No matter how much baseball you watch, there’s always something new. That’s the old adage, and it proved true Wednesday night — or more accurately, very early Thursday morning — when the hapless Baltimore Orioles beat the Los Angeles Angels, 10-8, in 16 innings in Anaheim, California.
The victory itself was surprising, given that the Orioles are moribund and the Angels are surging. The length of the game isn’t seen every day, either.
But what really made Baltimore’s victory special was how it ended: Stevie Wilkerson, an outfielder, pitched the bottom of the 16th for the Orioles and twirled a 1-2-3 inning with a collection of sub-60 mph pitches. That made him the first position player to earn a save in Major League history.
While you were sleeping, Stevie Wilkerson became the 1st position player ever to record a save.
Every pitch was slower than 60 MPH. pic.twitter.com/8lm2VGvz63
— MLB (@MLB) July 26, 2019
The prelude to history
The Angels rallied for three runs in the seventh inning to take a 4-2 lead, and as most of America readied for bed, it looked like another routine game in which the better team overcame the worse one.
But then strange things started happening. The Angels’ normally reliable bullpen — a key in a two-game sweep of the mighty Dodgers on Tuesday and Wednesday — cracked. Ty Buttrey surrendered two runs in the eighth inning as the Orioles tied the game. Baltimore took the lead on Trey Mancini’s ninth-inning home run, but closer Mychal Givens allowed a tying shot to Brian Goodwin in the bottom half.
The teams slowly worked their way through their entire bullpens until the 15th, when Baltimore scored three runs but L.A. answered with three of its own. Mike Trout’s game-tying double actually ended the inning when the Orioles threw out the potentially winning run at the plate.
Onto the 16th, where Baltimore scored twice more but had no pitchers to close out the bottom half.
Enter Wilkerson.
After review of the play, the umpires stick to their call that Fletcher was out at the plate… 👀👀 pic.twitter.com/hZKAS8TWE7
— FOX Sports West (@FoxSportsWest) July 26, 2019
The most unlikely save of all
Teams are using position players to pitch more and more, but it’s usually in blowouts to save their more effective arms.
In this case, Wilkerson — who had pitched twice earlier this year, both in blowouts — was the only arm left. And he was effective. Lobbing the ball in, Wilkerson retired Goodwin, Kole Calhoun and Albert Pujols on two flyouts and a groundout to notch the save, an unlikely win and to become the answer to a trivia question.
Here is a graph of Stevie Wilkerson’s pitch velocity during his *historic save*.
Averaged 54.3 mph.
Got. The. Job. Done.
Baseball, folks! pic.twitter.com/KL03tj9zBh
— Sarah Langs (@SlangsOnSports) July 26, 2019
