The Most Bizarre Stories of the 2022 MLB Season
The 2022 Major League Baseball regular season will be remembered for Albert Pujols hitting 700 home runs, Aaron Judge (presumably, eventually) setting the AL single-season home run record and the Los Angeles Dodgers (also, presumably, eventually) winning more regular-season games than any National League team in the past century.
But a whole lot of bizarre things also happened over the past six months.
There were two immaculate innings in the same game against the same three batters.
There were also two less immaculate intentional walks issued by the White Sox to batters who were already behind in the count, as well as a different game in which a Marlins pitcher was called for three consecutive balks.
A team lost a game while throwing a no-hitter, and later lost a player for three games for a hit over fantasy football.
A tattoo shelved a relief pitcher for nearly a month, and two former All-Stars had curious, injury-riddled seasons of their own.
This surely is not a comprehensive list of 2022's weird baseball occurrences, but these were some of the primary viral stories that sure did keep things interesting.
Pittsburgh Pirates Get No Hits; Win Game
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On May 15, Cincinnati's Hunter Greene was lights-out against the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Through his first 25 batters faced, he allowed no hits, had nine strikeouts and gave up three walks.
Unfortunately, he got no run support.
And, more unfortunately, he did get a little wild in the eighth inning. Greene walked the bottom two guys in the Pirates lineup (Rodolfo Castro and Michael Perez) before turning the game over to Art Warren. And Warren made matters worse by immediately issuing a four-pitch walk to Ben Gamel.
As a result, the bases were loaded when Ke'Bryan Hayes tapped a chopper to second base for a force out, bringing home the only run of the game.
Warren got out of the inning without any further damage by inducing a popout on the next pitch, but the Reds lost the game without allowing a hit.
It's not the first time it has happened in MLB history. In fact, it was the sixth such occurrence.
But it's quite rare.
The only other time in the past three decades was on June 28, 2008 when the Dodgers beat the Angels with a zero in the hit column. In that one, Matt Kemp reached on an error by pitcher Jered Weaver, stole second base, advanced to third on a bad throw by Jeff Mathis and then scored on a sacrifice fly. Aside from that, Weaver and Jose Arredondo were just about flawless, but the Dodgers won 1-0.
The Slap Heard 'Round the World
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During batting practice before the May 27 game between the San Francisco Giants and the Cincinnati Reds, Cincinnati's Tommy Pham walked out to left field while the Giants were warming up, confronted Joc Pederson and slapped him in the face.
And that's how we all found out about the most infamous fantasy football league of all time.
Evidently, there was a dispute between Pham and Pederson about the latter's usage of injured reserve as a means of "stashing" a player who was ruled out for a game. And, evidently, Pham held on to that grudge for, like, nine months.
And then details about the league and the dispute slowly trickled out over the next few weeks.
It was this whole weird saga that refused to die.
We eventually found out that Mike Trout was the commissioner and Alex Bregman was the winner of the 12-man fantasy league with a $10,000 buy-in. When Trout was mic'd up for Sunday Night Baseball—literally 16 days after the slap—ESPN's broadcast crew was asking him all about it.
Pham was immediately suspended for three games for the altercation but told USA Today three weeks after the fact: "You know what, I've got no regrets. None at all. Joc deserved to be slapped."
By the time the Reds and Giants played again from June 24 to 26, though, things had calmed down enough that there were no further fireworks.
Tony La Russa's Irrational 2-Strike Intentional Walks
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Rumors have been swirling for a while that Chicago White Sox manager Tony La Russa will not return this season, nor in 2023, because of ongoing health concerns that have kept him away from the team since late August.
Really, though, it's a miracle La Russa kept his job as long as he did, given both Chicago's status as the most disappointing team in the league and the two times La Russa ordered an intentional walk with two strikes.
The first one happened on June 9 against the Los Angeles Dodgers.
With the White Sox trailing 7-5 with two outs in the top of the sixth, Bennett Sousa threw a wild pitch to Trea Turner on an 0-2 count, allowing Freddie Freeman to advance to second base.
