So what do Houston Astros pitcher Jason Jennings and 19th century 'switch-pitcher' Tony Mullane have in common?  Both allowed 11 earned runs in the first inning of a game.  Jennings did so on Sunday night against the Padres; Mullane allowed 16 earned runs in the first inning against Boston on June 18, 1894.

So what's the big deal?  As far as my research can show, no other pitcher between Mullane and Jennings allowed as many as 11 earned runs to start a game.  That's over 113 years in between occurrences.  Here's how Mullane's dreadful inning went:

SINGLE, SINGLE, WALK, DOUBLE, SINGLE, SINGLE, HOMER, FLY OUT, HOMER, HIT BY PITCH, SINGLE, HOMER, WALK, STRIKEOUT, WALK, WALK, WALK, SINGLE, SINGLE, WALK, WALK, FLY OUT

I put the outs in bold, since they can be difficult to pick out amongst the hitting mayhem.

That's 11 hits, 7 walks, and 1 hit batter; 22 BOS players came to bat and 19 of them reached base safely.  Amazingly, out of the 16 RBI by Boston hitters, only Duffy had more than three in the inning, thanks to a 3-run homer and a bases-loaded walk.  And yes, those 16 runs allowed are the most ever allowed by any pitcher in any inning in any major league game.

As it turns out, Luke Hudson (KC AL) allowed 11 runs in the first inning of a game last season, but he got lucky and only 10 of those runs were earned.  When he gave up 11 runs in the first inning, he was the first pitcher to do so since Kid Nichols on 9/21/1897.  Hudson's line was:

1/3 IP, 11R, 10ER, 8H, 3BB

Here's another 19th century pitcher who gave one of our modern hurlers a run for his money:  Tom Parrott, CIN NL, had this line on Aug 21, 1894:

1/3 IP, 11R, 10ER, 9H, 1BB

And, with all the talk about Jennings giving up 11 runs in the first inning, we almost missed Jeremy Bonderman allowing 11 runs himself on the same day.

Here are the days since 1957 when two different pitchers allowed 11 runs or more:

4/29/1999: Roy Halladay (TOR, 11 runs) and Mel Rojas (DET, 11 runs)
8/24/2002: Jose Lima (DET, 11 runs) and Jose Cabrera (MIL, 11 runs)
7/29/2007: Jason Jennings (HOU, 11 runs) and Jeremy Bonderman (DET, 11 runs)

Notice a trend there?  A Detroit Tigers pitcher was involved each time.

A Century of Cobb
Ty Cobb's Batting Line from 100 years ago:
July 30, 1907: at New York; 4-for-5 with a double; opposing starter: Hogg

By the way, with Ichiro Suzuki garnering the 1500th hit of his Major League career last night in his 1060th career game, it was stated that he was the third fastest (in terms of games played) to reach that mark, with Ty Cobb being the fourth fastest at 1070 games.  But Cobb actually required 1072 games; the news sources citing the 1070 total are using outdated totals for Cobb's early career.  While Cobb needed 12 more games than Ichiro to get to 1500 career hits, Cobb did it in 434 fewer at-bats.