Brandon Belt is good at hitting foul balls. In fact, he is now the best in MLB history, after a record-breaking 21-pitch at bat in the 1st inning today.
Also 49 pitches in that inning by Jamie Barria, who was making his second career appearance, and didn’t allow a run in the inning. I wonder if that’s also a record.
Here’s a “supercut” of the whole thing.
Thanks Bismarck. That’s a great video.
What’s interesting to me is that in my mind’s eye on something like this, I’m picturing a bat-handler supreme like Tony Gwynn leaning out a flicking pitches on the outside corner foul down the line.
But that’s not what happened here. Belt has a terrific batting eye and patience, but he also can be struck out…and at 6’4" or 6’5" or whatever, we’re talking about a pretty big strike zone. What’s notable and probably helped is that when they were busting Belt inside and up in his hands, a lot of the time it was Barria’s changeup or a cutter or something offspeed.
Also notable:
This was at Angel Stadium, which has about medium-small in-play foul territory, at least according to data I could find from FanGraphs in a 2013 study by Eno Sarris. In other words, a park with larger in-play foul territory makes this a tougher challenge, since there’s more opportunity for a foul pop in play to be caught. At Angel stadium, the foul territory dimensions are average until you head up the lines, where they almost disappear past the first and third base bags. So that’s conducive to a record like this.
A final notable thing: Jaime Barria must have pretty great control. Even though the count was at 3-2 for most of that at bat, he seemed to be throwing a variety of pitches up, down and to both sides of the plate to try to get Belt retired.
Yes, it didn’t look as though he actually tried to spoil any of the pitches.
I was at that Angels game, and that was one of the wildest experiences I’ve ever had watching a game. 30 minutes into the game and still on the second batter. As you both say, pitcher and batter both gave an impressive performance.
The most fun part of it, of course, was the crowd cheering each time someone managed to catch the ball instead of it bonking the stadium structure somewhere.
Many, many moons ago (1976 actually) I was at a game like that at Fenway. It was like the second or third game of the year, a cold April day and a gale was blowing in from the Green Monster. The Cleveland Indians scored 13 runs in the top half of the 8th inning, coming within one hitter of batting around twice in the inning, and the Red Sox scored 6 runs in their half. All without benefit of a home run. The Indians even had a double that landed about 20 feet from home plate. The Red Sox third baseman first went back on a pop fly and then wound up chasing it almost all the way to the plate w/o being able to catch up with it. That inning really messed up my score card.
So, Panda’s got a pretty nice curveball:
Only 1-2-3 inning in the game against LA lol
Panda could have a second life as a closer I think.
Unrelated to anything important, but has any team ever had a future all-star team of sports writers cover it the way the Baltimore Orioles have?
Past Orioles beat writers:
Tim Kurkjian
Ken Rosenthal
Richard Justice
Buster Olney
Dave Sheinin
the late Joe Strauss
Cubs have had like the exact opposite of that. They get the worst hacks from the Tribune and Suntimes.
Jay Mariotti anyone?
If there was ever a prize for the worst sports takes, he would be an annual contender.
Um, wow.
Braves are calling up Mike Soroka tonight- so they’ll have the three youngest MLB players all playing tonight against the Mets (Soroka, Acuna, and Albies)
Didn’t need this…especially in a week where literally Nick Hundley pulled the Giants to a series win pretty much single-handedly.
Mariners have announced Ichiro will transition to assistant to the chairman, effective immediately. Last night was his last game.
The writing was on the wall, and there was a lot of buzz that this was going to be his final home stand, but a lot of us were expecting he’d play through the weekend. I have tickets for tomorrow. Would have been nice to say goodbye.
Amazing player, but I agree the writing was on the wall. There’s likely going to be an Ichiro day coming up soon if it hasn’t already been announced.
What a career. Would have been great to see him start out as a rookie here - not crazy to think he could’ve approached Rose’s hit record with 5+ extra years at the beginning.
Yeah. Elbow soreness -> DL -> visit to Dr. UCL is not a good trajectory.
Mets asked Matt Harvey to accept a minor league assignment.
He declined, and will be DFA’d.
Wow.