Rather than continue pitching to Turner, La Russa sent him down to first base to let Sousa face Max Muncy instead. And Muncy launched a three-run opposite-field home run to put the Dodgers up by five. (Chicago went on to lose by two.)
Undeterred by that immediate ramification, La Russa did it again two months later in an August 19 game against the Cleveland Guardians.
With Cleveland leading 5-2 with two outs in the bottom of the seventh inning, a passed ball turned first and second into second and third with a 1-2 count against Oscar Gonzalez. La Russa ordered the walk, made a pitching change and darn near watched Owen Miller launch a grand slam. But La Russa lucked out with a flyout to the warning track. (Chicago still lost 5-2.)
While we can appreciate that the situation did change in the middle of both of those plate appearances, throwing in the towel when you've already got two strikes on the hitter is a little ridiculous.
For what it's worth, in Turner's career, he is a .213 hitter after falling behind 0-2, while Gonzalez—who was playing in just the 48th game of his MLB career—is batting .235 after a 1-2 count.
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Ezequiel Duran's Immaculate Fate
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Once one the rarest feats in baseball, immaculate innings have become somewhat commonplace in recent years.
For the unfamiliar, an immaculate inning is when one pitcher records three strikeouts on nine pitches. And from September 1928 through September 1953, it didn't happen a single time.
Well, it has happened three times just in the past two weeks—Ryan Helsley against the Reds on Sept. 16, Hayden Wesneski (in just the fourth appearance of his MLB career) against the Pirates on Sept. 22 and Enyel De Los Santos against the Rays on Tuesday.
It's still pretty uncommon, though.
And two immaculate innings in the same game?
That had never happened before June 15 when the Houston Astros' Luis Garcia (in the second inning) and Phil Maton (in the seventh inning) did it to the Texas Rangers.
It just so happens that the feat came against the same three hitters, too, with Nathaniel Lowe, Ezequiel Duran and Brad Miller whiffing in both innings.
About six weeks later, Reid Detmers also threw an immaculate inning in the top of the second against the Rangers, in which Duran led off the inning by going down swinging. (His partners in crime for that inning were Kole Calhoun and Charlie Culberson.)
That made Duran the only batter in MLB history involved in three different immaculate innings—incredibly in what was just the 27th game of the rookie's career. So, you know, plenty of time for him to partake in a few more.
Zack Greinke Chucks Away Would-Be Autograph
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Before a June 26 game between the Kansas City Royals and the Oakland A's, 16-year-old Lucas Waterworth wanted Zack Greinke to autograph a baseball.
Greinke had other ideas.
“Zack took the ball and he looked right up at me," said Waterworth. "And he stared at me for about five seconds. And he threw the ball. And I was like, ‘Wow, that was crazy. Hey, Zack. I just want to know why did you do that? Why would you do such a thing? And he said, ‘For my amusement.’ and I was just really shocked.”
A few days later, the team acknowledged the incident, saying that Greinke did it because he saw Waterworth pushing younger fans out of the way to get the ball and to get to Greinke. The Royals added that Greinke went on to sign autographs for the younger fans in the area.
Greinke has always been a little...eccentric. This is the same guy who sat in the grass and watched the Petco Park grounds crew repair the pitching mound in the middle of one of his starts two years ago. So, when this story first went viral, it was met with a very "of course he did that" response.
I will say, as someone who spent countless hours in his youth both chasing autographs and chasing down home run balls during batting practice, it's a cutthroat world. I don't know Waterworth. I'm not suggesting he was in the wrong. But I definitely took more than my fair share of elbows to the back of the head from older kids.
Never saw one of those older kids later have one of their baseballs launched into the stands, though.
But let's be real: Anyone willing to show up at least an hour before the game on a Sunday afternoon in June to watch batting practice between the 26-44 Royals and the 24-49 A's should be treated to an all-you-can-carry buffet of autographs.
The Juan Soto Saga
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In March 2021, with Juan Soto still under team control for another four seasons, Washington Nationals principal owner Mark Lerner said they would "love to lock up Juan to a long-term deal."
But when reports came out this past April that the Lerner family was exploring selling the franchise—and with the team going through a rebuilding process—Soto's fate quickly became a daily conversation piece.
