MLB’s Strange But True 2025: Wildest hitting and pitching feats of the year
SOURCE:The Athletic|BY:Jayson Stark
We’ve reached the end of 2025 — and the final piece in our Strange But True series. Presenting the hitting and pitching feats of the year!
A pitcher summoned his inner Johnny Vander Meer and spun off back-to-back hitless starts … in two different leagues. … And we saw a pitcher hurl an incredible complete-game win even though he never had the lead when he threw a single pitch.
A really famous hitter got credit for a “game played” even though he did less work in that game than your dog does when he curls up by the fireplace. … And we had the Strangest But Truest bullpen pitching line ever witnessed — with some possible assistance by those wacky Zombie Runners.
We’ve finally reached the end of this collection of Strange But True Feats of 2025. So what better way to sprint through the tape than to present the Weirdest and Wildest hitting and pitching exploits of the year?
The 10 Strangest But Truest hitting feats of 2025
Rafael Devers, traded in June from the Red Sox to the Giants, managed to play in 163 games last season. (Thearon W. Henderson / Getty Images)
HEY, TWO ANGELS HIT 30 HOME RUNS THIS YEAR … and neither was named Mike Trout. A tip of the cap to Jo Adell and Taylor Ward. Who said this couldn’t be done? It happened as recently as … oh, yeah, 2012, when Albert Pujols and Mark Trumbo hit 30.
NO TEAM PLAYED 163 GAMES THIS YEAR, BUT YOU KNOW WHO DID? Rafael Devers, who sneakily played for two different teams (the Red Sox and Giants) who willingly participated in this blatant violation of the laws of baseball mathematics.
NICK KURTZ had an OPS over 1.000 this year (1.002 to be exact) … and you know who didn’t? How ’bout Juan Soto, Cal Raleigh, Freddie Freeman and, just to keep this simple, every other regular in MLB who wasn’t named Aaron Judge or Shohei Ohtani. But that isn’t even the Strange But True part, because this guy also …
Had himself a night (on July 25) I still can’t believe: 6-for-6, with … four homers … five extra-base hits … eight RBIs … six runs scored and 19 total bases. Holy rigatoni.
You know who never hit four homers in a game? Babe Ruth. … And you know who never got six hits in a game? Ichiro (Once Got 262 Hits in a Season) Suzuki. … You know who never drove in eight runs in a game? Henry (More RBIs than Anybody Who Ever Lived) Aaron. … And you know who never scored six runs in a game? How about Rickey (Most Runs in History) Henderson.
But Nick Kurtz did all of that — in one baseball game, the 66th of his big-league career, for the West Sacramento A’s. He could play another 6,666 games and never do it again.
went into the Phillies’ Aug. 28 game with Atlanta in an 0-for-20 funk. That changed! His box-score line : six at-bats, four runs, four hits, nine RBIs .
We won’t even deduct points for popping up against a position player when he had a chance to hit a fifth home run, because you know what they call a game like that? A box-score-i-gami! In other words, who else has ever had that line? That would be … nobody.
But you should also know that … the Phillies have been playing baseball for 143 seasons. That was the first time in any Phillies game in Philadelphia that anybody ever fired off four homers. No Phillies had ever done it. Nobody had ever hit four against them. … Oh, and one more thing: Want to guess how many players had ever had a four-homer game in the middle of a 50-homer season before the Schwarbino did it? Once again, “zero” would make for a sensational guess.
CHRISTIAN YELICH got into that cool-kids box-score-i-gami club, too, with this wild game on June 20: 6 AB, 0 R, 4 H, 8 RBIs. There’s a good reason that line had never appeared before in a box score near you. It’s that bagel in the RUNS column’s fault. Eight RBIs, but zero runs scored? That had never been done. And eight RBIs, with zero homers? In a related development, that had also never been done.
