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This Date in Baseball
(April 17
1892 In the first Sunday game in National League history, Cincinnati defeated St. Louis 5-1.
1924 Baby Doll Jacobson of the St. Louis Browns hit for the cycle in a 6-3 loss at the Chicago White Sox.
1932 New York first baseman Bill Terry tied an NL record with 21 putouts as the Giants beat Boston 5-0 behind Hal Schumacher’s two-hitter.
1951 In his first major league game, Mickey Mantle went 1-for-4 as the New York Yankees defeated the Boston Red Sox 5-0.
1953 Mickey Mantle cleared the bleachers at Griffith Stadium with a 565-foot home run off Chuck Stobbs. The shot came in the fifth inning of a 7-3 win over the Senators.
April 11, 2021
Joe Musgrove came into the season viewed by many as a breakout candidate, and it’s easy to see why. The 28-year-old Pirate-turned-Padre possesses plus stuff, and the change of scenery from Pittsburgh to his hometown of San Diego, no less portends more success…. particularly in the won-loss column. Musgrove went a paltry 1-5 with the N.L. Central cellar-dwellers in 2020, while his new club is poised to win, per our projections, 94 games in the current campaign.
By and large, the breakout has already happened, and not solely because the 6-foot-5, 235-pound right-hander hurled the year’s first no-hitter on Friday night. His 2020 peripherals were those of a pitcher who’d turned the corner. With the caveat that it was a pandemic-shortened season, Mugrove set career-bests in ERA, FIP, and strikeout rate, and more importantly, he did so with improved pitch profiles. Per StatCast, the spin and movement of his offerings were better than they’d ever been.