A little while ago, the Blue Jays and Twins completed one of the craziest half-innings of baseball that you are ever going to see.
Blue Jays right-hander Steve Delabar entered the bottom of the eighth inning with a 5-3 lead, but he issued walks to Josmil Pinto and Chris Herrmann before Eduardo Nunez moved them over with a sacrifice bunt. Sergio Santos, Toronto’s fill-in closer with Casey Janssen on the disabled list, then took over. And that’s when things got really crazy.
Santos failed to retire any of three batters he faced. In addition to walking them all, he threw three wild pitches which allowed three runs to score and put the Twins in front. Per Jesse Spector of the Sporting News, he’s the first pitcher in the live ball era to throw zero innings while walking three batters and throwing three wild pitches. Seriously. He threw just four out of 16 pitches for strikes. A night to forget for Santos. Oh, but it didn’t end there for the Blue Jays.
J.A. Happ took over for Santos and issued two more walks, including one with the bases loaded. Then we finally saw our first hit of the inning, on a two-run single from Jason Kubel. Happ walked Pinto before retiring Herrmann and Nunez to finally end the nightmare frame.
All told, the Twins scored six runs on one hit, eight walks, and three wild pitches to take a 9-5 lead. Glen Perkins tossed a scoreless top of the ninth inning to finish off the wild comeback victory and sweep the day-night doubleheader.
Per Rhett Bollinger of MLB.com, the last time a team drew eight walks in one inning was when the Rangers did it against the Orioles on April 19, 1996.
UPDATE: You can watch the inning unfold here. But I’ll warn you, it’s ugly.