Shortstop Andrelton Simmons Made Some (LOL) History in His Pitching Debut
Yesterday’s loss to the Reds came with some history insofar as the Cubs gave up 20 runs to a particularly terrible team.
I don’t just mean it felt historically awful, it actually was historically bad:
The Cincinnati Reds had the worst record entering a game of any team to score 20+ runs (minimum 30 games into the season) since the Louisville Colonels beat the Brooklyn Bridegrooms, 20-8, on July 9, 1894.
The Colonels were 16-45 (.262) entering that game. pic.twitter.com/VA0EdEKAHQ— Stats By STATS (@StatsBySTATS) May 26, 2022
Any time you match the Brooklyn Bridegrooms in a performance, you know you’ve done something truly special.
But that wasn’t the only history in the game, and we can at least enjoy this other bit. In the 8th inning, with the game farrrr out of hand, the Cubs turned to Andrelton Simmons to pitch, making his big league debut. It was pretty standard fare for position player pitching, with a reasonable amount of wildness, hard contact, and runs being scored. But there was at least one great moment! History, even!
Simmons got a whiff on the slowest pitch on record that got a whiff:
Of over 1 million swings-and-misses at almost 10 million tracked pitches, this one today was the very slowest one. 🤯 pic.twitter.com/7qYDcEtrtk
— Codify (@CodifyBaseball) May 27, 2022
Not the history Kyle Farmer probably wants to be a part of, but at least he singled thereafter. The humiliation lasted only so long.
Simmons’ outing also featured what might have been the worst called strike in baseball history, too:
Andrelton Simmons, Savage Eephus 😂
cc: @PitchingNinja pic.twitter.com/C89b3W5vYg— Codify (@CodifyBaseball) May 26, 2022
In all seriousness, I want to know if a pitch further from the strike zone than that one has ever been called a strike. Look at this thing:
ahahahaha pic.twitter.com/v5og1lQuxN
— Codify (@CodifyBaseball) May 26, 2022
Oh, for fun, Simmons also tried to get a little tricky with the velocity, but the command was wanting:
Andrelton Simmons blows 45 MPH passed Kyle Farmer and then nearly takes his head off with 78 MPH pic.twitter.com/eXKB1utMBp
— Jomboy Media (@JomboyMedia) May 26, 2022
UNLESS THAT WAS A PURPOSE PITCH! There were some shenanigans earlier in the game, a beefing extension of the beefing from the night before. Clearly Simmons was taking matters into his own hands.
