With one out in the bottom of the first inning in Atlanta, Jason Heyward hit a drive to deep center field and Matt Kemp did this:

Thanks to that catch and  a fine performance by Chris Capuano, the lone run the Dodgers scored in the fourth held up until the bottom of the eighth when Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez sent Evan Gattis up to pinch-hit for his pitcher with one out and B.J. Upton on first base. Dodgers skipper Don Mattingly countered by replacing the left-handed Capuano with his right-handed relief ace Kenley Jansen.

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Trailing 3-1 in the bottom of the fourth with a runner on first, one out, and Charlie Blackmon at the plate, Tim Lincecum did this.

That balked the runner to second, allowing him to score on a subsequent single by the opposing pitcher. In total, Lincecum gave up six runs in five innings in the game to inflate his season ERA to 4.70. Since the start of 2012 he has posted a 5.07 ERA in 239 2/3 innings. Coming into this season, I thought his free agency after this season would be fascinating, but now I’m beginning to think it will just be depressing.

The Astros’ winning percentage puts them on pace to be the worst team since the 1962 New York Mets. (Vincent Pugliese/Getty Images)

It’s a long season, and when you’re only winning about a quarter of your games, you have to get creative in order to find a new way to lose. Such is the case for the Astros, who blew a 4-1 lead against the Pirates on Wednesday night and lost in the ninth inning on a walk-off… collision (GIF courtesy of Chad Moriyama of mlbgifs.com):

The score had been knotted at 4-4 going into the bottom of the ninth. The Pirates loaded the bases with a pair of singles, a fielder’s choice and an error by pitcher Edgar Gonzalez, who recovered to strike out Neil Walker for the second out. Russell Martin worked the count to 3-2 and then hit what appeared to be a routine pop-up into shallow right centerfield. Second baseman Jake Elmore, a rookie playing in just his third major league game, signaled for it, but right fielder Jimmy Paredes, running at full speed, barreled into him just as the ball hit his glove. It fell on the ground, and Travis Snider crossed the plate with the winning run. Paredes was charged with the error.

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Paul Goldschmidt now has seven homers in his last 11 games, second in the league behind Justin Upton. (Norm Hall/Getty Images)

It’s a pity the Marlins don’t turn their home run sculpture on for dingers by the visiting team, because the Diamondbacks’ Paul Goldschmidt would have lit it up on Friday night. The Arizona first baseman walloped a pair of towering, two-run homers in each of his first two plate appearances against Miami’s Kevin Slowey, the second of which ended a 13-pitch battle that saw him foul off the previous six pitches. He collected a single and a double as well, and ended the night with four runs scored and four RBIs in the Diamondbacks’ 9-2 victory. Here’s a GIF of the first homer:

Goldschmidt now has seven homers in his last 11 games, including two on May 8, and 12 for the season, pushing him past Bryce Harper and into second in the league behind Justin Upton. He’s batting .338/.421/.656, having surpassed Harper’s league-leading slugging percentage tonight. It’s early in the season, but the 25-year-old slugger is making the five-year, $32 million extension to which the Diamondbacks signed him for 2014-2018 look very shrewd. As the Los Angeles Times‘ Bill Shaikin pointed out, the other first basemen in the NL West have combined for just 14 homers this year.

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Pete Rose (left) and Mike Schmidt combined for five hits, seven runs scored and eight RBIs in the memorable game at Wrigley Field. (AP)

David Wells’ perfect game isn’t the only memorable milestone with a May 17 anniversary. The annals of baseball history feature not one but two Hall of Famers collecting their 3,000th hits, 45 years apart on this day, as well as the highest-scoring game since 1922.

That game, which took place on May 17, 1979, saw the Phillies beat the Cubs, 23-22 at Wrigley Field, thus exacting a modicum of revenge for the Cubs’ Aug. 25, 1922 26-23 win at Wrigley, the highest-scoring game in major league history. Retrosheet doesn’t record the wind speed or direction in the former, but for both that game and the latter — ”18 mph in unknown direction” — it’s safe to assume it was blowing out.

In the 1979 game, the two teams combined for 11 homers, three by the Cubs’ Dave Kingman, one apiece by teammates Bill Buckner, Jerry Martin and Steve Ontiveros, two by the Phillies’ Mike Schmidt, and one apiece by Bob Boone, Garry Maddox and starting pitcher Randy Lerch. Schmidt and Boone both hit three-run homers off Cubs starter Dennis Lamp in the first inning, chasing him after he allowed six runs while retiring just one hitter. Facing reliever Donnie Moore, Lerch hit a two-out solo homer to run the score to 7-0 before he’d even taken the mound Continue Reading