Duck! Reds pitchers Lowder, Phillips tie unfortunate MLB record

PITTSBURGH – BBBBBBBBBBBBBB. If that was a word, that would sum up the outputs of Cincinnati Reds pitchers Rhett Lowder and Connor Phillips Saturday in Pittsburgh on a day they made ignominious rare MLB history. Lowder, the Reds starter (three) and reliever Phillips (four) combined to walk seven consecutive Pirates batters in a five-run second inning.

Phillips, who only faced the four batters, walked his first and third batters faced on four pitches each. Lowder walked his last on four. It's the third time in MLB history that a team drew seven consecutive walks in a big-league game – first since a season in which Bob Walk actually pitched for one of the teams involved, 43 years ago.

"Never seen that before," said one longtime press box wag. "You never know what you're gonna see at the ballpark when you wake up in the morning. " What anyone at PNC Park saw in that second was something that hadn't been done since the 1983 Pirates walked seven straight Braves on May 25 in Atlanta.

Strangely, the ugly skein wrong-way pitching followed a Lowder strikeout of Oneil Cruz to start the inning (albeit, after Lowder gave up five in a nine-batter first inning). The last time Reds pitchers walked seven batters in an inning non-consecutively was April 17, 2014 against Philadelphia. Saturday's streak mercifully came to an end when Sam Moll, after replacing Phillips, induced a routine double-play ground to third.