Veal’s pitching three true outcomes
Not every rookie breaks into the majors as smoothly as Colby Rasmus, who had two hits and a walk, did Tuesday night. Take, for instance, the Pirates’ Donnie Veal, who walked Rasmus in the fifth inning of the Cardinals’ 9-3 win. Veal had previously in the inning served a center-cut piece of meat to the first batter he faced in the major leagues, Yadier Molina, who smoked it for a home run. But even players who enjoy successful baseball careers get off to rocky starts — the Cardinals’ own Ricky Horton surrendered a circuit clout to his first batter. What distinguished Veal last night was his knack for keeping the ball out of the realm of his fielders: None of the seven batters he faced put the ball in play, and given the stone-glove work of Bucs’ third baseman Andy LaRoche (three errors in the first two games), one could hardly blame him.
After Molina’s home run, Veal either struck out (each on a dropped third strike) or walked the rest of the batters he faced before yielding to Sean Burnett, who unwisely let his defense try to help out (for the game, the Pirates had a below-average .583 Defense-Efficiency Rate). Here’s the sequence of Veal’s fifth inning:
- Molina homered to deep center
- Thurston struck out swinging
- Lohse struck out swinging
- Schumaker walked
- Rasmus walked
- Pujols walked
- Duncan struck out looking
As impressive as Veal’s pitching three-true-outcomes was, we had no idea how rare it was. We had to go back to 2004 to find a truer three-outcome performance, which was eight batters faced by Jorge Sosa. Here are the top TTO-only performances since 2004:
| Player | Date | Tm | Opp | BF | IP | BB | SO | HR |
| Jorge Sosa | 6/22/2004 | TBD | @TOR | 8 | 2 | 1 | 6 | 1 |
| John Parrish* | 5/17/2005 | BAL | @KCR | 7 | 1 2/3 | 3 | 4 | 0 |
| Brian Bruney | 9/16/2006 | NYY | BOS | 7 | 1 2/3 | 2 | 5 | 0 |
| Juan Cruz | 9/23/2007 | ARI | LAD | 7 | 1 2/3 | 1 | 5 | 1 |
| Donnie Veal | 4/7/2009 | PIT | @STL | 7 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 1 |
*Included a caught stealing
Though some are hoping that Veal leaves on a high note, it’s possible that he can top Sosa’s effort, if he sticks with this baseball thing. After all, he’s still young, and, with the less-than-nimble Ryan Doumit behind the plate, Veal someday might even rack up eight strikeouts alone without ever even recording an out.