Odor walks into history. 64 comments


With five walks, Rougned Odor didn’t get much of a chance to swing the bat. But when he did, he made it count.

 

It was a crazy night in baseball. In the year of the strikeout, offense woke up.

A night after the Nationals scored 25 runs, which was the most any team has scored since the Rangers put up 30 on the Orioles back in 2007, the Dodgers scored 21 against the Brewers, the Rangers scored 17 against the Orioles, and the Red Sox scored 15 against the Yankees.

But in all that offense, the Rangers game saw something that had never been seen before in all the history of major league baseball.

A history-making night from walks.

Rougned Odor walked five times, none of them intentional. That had never happened before.

He also capped that off with a home run.

According to baseball-reference.com, only three other players in major league history had walked five times in a game and also homered: Hank Aaron, Mark McGwire, and Edgar Martinez. But each of those three drew an intentional walk in their games. Odor earned all five walks.

Last season, he walked just 32 times in 162 games. Last night, five times in one game.

And his five last night brought his season total to 27. This from a guy who swung at every single pitch thrown to him last season. On a few occasions, he even swung at low flying birds.

What was even more fun about last night’s beatdown of Baltimore was, as Dic Humphrey on mlb.com pointed out, thirteen of the Rangers seventeen runs were driven in by players who are 25-years-old or younger.

Odor drove in three. Profar four. Gallo three. Kiner-Falefa two. Calhoun one.

And everyone in the lineup got at least one hit.

It was one of those nights.

Baseball purists may not like it. But if you went to a ballpark looking for offense, you found it last night.

*****
TODAY’S GAME:

David Hess (2-5, 5.94) vs. Ariel Jurado (1-1, 4.22)
Game time: 7:05

The Orioles have never batted against Jurado.
The Rangers have never batted against Hess.