The Braves Won 2 Straight Games With No RBIs

…and that’s the first time that has ever happened. That and plenty more factoids from the Braves’ bizarre pair of 1-0 wins over the Rockies coming up.

In the first game

, the Braves got 7 shutout innings from Mike Minor and scored their only run on a throwing error by Rockies shortstop Josh Rutledge . In the second game , it was Tim Hudson ‘s turn to throw 7 shutout innings and starting pitcher Jhoulys Chacin ‘s turn to make a costly error, in his case, bizarrely dropping a throw back to the mound to allow Juan Francisco to score from third. All in all, two games and no RBIs for either team.

Now, just having a game in which neither team has an RBI is fairly rare–it had only happened once in 2012 before the Braves and Rockies did it twice in two games. In that prior game

, the Astros beat the Pirates 1-0; the only run was scored on a double play. Overall, an RBI-less game has now happened 328 times since 1918, or about 3.5 times per season on average. So to have two such games in the same series, much less consecutively, is extremely improbable.

As you can infer from the description of the games above, neither Braves run in the two games was earned. That means the Rockies became the first team since the 1987 Royals (against the Orioles) to lose consecutive games without allowing any earned runs. Here’s the full list

. Only twice before has a team lost consecutive 1-0 games without allowing an ER: the 1984 Reds did it agains the Dodgers and the 1967 Angels did it against the White Sox.

Even taking the earned/unearned distinction out of the equation, the two Braves-Rockies games are notable. Before those games, the Braves hadn’t won a 1-0 game in 2012 and the Rockies hadn’t lost a 1-0 game in 2012. In fact, the Rockies hadn’t lost 1-0 since the next-to-last day of the 2010 season

, against the Cardinals. Coincidentally, that game also featured no earned runs and no RBIs, as the winning (and only) run scored on an error.

In addition, the Braves became the first team of 2012, and just the 50th since 1918, to win consecutive games 1-0. The Dodgers were the last to do it, in July of 2011

against the Padres.

So all in all, it was a crazy couple of games. As a Braves fan, I wasn’t exactly thrilled to see my team go two games without an RBI, but I am always appreciative when the team manages to win a game, and especially so when they do it in an unusual way.