Angels' Walbert Urena made himself the unluckiest pitcher of the MLB season already
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Angels' Walbert Urena made himself the unluckiest pitcher of the MLB season already originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
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Walbert Urena should've been out of the inning.
One look at the box score tells that story for the Los Angeles Angels' right-handed relief pitcher. He didn't give up any earned runs on Saturday night against the Houston Astros.
The problem? He gave up six unearned runs.
There have been very few outings like this in baseball history. The last was in 2021, with the last by a reliever in 2019, and the last by the Angels in 2018:
Walbert Ureña is the first pitcher since Charlie Morton in 2021 to have an outing featuring 6+ runs but 0 *earned* runs in no more than 1 IP. He's the first relief pitcher to do so since Matt Magill in 2019, and the first Angels pitcher since Jim Johnson in 2018.
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Ironically, there was a bad sign when Urena entered in the middle of the fifth inning and the second batter Urena faced reached on an error. That didn't lead to any runs charged to Urena, but the sixth inning was different.
Urena induced a groundout to start the inning. And then this is where the stats get weird.
The pitcher himself made a throwing error to allow Jake Meyers to reach base. So in the books, an error, changing the dichotomy of earned/unearned runs in this inning. But the error was by the pitcher himself.
Joey Loperfido singled, but then Urena struck out Jose Altuve. If there had been no error, that would've been the third out of the inning.
Instead, wild pitch scores Meyers. Intentional walk to Yordan Alverez, regular walk to Isaac Paredes. A two-run single for Carlos Correa (that also includes a throwing error by the catcher Logan O'Hoppe).
Then an RBI single by Christian Walker. And the reliever who came in then, Joey Lucchesi, allowed both of Urena's inherited runners to score.
His final line was 1.0 inning, four hits, two walks, six runs (none earned) and one strikeout.
The reason the runs weren't earned was because of Urena's own error, a quirk in the scoring if there ever was one.
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