Most Doubles Allowed By A Pitcher In A Game

Last night, the Boston Red Sox smacked the Rangers pitching staff around, hitting 8 doubles in a 9-2 win

. Remarkably, 7 of the doubles came against Texas starter Yu Darvish , who somehow lasted into the 7th inning despite allowing 15 baserunners (11 hits, 4 walks). Very few pitchers have given up more doubles in a game.

While Darvish’s feat of 7 doubles allowed is relatively common–he’s the 40th player (full list here

) to allow exactly that many since 1918–only 7 pitchers have topped him. Just two of those 7 games occurred in the past 70 seasons:

Amazingly, of these 7 games, 4 of them were won by the team whose pitcher gave up 8+ doubles. Looking at the early games on the list, you can kind of see how it happened, though. In each of the 5 games from the 1920′s and 30′s, the pitcher threw a complete game, which of course gave him more opportunities to give up doubles. In all of those games but Boom-Boom Beck

‘s in 1939, the pitcher had a lead or was pitching in a close game. It’s easy to understand why a manager would let Jack Quinn , for instance, finish his game when he’s allowed only 3 runs and has a lead!

The two recent cases are interesting in a different way. Jim Abbott

managed to give up his 8 doubles in less than 5 innings of work, which is fairly incredible–and a far higher double/inning ratio than anyone else on the list. Even more impressive is that the Yankees, down 7-1 after Abbott’s departure, rallied to win 13-8. Curt Schilling pitched better than Abbott, taking a 4-2 lead into the 8th inning before blowing it by giving up 3 doubles, a walk, and a single. That single was the only one Schilling allowed that day, to go along with 9 doubles and a homer. Abbott allowed only 2 singles.

Getting back to Darvish’s game, he also struck out 9 Red Sox last night. That makes him one of a select few to allow 7+ doubles and record 7+ strikeouts in the same game:

Interestingly, all of these games were in the American League; in fact, all five involved either the Red Sox or the Yankees. It’s mostly a coincidence, of course (though 2 of the games, including last night’s, happened at the notoriously doubles-friendly Fenway Park), but it’s fun nonetheless.

Finally, I thought it’d be interesting to see which pitchers allowed the most doubles in a game in which they only allowed doubles (no other hits). All of the leaders are fairly recent:

Two of these pitchers–Rick Reuschel

and Shane Reynolds –has as many doubles as outs recorded! Humorously, Reuschel allowed back-to-back doubles to Von Hayes and Charlie Hayes (no relation) in both the 2nd and 3rd innings. The play log for that game thus looks a bit wonky, with Hayes doubling in Hayes in consecutive innings. The final out that Reynolds recorded in his start actually came on a double, as Ryan Klesko was thrown out trying to reach 3rd.

The Rays’ rookie Matt Moore

nearly made the list with a start last month , giving up 5 doubles out of 5 total hits (he also gave up 5 walks and 5 runs, but alas, fell 1 out short of making it 5 innings).