It still felt unlikely that the Nationals would actually trade their superstar right fielder, until just before the All-Star break when The Athletic's Ken Rosenthal dropped an MLB version of a Woj Bomb by reporting that Soto had turned down a $440 million offer to remain in the nation's capital.
At that point, it started to become just a question of how much Washington could get for him and where he would land.
It all culminated in one of the wilder trade-deadline brouhahas in recent memory, as it wasn't until at least a couple of hours after the initial "Soto to the Padres" reports that we learned the full extent of the package.
Part of the reason for that was Eric Hosmer's refusal to be a part of the deal. He instead ended up going to Boston, while Luke Voit took his ticket to Washington. But there was a little while there on August 2 when we weren't entirely sure whether the trade was going to go through.
And now we wait to see how Soto's 2022 story ends, as the Padres are still battling to clinch their postseason spot.
Everything About Fernando Tatis Jr.
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Before the season even began, Fernando Tatis Jr.'s fractured wrist was a bizarre story.
There had been reports that he was involved in a minor motorcycle accident during the offseason, but then it was reported a wrist injury he suffered didn't happen until he was swinging an ax at his ranch. The day after the ax story, when asked when the motorcycle accident was, he casually responded to reporters "which one?"
Next came the delays in the recovery process.
The initial timeline of "up to three months" put his return at mid-June. But then in mid-May, it turned into late June. In mid-June, it became a "week to week," maybe-in-July situation. At the end of June, Tatis said he should be able to start swinging a bat in two weeks, which would mean a late-July, early-August return.
It was beginning to feel like he would never actually play this season.
And then when he finally went on a rehab assignment in early August, it lasted all of four games before the performance-enhancing-drug bombshell.
Tatis was suspended 80 games for testing positive for Clostebol, ending his 2022 season and knocking him out for probably the first month of next year. (We won't know his return date until we see how long the Padres last in the playoffs, because those postseason games will count toward his sentence. It'll be 32 more games after the regular-season ends.)
Perhaps the most bizarre part of it all was that Tatis initially blamed the failed test on a medication that he took for ringworm, which led to a whole lot of questions. The New York Times' Kevin Draper did an investigative piece on whether it was even a plausible excuse.
Eleven days after the suspension was announced, Tatis apologized and sort of accepted blame, but he never actually walked back the ringworm excuse or admitted to knowingly using steroids.
And now he is recovering from surgery on the left shoulder that he dislocated four times last season. One has to assume he'll be good to go by the time his suspension is up, but we'll see if that causes any more delays in his return to action.
Chris Sale's Painful Bike Ride
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Much like Tatis' situation, the Chris Sale saga was a season-long endeavor.
Heck, for Sale, it has been a three-year-long injury-fueled nightmare, as he missed all of 2020 and most of 2021 following Tommy John surgery. But this season's medical melodrama began in February with a stress fracture in his rib cage he suffered while throwing at Florida Gulf Coast during the lockout.
It wasn't until almost four months after the injury that Sale was finally able to begin his rehab assignment, and he didn't take the mound for the Red Sox until just before the All-Star break.
He didn't even make it to the Midsummer Classic before landing back on the IL, though, breaking the pinky finger on his throwing hand when Aaron Hicks lined a comebacker straight at him.
Sale had surgery the following day and was questionable to return in 2022. But that uncertainty turned into a sure thing less than three weeks later when he suffered a right wrist fracture while riding his bicycle to lunch.
Bless his heart for going green, but who the heck goes for a bike ride a few weeks after having surgery on a broken finger?
Maybe next time he'll get some exercise on a stationary bike and get his lunch brought to him. I think he can afford the delivery charge on that five-year, $145 million contract.
Aroldis Chapman's Infected Tattoo
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More than five years ago, I ranked the 25 weirdest sports injuries of all time. Glenallen Hill sleepwalking through a glass table while having a nightmare about spiders was tops among baseball players, and Aroldis Chapman's IL trip this season was nowhere near weird enough to finish ahead of that oddity.
Still, missing almost an entire month because of a leg infection that originated from a tattoo is a new one.
