It’s an APBA thing: pitching upgrades can come back to haunt you

In my 1966 NL replay tonight, I had “one of those APBA things” happen. 

It’s April 27th and Houston’s Dave Giusti (CY) was mowing down the St Louis Cardinals.  Through six innings, he had a no-hitter going.  Not only that, he had faced the minimum amount of batters.  Charley Smith, the only base runner, had reached on an error but was picked off immediately by Giusti.  St Louis starter Ray Washburn (C) wasn’t doing too badly either.  He had only given up one run, a Bob Aspromonte solo homer. 

As a C pitcher who had pitched six scoreless (and hitless!) innings, Giusti received his due upgrade so he entered the 7th inning as a BY.    Now, I’m sometimes superstitious about these upgrades.  “If he’s doing so well as a C pitcher, why jinx it by changing his grade?” my convoluted logic tells me. 

In this case, I had just cause to feel this way.  Lou Brock lead off the 7th and rolled a 31-9.  It’s a base hit, the first of the game for the Cardinals.  Giusti is so rattled that he then immediately gives up a two-run homerun to Julian Javier giving the Cardinals the lead.  That ended up to be the final score for the game.  Giusti’s fine four-hit effort went down the tubes and he got the loss. 

Dave Giusti’s performance did have an effect on the current leaderboards, though.  St Louis’ Tim McCarver and Lou Brock were one-two in the early batting race.  For the game though, they went a combined 1 for 7.  That was enough to make Brock #2 with a .418 average and put McCarver third at .417.  Pittsburgh’s Bob Bailey is now at the top with a .429 average.  He now leads the league in batting average and slugging average (.755) and is second in OBP (.521).

Brock was lucky he snuck in that 31-9, by the way.  He holds on to his hitting streak which started at the beginning of the season which stands at 13 games.  Tim McCarver, not so much.  He went hitless for the first time in nine games.