In Friday night’s game between the Tampa Bay Rays and New York Yankees, something unusual happened: Yankee ace CC Sabathia allowed five home runs, the first time in his career he’s allowed more than three home runs in one game.
Some other interesting factoids on this rare event:
- Sabathia is only the third pitcher in baseball to allow five homers in one game this season. The other two pitchers are Sean O’Sullivan (6.92 ERA) and Carlos Zambrano (4.82 ERA), with Zambrano throwing his five homer game Friday night as well.
- The first four batters to hit a homer off Sabathia tonight were Casey Kotchman, Kelly Shoppach, Johnny Damon, and Elliot Johnson. Coming into tonight, the four of them had combined for a mere 25 homeruns on the year.
- Sabathia tied the Yankees’ record for the most home runs allowed in one game. He’s the first Yankee to allow this many solo home runs in one game, and only the 13th player since 1919 to allow 5 solo home runs in one game.
Here’s a video of the home runs courtesy of DRaysBay (minus Longoria’s blast):
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