So what’s so Strange But True about all of this? Yelich was the 165th hitter in the live-ball era (since 1920) to drive in at least eight runs in a game. One thing he should know about those other 164 guys is that they definitely didn’t need Google Maps to locate home plate. You could tell because … they combined to score 467 runs in those games — possibly because that is normally how this works.
YOU KNOW WHO JOINED THE 30-STOLEN BASES CLUB THIS YEAR?Josh Naylor (the second-slowest regular position player in MLB according to Statcast) … and Juan Soto (a man who had stolen 30 bases in his previous 555 games combined). … So see? This can be done, even though … you know who didn’t join the 30-steals club this year? Ronald Acuña Jr. … and Steven Kwan … and Byron Buxton … and do you even need us to keep going here?
Aaron Judge kept ticking off Strange But True feats in 2025. (Alex Slitz / Getty Images)
AARON JUDGE IS REQUIRED BY LAW TO APPEAR IN THIS COLUMN. You know why? Maybe because he just became the tallest batting champ ever (at 6-foot-7) … or possibly because, over his last 594 games, he has averaged 60 homers per every 162 games … or also because he’s now the new king of the Strange But True intentional walk: five INT BBs this year with nobody on base, seven more with first base occupied, one more with one out in a 0-0 game in the first inning and another one (against the A’s) even though his team was already winning by five runs in the eighth inning.
But are you ready for the Strangest But Truest thing Judge did all year? He mashed 53 home runs and won the batting title, but somehow did not win the Triple Crown. (He can blame Cal Raleigh, for turning into Babe Ruth in shin guards and hitting 60.) Not to imply Judge’s non-Triple Crown is kinda rare, but the last time it happened was 87 years ago (to Jimmie Foxx).
RALEIGH AND THE 60-HOMER CLUB. I could fire off Strange But True Cal Raleigh stats all day. For some reason, I love this one: The Mariners catcher … hit 60 home runs … homered in the All-Star Game … and homered in a postseason Game 7 (of the ALCS). Only two players have ever done all of those things at any point in a career, let alone in the same season. One is Raleigh. The other? Some guy named Babe Ruth.
WINK-WINK. I bet you didn’t expect the Mets’ Jesse Winker to show up in this column, but I couldn’t help it — all because when he does something, his specialty is doing it in sets of twos.
On April 5, he started the night working on a streak of 443 games in a row without a triple. So how Strange But True is baseball? The same man who had hit zero triples in the previous four years then hit two triples in four innings. … Which would be strange enough, but hold on, because …
On April 25, guess who hit into one of the weirdest triple plays you’ll ever see? Yessir, it was Jesse Winker again.
Carlos Mendoza argued extensively with first base umpire Alfonso Márquez after an apparent ground ball hit by Jesse Winker was ruled a lineout and resulted in a triple play. pic.twitter.com/7EH8tgw01s
But that wasn’t even the Strange But True part … because it wasn’t the only triple play Winker had ever hit into. … He’d also lined into one back on April 20, 2022. And why would the Strange But True Feats of the Year column even care? Because Winker has now lined into two triple plays to the same fielder (Nathaniel Lowe) … while they were playing for four different teams (Mets and Mariners for Winker, Nationals and Rangers for Lowe). And what other pairs of hitters/fielders have ever done that? Right you are. That would be none!
GIANCARLO STANTON’S PHANTOM GAME PLAYED. Playing a big-league baseball game can be hard work — unless you have the kind of day the Yankees’ Giancarlo Stanton had on Sept. 21. If you check the box score, you’ll see he did indeed qualify for a “game played” that day. I’m just not sure the “played” part applies. Here was his grueling contribution to this game:
• Brought in as a pinch hitter.
• Intentionally walked (with zero pitches thrown).
• Jogged to first base.
• Removed for a pinch runner.
I hope they had an oxygen tank waiting for him in the dugout, because that’s one Strange But True day at the office, even for …
Baseball!
