"And the home ... of the ... braaaaave!"
OK, on to Zobrist's game; It was like he was assembling a hitting r�sum�: He set a team record with 8 RBIs, going 4 for 6 with a home run and two doubles in the Tampa Bay Rays' 15-3 thumping of the Minnesota Twins in Game 1 of a doubleheader.
UPDATE: Zorilla hit a two-run homer in his first at-bat of Game 2 to give him 10 RBIs today ? one short of the AL record and three shy of the major league mark (owned by Nate Colbert and Mark Whiten) for a doubleheader.
It's the most RBIs in one game since Adam Lind knocked in nine Aug. 31 2009.
Even accounting for the random nature of RBIs, Zobrist has an astonishing number of them over the past four games: 16.
He came into the day batting .205/.272/.482, but Zobrist has gone 8 for 18 during his recent RBI spree to take the league lead with 23. That's more like the guy the Rays signed for $18 million over four years before the 2010 season.
Zobrist, seemingly a humble guy, rightly spread the credit for his outburst, noting that the Rays collected 19 hits and six walks. And hey: Zobrist actually stranded three runners!
He told the media at Target Field, via The Heater:
"Any time you have that many RBIs, it's just because your teammates are on base for you every time. That's what it was about today. We hit well up and down the lineup. Everybody hit. Hopefully, we saved a few for the second game."
Since we're on an RBI kick, Zobrist's performance ties for the third-most RBIs with just one homer since 1919, says this chart at Baseball Reference. The most recent eight-RBI, one-homer performance came from Houston's J.R. Towles (really!) in 2007.
In 1944, Phil Weintraub of the New York Giants drove in 11 with one homer to set the standard for that bit of statistical gymnastics.
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