Already got a few Twitter messages asking how the Miami Marlins' 14-11, 10-inning win over the Toronto Blue Jays Wednesday night compared to some Buffalo Bisons games I've covered over the years in Sahlen Field.
Easy answer: One of the wildest nights I've ever seen in 33 years in the ballpark.
With the help of the Blue Jays and my own Bisons' research, here's some numerology on the marathon, which stretched for 4 hours, 20 minutes and ended just as the clock struck 11 p.m. downtown:
• Two big news items came down around midnight (and just after newspaper deadlines):
1) According to Stats Inc., the Blue Jays became the first team in MLB history to have at least 18 hits and seven home runs in a game and still lose. Seriously.
Overall, the Jays are just the fourth team in MLB annals to lose with seven home runs. The last team to do that was Detroit in 2016.
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2) Toronto's Bo Bichette became the first shortstop in the modern era (since 1901) to reach base safely six times, hit a home run and steal two bases in the same game. Bichette had four singles and a home run in his first five at-bats and then walked in the 10th.
Had he got a hit in that at-bat to go 6 for 6, he would have joined utility man Frank Catalanatto (2004) as the only six-hit men in Jays history. Bichette, 22, became the youngest player in team history with a five-hit game (Roy Howell was 23 when he did it in 1977, the Jays' inaugural season).
• The Blue Jays had never homered in more than four straight innings in a game. They did for six straight innings Wednesday, becoming just the fifth team in history to do that.
The roll call of Wednesday's homers:
1) Teoscar Hernandez, two-run HR in the third (career-high 466 feet, tied for third-longest of the season in MLB).
2) Rowdy Tellez, two-run HR in the fourth (career-high 459 feet).
3) Travis Shaw, two-run HR in the fifth.
4) Danny Jansen, two-run HR in the sixth.
5) Vladimir Guerrero Jr., solo HR in the seventh.
6) Travis Shaw, solo HR in seventh.
7) Bo Bichette, solo HR in the eighth.
A couple replies asked for some Sahlen Field records for Bisons games and how they would compare to Wednesday's game. Here's the corresponding numbers:
1). The highest-scoring game was 33 runs, in the Bisons' 17-16 win over Scranton/Wilkes-Barre in 1998, a contest that saw Buffalo blow a pair of eight-run leads (10-2 and 15-7) and then win on Einar Diaz's walkoff single.
2). The Jays' seven-homer game came in just their second appearance in Sahlen Field. The Bisons have played 2,289 games in the park since it opened in 1988 – and have accomplished that feat just once, in a 16-2 win over Syracuse on July 2, 2004. Jhonny Peralta, Eric Crozier and Sandy Martinez hit two apiece and Brent Abernethy had the other.