BONUS SHOHEI OHTANI NOTE ALERT. The Greatest Shoh on Earth has already appeared so many times in this Strange But True collection that I almost left him out of this installment. But then … I couldn’t do it.
So what was the Strangest But Truest thing he did this year that we haven’t previously mentioned? Well, he hit into a triple play … and struck out against a position player … and had a streak of home runs in five games in a row with one of them coming as a pitcher. But …
None of that is our feature attraction, because we haven’t spent enough time talking about … his 146 runs scored. The last Dodger to score that many (Hub Collins) did it as recently as 1890. But I’m stuck on this:
Ronald Acuña Jr.* and Luis Arraez — 140 runs combined
Shohei Ohtani — 146 runs by himself
(The only other active player to score 140 in a season: Acuña!)
The 10 Strangest But Truest pitching feats of 2025
Framber Valdez’s May 30 start against the Rays — an 83-pitch complete game — was a Strange But True masterpiece. (Alex Slitz / Getty Images)
BLAKE TREINEN ALMOST HAD TO CHANGE HIS INITIALS TO LP. You might have noticed that the Dodgers didn’t lose much in September, but when they did, there was a common thread. Treinen, their scuffling onetime closer, ran into so many late-inning debacles, he just missed becoming the losing pitcher in every game they lost after Labor Day weekend.
Starting Sept. 6 (with the Yoshinobu Yamamoto Game we chronicled in our Games of the Year column), Treinen somehow got an “LP” printed next to his name in every Dodgers loss for the next two and a half weeks. That’s five of them in a row … until Tanner Scott finally came to his rescue and took the loss on Sept. 23. That’s what bullpen friends are for, right? (Hat tip: MLB.com’s ever-alert Mike Petriello.)
IT’S NOT A MADDUX. IT’S A FRAMBER. An 83-pitch complete game? In the year 2025? Is that an actual thing? It was in Framber Valdez’s incredible May 30 start for the Astros. Would you believe the most pitches he threw in any inning was 11? Truth! Except that wasn’t even the Strange But True part.
Ever heard of a pitcher spinning off a complete-game win without throwing even one pitch with the lead? You have now, thanks to Yainer Diaz’s walk-off homer, that made Valdez a winner, in the bottom of the ninth.
DANIEL PALENCIA, TRIPLE THREAT. You know what’s really hard to do? Give up a walk-off triple. You know who might find that hard to believe? Cubs reliever Daniel Palencia.
Walk-off triples served up by Palencia this year: two.
Walk-off triples allowed by the other 872 men who pitched in a big-league game in 2025: zero!
Aroldis Chapman didn’t give up a hit during a dominant stretch from July 23 and Sept. 10. (Ishika Samant / Getty Images)
AROLDIS VANDER MEER. You know who didn’t give up any triples this year? Red Sox closer Aroldis Chapman. Then again, in the second half of his amazing season, it looked like Chapman might not ever allow any kind of hit again.
Between July 23 and Sept. 10, Chapman faced 50 hitters … and gave up a hit to none of them. They went 0-for-46, with four walks. Want to guess how many other closers have held 50 consecutive batters hitless since the arrival of the modern save rule in 1969? Yessir, that would be none.
THE SKUBAL-DOO SHOW. You know who else was pretty much unhittable? That would be the AL Cy Young Award winner, Tarik Skubal. Every time I watched him, it reminded me of my favorite Willie Stargell quote, on what it was like to face Steve Carlton: “It’s like hitting soup with a fork.”
How did opposing cleanup hitters do against the Tigers’ ace? Oh, great. They batted .131, “slugged” .214 and hit one homer against him. … What about No. 3 hitters? Had a fantastic time, except for the part where they batted .182, with a .217 on-base percentage and two extra-base hits. … OK, then how did opposing leadoff men make out? Well, the two of them who got a hit leading off the game enjoyed themselves — so at least their combined .074 average and .194 OBP weren’t .000.
