And, on a 97-degree day when the ball was jumping and the Toronto Blue Jays offered up a bullpen game in the opener of a split doubleheader, Baltimore became the first team with four home runs and five sacrifice flies in a single game, coming in a 16-4 throttling of the best team in the American League.
They tied three other teams in recording five sacrifice flies, and the safety parade began early: Tyler O’Neill and Cedric Mullins each cashed in runs on fly balls in the first inning.
Ramon Urias and Mullins repeated the feat in the third inning off Blue Jays starter Easton Lucas, giving them five innings to break the mark.
Trouble is, the deep fly balls they hit kept going over the fence.
O’Neill homered in his fourth consecutive game, Gunnar Henderson clouted another three-run shot, Urias hit a pair out of the yard.
The sacrifice fly record was equalized with one out in the eighth inning, when Jackson Holliday flew out to left field against Blue Jays catcher Ali Sanchez – who did record a strikeout of Alex Jackson on a 35.3-mph eephus pitch earlier in the frame.
Urías did not realize it was a sac fly record until Holliday mentioned it after the game. And his two homers played a huge role in the homer/sac fly oddity. Given that a runner must be on third with zero or no outs, and a deep enough fly ball must follow, it’s almost a mathematical impossibility – unless aided by dreadful pitching – to get many more than five.
‘How many were there? Five?’ Urías asked after the game.
Yep. And four homers, this for a team that’s flailed most of the season, necessitating a trade deadline sell-off, yet has suddenly burst open for 50 runs in its past four games. That period was marked by catcher Adley Rutschman’s return from injury, making the lineup whole for one of the few times this season.
‘We got a group that is healthy,’ says Urías. ‘The boys are feeling good and swinging it well, and feeling good about each other.’
The USA TODAY app gets you to the heart of the news — fast. Download for award-winning coverage, crosswords, audio storytelling, the eNewspaper and more.