Welcome to Crooked Numbers, a monthly column dedicated to Minor League Baseball on-field oddities and absurdities. The edition, rounding up the month of August, features RBI explosions, epic sweeps, same-named individuals and, of course, much more. Keeping track of this type of thing is a team effort, so get in touch if you’ve witnessed something weird at a Minor League game (benjamin.hill@mlb.com).
Set ‘em up, knock em’ down
Brandon Sproat, the Mets’ second-round Draft pick in 2023 and now MLB’s No. 39 prospect, struck out a career-high 13 batters for Double-A Binghamton on Aug. 2. He did this over the span of just five innings against the New Hampshire Fisher Cats (Blue Jays) and, even more impressive: 11 of those batters were K’d consecutively!
Sproat’s run of K carnage began with the second out of the second inning and continued until he was removed from the game after five. No one in Major League history has ever struck out 11 batters in a row; the record is 10, achieved most recently by Milwaukee’s Corbin Burnes in 2021.
The bad news is that Sproat was removed from the game in a scoreless tie and Binghamton went on to lose, 7-3. The good news is that Sproat received a call-up to Triple-A Syracuse following this dominant outing, having seemingly nothing left to prove in Double-A.
Ten years after
Aug. 2, 2014: Blake Snell, pitching in the Class A Advanced Florida State League against the Daytona Cubs, throws the first no-hitter in Charlotte Stone Crabs history. It was a rain-shortened effort, however, as the game was called after he tossed just 5 1/3 innings. Afterwards, Snell said the following: “I still want to try to go a nine-inning no-hitter all to myself, because you have to go through the lineup three or four times. So that’s something that would be the most special to me.”
Aug. 2, 2024: One decade later, to the day, Snell’s wish came true. Now a member of the San Francisco Giants, he pitched a nine-inning no-hitter against the Cincinnati Reds.