But none of that was even the Strange But True part. That happened when Skubal started the All-Star Game … and allowed hits _to the first three hitters he faced._What’s up with that? You know the answer. It’s …
Baseball!
It was tough sledding for the Rockies’ rotation, including Bradley Blalock, in 2025. (Justin Edmonds / Getty Images)
PITCHING ON ROCKY GROUND. How does a team become the first to roll up a minus-400 run differential since Ducky Hemp’s 1890 Pittsburgh Alleghenys? It takes a village … of frightening trips to the pitcher’s mound. And let me assure you, those 2025 Colorado Rockies lived in that very village.
Thunder Road — So you think it’s hard to pitch at Coors Field, huh? These Rockies weren’t big fans of sea level, either. Would you believe that no Rockies starting pitcher won a game on the road until June 2? That’s a fact. And it didn’t get much better from there. Garrett Crochet won 13 games on the road by himself this year. The Rockies’ starters (all of them) won seven … as in 7-49 … the fewest road wins by a rotation in any full season in the modern era.
Don’t Get Me Started — Of course, I should probably mention that this was a rotation that didn’t conjure up visions of the 2011 Phillies no matter what city, state or time zone these guys pitched in.
The record of Rockies starting pitchers (home and road) this season was an attractive 22-93, with a 6.65 ERA, while basically turning opposing hitters into the 1955 version of Hank Aaron (opponent slash line: .312/.370/.527/.897). That’s merely the worst ERA by any rotation in the modern era … and barely missed (by one one-hundredth of a percentage point) tying Jay Hook’s 1962 Mets for worst winning percentage by a rotation in modern times.
’62 Mets: 23-98, .190 ’25 Rockies: 22-93, .191
Winning Wasn’t Optional – Sorry these Rockies rotation notes keep coming. But once we get rolling, it’s hard to stop. This team featured six different starters who made 10 starts or more and finished the season with an ERA over 6.00. Not shockingly, no team in history had ever pulled that off before.
But here’s a Stranger But Truer nugget, even if it wasn’t a record. You know how many games these Rockies played in which their starting pitcher began the day with a winning record? That would be exactly one … on April 12.
It was promising rookie Chase Dollander who took the mound that day, with a record of 1-0, to make his second career start. You can guess what happened next. He took the loss — and it was one big landslide downhill after that. If not for him, though, the Rockies would have joined this esteemed group of teams in the modern era who never started a pitcher with a winning record in any game:
Highball Wilson’s 1904 Senators (0 in 157 games) Fat Jack Fisher’s 1964 Mets (0 in 163 games)
THE BOYLE-ING POINT. This might have been the greatest pitching feat of the whole darned season … and it feels as if nobody noticed … except the Strange But True Feats of the Year column. Check out these two back-to-back starts by Rays pitching prospect Joe Boyle.
April 13 – makes a last-minute fill-in start in the big leagues against the Braves: 5 IP, 0 hits.
April 19 – heads back to Triple-A Durham, faces the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders: 6 IP, 0 hits.
So paging Johnny Vander Meer. That’s two consecutive starts allowing zero hits. Which seems good. You know, Vander Meer never made any more starts with zero hits allowed after his legendary back-to-back no-hitters. Boyle, on the other hand, did it a third time, in a September Triple-A start. OK then, Joe Boyle > Johnny V? The debate starts here!
NESTOR’S TRIFECTA. Does anyone still say that good things come in threes? I know one guy who won’t. Nestor Cortes comes to mind.
His first start of the year (March 29): Gives up three home runs to the Yankees on the first three pitches he ever threw as a Milwaukee Brewer.
Aug. 18 vs. the Giants: Now a San Diego Padre after a midseason trade, Cortes gives up three home runs in the first inning again, but at least mixes in an out between the second and third blast. Still, two different starts in one year allowing three long balls before he gets three outs? On one hand … it could be worse. He’s only the third starting pitcher in the expansion era to dish out three homers in the first inning twice in one season. On the other hand … how many pitchers have done that for two teams in the same year? Let’s all say this together: None!
