Ts and Ps to the Holy Cross Pitching Staff, Which Gave Up an NCAA Record 23 Runs in One Inning Against George Mason on Tuesday

Coming into Tuesday, all signs would have pointed you to the conclusion that Holy Cross was a fine baseball team with a decent pitching staff. The Crusaders were 5-4 with a win over No. 22 Auburn and had given up just 10 runs in their last four games. Then the second inning against George Mason happened.

George Mason has been a good offensive team so far this year — the Patriots are seventh in the country in batting average and 18th in on-base percentage — but nobody in college baseball had ever done what the Patriots did in one inning on Tuesday afternoon. Mason scored 23 runs on 11 hits to set a new NCAA record for runs in an inning.

Maybe the craziest part of the whole thing is the Patriots' first hitter of the frame grounded out to third base. The rest of the inning went as follows: walk, walk, single, single, hit by pitch, double, single, hit by pitch, error, single, walk, hit by pitch, walk, walk, double, single, hit by pitch, double, flyout, walk, double, single, walk, walk, single, groundout. The scored 23 runs without even hitting one homer.

I think I'm mostly just surprised no team has ever scored this many runs in an inning before and that it happened in a game of two relatively evenly matched teams. I'm sure some top teams could have done this at some point against an inferior opponent if they really wanted to, but it's not like baseball is a sport where you can just kneel the clock out. The other team has to throw strikes and your guys are going to keep trying to hit them.

The good news is the game ended 26-6, so Holy Cross actually outplayed George Mason as long as you just don't look at the 23-run inning. Something to take with you into the weekend if you're the Crusaders.