Ken Chia, a copy desk ace and a weekend Page 2 raconteur sent in a submission for RandBall which we particularly enjoyed. Ken, take it away:
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The fans who remained for the end of Tuesday night's game at Target Field missed out on a chance at witnessing a rare baseball occasion, one that these days is rarer than a starter pitching a one-hitter or a batter hitting three home runs in a game.
The four-inning save.
Obviously, the four-inning save is not the kind of performance that draws attention to itself in baseball the way a diving catch does. But it does say that a relief pitcher was able to preserve a lead over the final four innings of a game, presumably after a starter was lifted following the first five.
In Tuesday's case, Anthony Swarzak was given the ball in the sixth inning with a one-run lead after Mike Pelfrey had thrown 96 pitches and given up four runs over five innings. Swarzak promptly struck out the side on 12 pitches in the sixth inning. He made the seventh and eighth innings look easy, too.
He came out for the ninth inning with a four-run lead and retired the first batter, but a Trevor Plouffe throwing error, followed by a single, ended Swarzak's night.
Thus -- and this is all according to the excellent Baseball-Reference.com -- Swarzak failed to become the first Twins pitcher to earn a four-inning save since Brian Bass did it in April 2008 against the White Sox, the only time in Ron Gardenhire's tenure that a reliever has gone four innings for a save. Perhaps not surprising given the way bullpens are handled in recent times, there have been only 38 four-inning saves in the major leagues since Gardenhire's first season of 2002, compared to 71 one-hitters and 109 three- or four-homer games.