Sept. 3 vs. the Orioles: Wait. He did this again? Sort of. The good news is, Cortes only gave up one homer in the first inning of this start. The bad news is, he gave up back-to-back-to-backers in the third inning. And if that sounds familiar, I know what you’re thinking. How many pitchers have served up three in a row twice in the same season? I can help with that. In the modern era, it’s only Nestor and Don Newcombe (1957 Dodgers).
In happier times, Cortes pitched 555 2/3 innings for the Yankees over five seasons. Guess how many times he allowed three home runs in any of those innings. Isn’t it amazing how often “none” is the perfect guess?
BLOWN SAVE OF THE YEAR ALERT. There are a million ways to blow a save. None of them are good. At least some of them can make you laugh out loud. So we take you now to White Sox versus Royals on May 6, the White Sox holding a 3-2 lead in the ninth. And then … they blew a save because their second baseman (Chase Meidroth) got hit in the head with a popup!
BOX-SCORE LINES OF THE YEAR. So many Strange But True box-score lines. Can’t possibly present them all. But we’d like to roll out a few that should inspire you to dig into those box scores every darned day in 2026.
RYAN PRESSLY, MAY 6 — This might just be the Strangest But Truest bullpen box-score line in baseball history, from then-Cubs reliever Ryan Pressly against the Giants. Seriously. It was the 11th inning of a tie game. Then this happened:
0 IP, 5 H, 9 R, 8 ER, 1 BB, 0 K, 1 HBP
What’s so Strange But True about that? Before Pressly stopped by, only one other reliever in the modern era had allowed nine runs in a game in which he got zero outs. That was Hank Borowy, for the Tigers, on Aug. 18, 1951. But … that wasn’t even the Strange But True part. Because one more thing: Pressly gave up nine runs … but only faced eight batters … because baseball! … and Zombie Runners!
TANNER HOUCK AND THE 11-11 CLUB — Only four times all season did a pitcher give up 11 earned runs in a game. Boston’s Tanner Houck did his part — because he contributed two of them!
• April 13 vs. the Rays: 2 1/3 IP, 10 H, 12 R, 11 ER, 2 BB, 1 K, 1 WP
• May 12 vs. the Tigers: 2 1/3 IP, 9 H, 11 R, 11 ER, 2 BB, 3 K, 2 HR, 1 HBP, 1 WP
What’s so Strange But True about that? Oh, nothing much, except for this: How many pitchers in the modern era have ever made two starts like that (at least 11 earned runs allowed, but no more than seven outs) in one season? Yep. That would be none!
DOUBLE TROUBLE FOR THE ANGELS – Kochanowicz and Peraza sound like a detective team in a screwball comedy show on Netflix. But on Aug. 27 in Texas, a screwball was about the only pitch those two threw for the Angels that didn’t get tattooed, in a 20-3 squashing by the Rangers.
• The starter (Jack Kochanowicz): 3 1/3 IP, 9 H, 11 R, 10 ER, 3 BB, 1 K, 1 HBP
• The position player (Oswald Peraza): 1/3 IP, 7 H, 8 R, 8 ER, 0 BB, 0 K, 1 HBP
What’s so Strange But True about that? I spent way too much of my theoretically useful life trying to determine if there’d ever been a game in which a starting pitcher and a true position player both pitched for the same team and teamed up to give up 19 runs.
And that answer is … of course this was the first game like that ever. The previous record was “only” 17 — by Tyler Anderson (nine) and Wilmer Difo (eight) for the Pirates, in a 20-1 wipeout in Atlanta on May 21, 2021. And come to think of it, Anderson and Difo would also be a perfect detective team on a screwball comedy on Netflix. Somebody needs to get on that … preferably before it’s time for me to write the Strange But True feats of 2026!
