It was a banner day in Mexico City on Saturday for fans of the dinger.
As part of MLB’s annual Mexico City series, the San Francisco Giants hung 11 runs on the San Diego Padres … and ended up losing by five runs. Playing an an altitude of 7,349 feet (almost 40 percent higher than the altitude in Denver, Colo.), the Giants and the Padres combined for a surreal 11 home runs in an eventual 16-11 win for San Diego.
One of the many absurd highlights from Saturday’s game was four separate instances of back-to-back home runs. Giants teammates Brandon Crawford and LaMonte Wade Jr. went back-to-back in the third inning before Padres teammates Juan Soto and Xander Bogaerts did so themselves in the fourth inning. Two more Padres (Fernando Tatis Jr. and Manny Machado) then produced back-to-back jacks during the fifth inning … only for two more Giants (Blake Sabol and David Villar) to follow suit in the seventh inning.
OptaSTATS shared that this was the very first game in MLB history with four different sets of back-to-back homers.
Today's @SFGiants – @Padres game is the first game in MLB history to feature 4 separate sets of back-to-back HR.
— OptaSTATS (@OptaSTATS) April 30, 2023
On top of that, the Padres-Giants slugfest also tied the MLB record for most players (ten) to homer in a single game. The Padres star Machado was the only one in the contest to homer twice (in the fifth and seventh innings).
Baseballs flying out of the yard was very much expected at the extremely high Mexico City altitude. In fact, the betting over-under on total runs scored was set at 15.5 before the game.
But the two NL West teams managed to almost double that on Saturday by combining for 27 runs. The Padres and Giants play again in Mexico City on Sunday. Now we will have to see if they can go for 30 combined in that one.
