Bases Covered is a roundup of the most interesting stories in baseball.
Miami Marlins starter Edinson Volquez tossed his first career no-hitter on Saturday versus the Arizona Diamondbacks. The 33-year-old right-hander dedicated the performance to friends Yordano Ventura and Jose Fernandez, who both died last year.
Saturday would have marked Ventura’s 26th birthday.
“I just do it for them. They’re watching right now,” Volquez said. “And they might feel really happy right now.”
Catching No. 600
Albert Pujols hit his 600th career home run on Saturday, becoming the ninth major-leaguer to reach the milestone.
Pujols got to 600 in front of a home crowd, and Scott Steffel, a 23-year-old Angels fan, caught the home run. Steffel, who was escorted from his seat to meet Pujols by an enormous crew of security guards, chose to return the ball to the slugger without asking for anything in return, saying, “It’s not my ball. It’s his. He deserves it.”
Are they for real?
The Houston Astros swept the Texas Rangers over the weekend to reach their 10th straight win. The team holds baseball’s best record at 41-16, and as ESPN’s David Schoenfield writes, “The Astros are just the seventh team in the divisional era since 1969 with 41 wins in 57 games, with the 1998 Yankees (44), 1984 Tigers (43), 1970 Reds (42), 1986 Mets (41) and 1974 Dodgers (41) also on the list.”
Some of those teams, Schoenfield notes, are legendary. These Astros just might be in the midst of a legendary season, too.
Seventh inning stretch x 2
Something weird happened in the Mets game on Sunday: the seventh inning stretch was performed not once but twice.
The reason? The Mets were trailing 5–1 to the Pirates after the sixth inning when Pittsburgh manager Clint Hurdle challenged the play that had ended the inning.
The inning had ended on a double-play, but Hurdle argued that New York second baseman Neil Walker had taken his foot off the bag too early as he caught a throw from Wilmer Flores.
MLB rules dictate that a team has 30 seconds to inform umpires of a challenge, and Hurdle seemed to take longer to do so — so long, in fact, that “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” had already begun to play. Still, the umpire allowed it.
When the song was over, the players took to the field to finish the sixth inning, after which “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” was played once more. The Mets lost 11–1.
“I can’t say I’ve ever been through that,” said Walker. “Very odd.”
Nine innings
The Mariners defeated the Rays 7–1 on Sunday, earning the series sweep, and Seattle starter Ariel Miranda picked up his first career complete game. The lefty allowed just four hits and tied a career high with nine strikeouts.
“Miranda was on top of his game. It was really fun to watch,” said Mariners manager Scott Servais. “He was commanding the strike zone and was really aggressive with the fastball and enough off-speed pitches to keep them honest. He really wanted to finish that ballgame.”