We've yet to see the tattoo, but Chapman said it's a portrait of his sister. He is tatted up all over both arms and his right leg, so he's no stranger to the inking process. I wouldn't know because I despise needles with the passion of a thousand burning suns, but apparently it's just a risk you run when getting a tattoo.
Chapman also missed more than a month in the middle of the season with Achilles tendinitis in the same leg.
Fortunately for the Yankees, he has been no worse for wear since the latest absence, logging 3.1 hitless, scoreless innings over the past two weeks.
Of course, the irony of a tattoo temporarily derailing Chapman's season is that after Jose Altuve hit the series-ending, walk-off home run off Chapman in Game 6 of the 2019 ALCS, Carlos Correa said the reason Altuve yelled at his jubilated teammates not to rip off his jersey was because of an embarrassing tattoo as opposed to the buzzer theories.
Balk, Balk, Balk
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Richard Bleier has pitched nearly 300 innings in his MLB career, and before this week, he had never once been called for a balk.
But with the Miami Marlins protecting a 6-3 eighth-inning lead over the New York Mets, Bleier was called for not one, not two, but three balks in a single plate appearance against Pete Alonso, allowing Jeff McNeil to score from first without a pitch being put into play.
Balks are a weird, gray area in baseball. They could be called way more often than they are but only seem to happen as an occasional point of emphasis against a certain pitcher's delivery.
Similar to a false start in football, you're more or less allowed to move around all you want before a pitch, so long as you don't do anything to "fake out" the opposing team and as long as you actually stop for a beat prior to throwing. Otherwise, it's a balk.
And first base umpire John Tumpane was not satisfied with the complete-stop portion of Bleier's pre-pitch routine on Sept. 27, calling all three of the balks.
Manager Don Mattingly was, understandably, apoplectic by the third balk and got ejected. Bleier was somehow restrained enough to not get ejected until after getting Alonso to ground out to second base. But then he said a magic word or two to Tumpane before leaving the field and also got tossed.
Ultimately, it didn't matter. The Marlins didn't allow another baserunner and won 6-4. But it was quite the bizarre sequence.
Dallas Keuchel's Fall from Grace
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There were quite a few veteran players who made a whole lot of money this season for minimal production. Just in Anthony Rendon, Stephen Strasburg, Miguel Cabrera, Chris Sale, Justin Upton, Joey Votto, Jason Heyward, Patrick Corbin, Yasmani Grandal and Lorenzo Cain, we're talking roughly $270 million for next to nothing.
But only Dallas Keuchel was downright awful for three different teams.
Keuchel was a Cy Young candidate two years ago, making 11 starts with a 1.99 ERA and a 1.09 WHIP. And while he did sputter to a 5.28 ERA in 2021, he made nine quality starts and never reached the point of futility where Chicago would need to consider releasing him.
It was a different story this year, as Keuchel—who opened the season as the fifth starter behind even Vince Velasquez—gave up 10 runs in just one inning in his second start of the season. By the time he allowed six earned runs in back-to-back starts in late May, the White Sox had seen enough and released him.
Chicago paid him $18 million for eight 2022 starts with a 7.88 ERA.
After he cleared waivers, Arizona gave Keuchel a second chance. He sure looked good in his second warm-up at the Arizona Complex League, firing 13 strikeouts in seven innings. But he only lasted four starts with the big league D-Backs before getting released again, this time with a 9.64 ERA for his erstwhile team.
Then it was Texas' turn to take a flier on the 34-year-old lefty.
Once again, Keuchel looked good in the minors, making four starts with a 2.31 ERA for the Round Rock Express. When he got back to the majors, though, he allowed seven earned runs in back-to-back starts and got the boot after just 10 innings and a 12.60 ERA.
I can't figure out how to look up whether it's the first time a pitcher has logged at least 10 innings with three different teams, giving each of them an ERA north of 7.80, but it seems like a reasonable assumption that it is.
Because, all told, he made 14 starts with a 9.20 ERA, good for the sixth-worst single-season ERA of the past half-century among guys who pitched at least 60 innings.
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