Eat your heart out, Shohei Ohtani. No one in Major League Baseball history has had a two-week stretch like Royals utility player Tyler Tolbert.
In addition to tying the MLB record with 12 consecutive hits, which is a statistical anomaly for someone who had a .200 average at the start of the streak, Tolbert’s two-day and two-week stretch are historical.
But Tolbert also is just the third player in MLB history with consecutive five-hit games, joining Roberto Clemente (1970) and Hi Myers (1917).
Myers had five hits for Brooklyn in a 3-3 tie with Pittsburgh in a game called after 13 innings on Aug. 20, then followed it up the next day in Brooklyn’s 6-5 win over the Pirates in 22 innings. Myers batted third in both games.
Clemente, the Hall of Famer, had five hits for the Pirates in a 2-1 win over the Dodgers in 16 innings on Aug. 22. The next day, Clemente got five hits as Pittsburgh routed L.A. 11-0 and didn’t play in the ninth inning. He also was the No. 3 hitter for the Pirates.
Tolbert is the only player in MLB history with consecutive five-hit games without needing extra innings. And that’s not all: He is the only one of the three to do it while batting ninth.
It’s been a historic stretch for Tolbert, and how about a bit of Royals franchise history?
MLB analyst Ryan Spaeder noted in an X post that “Tolbert is the first player in Royals franchise history to have five hits out of the nine-hole. He is also their only player to have even one five-hit game in the last four seasons. He has done it twice… in the last two days.”
All of that is amazing in and of itself, but there is another element that takes Tolbert to unicorn status.
It’s entirely possible sometime in the future that a player will get five hits in back-to-back games, even while batting ninth. But what we won’t see is someone do that while also having pitched in consecutive games less than two weeks earlier.
Before Tolbert’s remarkable hitting display, he was called on to finish a pair of blowout losses on June 25 and June 26. The latter was a scoreless outing against the White Sox.
Neither Myers nor Clemente ever pitched in a game, so Tolbert’s double-duty work in the same season that he had consecutive five-hit games stands alone in MLB history. And because relief pitchers have no chance to bat these days, and Ohtani is a starter, and hitters are rarely called upon to pitch consecutive days, I believe it’s a certainty we will never see a player have a fortnight like Tolbert has had for the Royals.
It’s simply remarkable.
