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Hiatus history lesson: Volquez's start from hell

Ed Zurga / Getty Images

With baseball on hiatus, it's a good time to look back at great moments from the game's past. Today, we're remembering Edinson Volquez's unprecedentedly horrific start against the Houston Astros on June 24, 2016.

A pitcher's pregame bullpen session isn't necessarily predictive.

Before tossing the 15th perfect game in big-league history, for instance, an admittedly hungover David Wells stumbled through a "horrific" warm-up in the bullpen at Yankee Stadium, even throwing two balls clear out of the stadium in frustration. "Play ball!" is a powerful refrain, capable of quashing the self-doubt that creeps in after a bad bullpen session and zapping the confidence gained from a good one, of correcting mechanical flaws and creating them.

As Edinson Volquez got loose in the Kauffman Stadium bullpen on a late June evening in 2016, however, the Kansas City Royals' veteran right-hander knew he was in trouble. His pitches weren't moving like they were supposed to. His sinker wasn't sinking. His curveball hung. The magic of "Play ball!" wouldn't be able to save him, not tonight.

"I knew it right away, right from the get-go," Volquez told Tod Palmer of The Kansas City Star afterward. "I was warming up, and I told everybody, ‘Hey, my ball isn't moving.'

"I was hoping to get the movement in the real game, but I didn't get it today."

Instead, Volquez endured a legendary spanking at the hands of the Houston Astros, then a burgeoning powerhouse. In fact, Volquez, who months earlier had helped propel the Royals to the 2015 World Series championship, suffered through one of the worst starts of the modern era: a 12-run, one-inning nightmare that earned the one-time All-Star a bevy of dubious distinctions in baseball's history books.

As is typical of historically dreadful starts, Volquez's outing began inauspiciously and unraveled quickly. His second pitch of the game, a listless sinker, was plastered off the top of the center-field wall by George Springer. Springer waltzed into third with a leadoff triple after his shot - which exploded off his bat at 107.6 mph - caromed away from Paulo Orlando. Volquez retired only one of the next eight hitters he faced, conducting a veritable midsummer night's hit parade.

By the time Springer sauntered into the batter's box for his second first-inning plate appearance, the Astros had all but bled Volquez to death, parlaying that game-opening triple, five singles, one walk, and an error by Royals shortstop Alcides Escobar into a 5-0 lead.

Springer, facing the beleaguered hurler with the bases loaded and only one out, proceeded to twist the knife. Gifted a hanging knuckle-curve on the first pitch of the at-bat, Springer unloaded, depositing a 397-foot grand slam into the camera bay beyond the left-field wall. If you dare, relive the carnage in full below:

Insofar as any game can be over in the first inning, this game was over. When the Royals finally slunk back to the dugout after the top of the first, their win expectancy stood at 2.6%, according to FanGraphs. That figure didn't even account for the fact that Houston had reigning American League Cy Young winner Dallas Keuchel - scuffling though he was at the time - on the mound.

But rather than turning the debacle over to the bullpen to spare Volquez any further embarrassment, Royals manager Ned Yost sent his starter out for the second inning, resolved not to overtax his relief corps in the first of 17 games in 17 days. His resolution went unfulfilled.

Volquez, who used 36 pitches to get through that hellacious opening frame, walked the first hitter he saw in the second, reigning AL Rookie of the Year Carlos Correa. The next batter, Colby Rasmus, stroked a single to right field, putting runners on the corners. Volquez then walked Carlos Gomez on four pitches, loading the bases with nobody out. At that point, Yost mercifully lifted Volquez. Dillon Gee, who had been summoned from the bullpen to mop up the mess, eventually allowed all three of those baserunners to score and helped cement Volquez's place in history.

Volquez became the only starter ever to allow 12 runs while tossing one inning or less. (The only other pitchers to surrender a dozen runs in an outing while recording no more than three outs are Hal Kelleher and Bubba Harris, both of whom did so in relief in 1938 and 1948, respectively.) By Game Score, the comprehensive metric created by Bill James to evaluate the strength of a pitching performance, Volquez's effort (-12) is tied for the eighth-worst since integration.

Lowest Game Scores, 1947-2019

Player Date IP R BB GSc
Mike Oquist 08-03-1998 5 14 3 -21
Colby Lewis 07-10-2014 2.1 13 0 -16
Scott Sanders 04-14-1998 4 11 3 -15
Galen Cisco 07-27-1962 5.1 13 4 -14
David Wells 08-20-1992 4.1 13 4 -14
Bill Travers 08-14-1977 7.2 14 4 -13
A.J. Burnett 05-02-2015 2.2 12 1 -13
Jerry Augustine 05-11-1982 5 12 2 -12
Yovani Gallardo 08-08-2007 2.2 11 3 -12
David Buchanan 08-11-2015 1.2 11 2 -12
Edinson Volquez 06-24-2016 1 12 3 -12

"He just wasn't very good," Yost said. "It was just one of those nights where really nothing was working for him."

The cumulative effect of that one-inning start, moreover, was staggering. Volquez finished second in the majors in earned runs allowed that season (113), while his 5.37 ERA tied him with Wade Miley for dead last among qualified major-league starters. Erase that ghastly outing against the Astros, though, and his ERA drops by a half run to 4.87; the AL starters' average in 2016 was 4.42.

It's possible, in fact, that that one start profoundly influenced the trajectory of Volquez's career. With a less unsightly ERA, perhaps Volquez, then 33, finds a more appealing offer in free agency that winter than the two-year, $22-million contract he ultimately signed with the Miami Marlins. From there, who knows what else could've gone differently? Would he still blow out his elbow in 2017? If he did, would another team release him during his recovery from Tommy John surgery like the Marlins did, or would Volquez get a real shot to re-establish himself? It's impossible to say for certain, but it's no stretch to suggest Volquez's 2016 stinker against the Astros had an outsized impact on the rest of his MLB career.

Jonah Birenbaum is theScore's senior MLB writer. He steams a good ham. You can find him on Twitter @birenball.

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