nine hitters — with every one of them reaching base in any inning of the previous 597 World Series games ever played. But the Red Sox did that in the fifth inning of this game (on five hits and four walks).
– It took Francis 30 pitches to survive that inning. And there was more where that came from. By the end of the second, he was already up to 57 pitches. And he was gone after four innings — forced to hurl 103 pitches just to get 12 outs.
– But after Francis departed, down 6-1, this mess just got messier. Franklin Morales succeeded him — and became the first pitcher in any postseason game in history to give up seven runs or more without even making it through an inning. Oof.
– So by the time the sixth inning was through, 24 Red Sox had already reached base via a hit or a walk, there were 13 runs on the board, and four Rockies pitchers had combined to throw (ready?) 180 pitches — to get 18 outs.
– And Manny ground out two more singles, a double and a walk in Game 1. So he has now been on base in 30 of 50 plate appearances this October — a .600 on-base percentage.
