Kody Clemens’ walk-off grand slam sank the Royals on Thursday, and I need you to sit with everything that happened before that swing before your brain lets you enjoy it properly.
The Minnesota Twins were no-hit into the seventh inning at Target Field before anything good happened for them. Noah Cameron carried a no-hitter into the seventh for the Kansas City Royals and finished with eight shutout innings on his line, and the only blemish was a clean single to right-center off the bat of Ryan Jeffers to lead off that frame. That was the entire offensive output Minnesota had to show for most of the night, and the Royals still walked into the ninth ahead 3-0.
Down 3-0 with three outs left, the Twins looked exactly as finished as that scoreline suggests.
Then Kansas City’s bullpen decided the last Thursday in July was the perfect time to fall apart. Royals closer Lucas Erceg and reliever Matt Strahm combined to load the bases with two outs, and Strahm somehow got Clemens down 0-2 in the count before throwing an 82 mph slider that never left the middle of the plate. Clemens turned it around at 104.7 mph off the bat and put it 407 feet into the flower box above right-center. Twins win, 4-3.
That’s his second career grand slam, for what it’s worth. It also happens to belong to the son of Roger Clemens, which is either a fun fact or a small act of cosmic revenge depending on how you feel about pitchers’ kids hitting bombs for a living.
Per the Elias Sports Bureau, this is the first time in MLB history, postseason included, that a team broke up a no-hitter in the seventh inning or later and then won that same game with a walk-off grand slam. Separately, ESPN Research has Clemens as the first player to hit a walk-off slam with his team down to its final strike since David Bote did it for the Cubs back in August 2018.
Walk-off slams aren’t actually that rare. Some version happens most seasons, and that alone wouldn’t get me typing on a Thursday night. What makes this one different is the math: it’s the 34th “ultimate grand slam” in recorded MLB history — a walk-off slam while trailing by exactly three — and only the 15th of those to come with two outs.
It’s also the first one since pitch counts started getting tracked in 1988 to land on an 0-2 count.
Strahm had Clemens exactly where he wanted him and lost anyway.
I had money on the under. Of course I did. Baseball ruined my Thursday a few hours before it ruined Kansas City’s.
“That’s stuff that you dream about,” Clemens said after the game, “stuff like that when you’re a little kid. That was awesome.”
Watch the reaction at Target Field for yourself:
https://x.com/Twins/status/2082920351009296816
The Twins are barreling toward the trade deadline this week, and nobody wants to blink first at the deadline right after watching a contender’s bullpen implode like Kansas City’s just did. Every contender is playing some version of this game in late July, with the deadline chaos already reshaping rosters before a single big trade even lands. Even MLB’s own account couldn’t resist posting the box-score turn.
https://x.com/MLB/status/2082921000144957782
Somewhere in Kansas City tonight, somebody’s deleting a bullpen depth chart. The rest of us just watched the sport do the one thing it does better than any other: make a boring Thursday completely unrecoverable.
