WILLI! WILLI! WE'RE JUST ONE AWAY FROM THE 700TH 7+-RBI GAME...

YES, it's been awhile...we have been focused on more film writing, while looking to end the latest curse that has kept us from invading movie theaters for the past year and a half. (We've also weaned ourself off those silly Sumimoto sisters...)

Baseball still beckons, of course--and we''ll get back in the hunt for semi-cosmic meaning in the 2026 season soon--if only to explain how Fenway became a pitcher's park (at least for the first 12 weeks of the season, anyway). 

BUT let's have some fun with the semi-arcane--one of our favorite "side hustles" (are you listening, Sumimotos? They aren't surprised to discover how good we (still) look without much on--but we will spare you, dear reader...)

We come carrying tidings of joy for those who enjoy semi-marginal utility players (SMUPs...) as we update one of our favorite semi-arcane lists--those hitters who have driven in seven or more runs in a single game. One of our faves in the SMUP category in recent years is Willi Castro, a man who has played every position on the field except catcher.  He signed with the High-Mile Down-Lows (you know them--and not in the Biblical sense--as the Colorado Rockies) in the 2025-26 off-season and has been all over the diamond and the batting order for his new club this year.

Lately, it's been at or near the top of the batting order, and that's relevant to the feat he pulled off yesterday. Based on the current data available at Forman et soeur, Willi is the 699th batter to drive in seven or more runs in a game. He totaled four hits, two of them homers (one of them a grand slam) as the Rox rocked the A's 23-9 (in Las Vegas, but that is another story)...

It's the RBI total in a game when batting leadoff that's the really rare feat--Willi is just the 24th leadoff hitter to drive in seven or more runs in a game. It turns out that this was a virtually unheard-of occurrence in twentieth century baseball--it happened only 11 times (see TimeGrid™ chart at left). 

Since the 2000 season, however, we've had thirteen--an average of one every other season. (That is due largely to the fact that teams are batting sluggers in the #1 slot a lot more often than was the case in the last century--with the likes of Mookie Betts and Francisco Lindor batting leadoff.) Three such occurrences clustered within eighteen days of one another in 2018; there were three more in 2024, all featuring sluggery types: Shohei Ohtani, Kyle Schwarber, Ben Rice.

THERE is a lot more to share about 7+ RBI games, and we'll get to much more of it later in the week. (Yes, freed from the vagaries of French film noir and those sedulous Sumimoto sisters, we will be "doing time with baseball" until the walls close in again.) While you wait for that, you might think about who had the most 7+ RBI games in his career...and who had the fewest career HRs of all those who managed this feat (and, no, the answer is not Tony Cloninger!) Stay tuned...