Phillies walk off Dodgers in 16 with history-making home run; inside the weirdness

Tom Gatto

Phillies walk off Dodgers in 16 with history-making home run; inside the weirdness image

The Dodgers and Phillies settled their Tuesday night game Wednesday morning in a weird, historic way.

The Phils' Trevor Plouffe lined a three-run home run off Dodgers utilityman Enrique Hernandez in the bottom of the 16th inning to give the home team a 7-4 victory.

MORE: Cubs' Anthony Rizzo makes history in pitching debut

It turns out that Plouffe's homer was historic.

Hernandez was in the game after the Dodgers had used closer Kenley Jansen for five outs in the 14th and 15th. Rich Hill, one of the Dodgers' starters, was getting loose in the bullpen, but not to come into a tie game.

"You don’t want to compromise the starters going forward. They were on line for an extra day (of rest) and that’s what we wanted. They need that. It’s a decision you have to make and unfortunately we ran out of pitching in the 16th," Dodgers manger Dave Roberts told reporters, per the Orange County Register.

Unfortunately for Hernandez, his versatility didn't quite translate to the mound:

"I was thinking, 'Just try to throw strikes. Just try to throw as slow as I could,’” Hernandez, who topped out at 85 mph, told reporters (per the Register). "But I wasn’t near the strike zone (he walked two batters ahead of Plouffe) so I had to try and put more on it. … I was going to try to give my team six or seven good innings. It didn't happen."

In addition to Hernandez's historic "feat," this contest produced a large collection of oddball facts and figures. Below is a quick rundown:

18

Counting Hernandez, the combined total of pitchers used, nine by each team. Vince Velasquez, one of the Phils' starters, worked the 16th and got credit for the win. The Phillies also used a 10th pitcher, Zach Eflin, to pinch-hit.

10

Consecutive scoreless innings by Phillies pitchers. LA last scored in the top of the sixth when it took a 4-1 lead. The Phils tied the game with three runs in the bottom of the seventh.

11, 57

Hits and at-bats for each team (that comes out to a .193 average).

17

Strikeouts by each team.

4

Golden sombreros in the game, two for each team. The Dodgers' Yasmani Grandal and Joc Pederson, and the Phillies' Cesar Hernandez and Jorge Alfaro, all fanned four times.

21

Combined at-bats by Enrique Hernandez, Cesar Hernandez and the Dodgers' Max Muncy. They produced no hits as each went 0 for 7.

26

Number of standing ovations for Chase Utley (give or take) on the second night of his last regular-season visit to Philadelphia. Utley singled as a pinch hitter in the 12th.

36

Hernandez became the 36th full-time position player to pitch in the major leagues this season. Those 36 players have combined for 42 total appearances. That figure does not include Angels two-way player Shohei Ohtani's nine appearances.

8.71

Combined ERA for those position players not named Ohtani (40 earned runs in 41 1/3 innings). Of course, putting up zeroes isn't really the goal with these appearances: saving bullpen arms is. Unfortunately for the Dodgers, their position-player pitcher gave up runs AND took an L on Tuesday.

Tom Gatto

Tom Gatto Photo

Tom Gatto joined The Sporting News as a senior editor in 2000 after 12 years at The Herald-News in Passaic, N.J., where he served in a variety of roles including sports editor, and a brief spell at APBNews.com in New York, where he worked as a syndication editor. He is a 1986 graduate of the University of South Carolina.