Baseball Reference Blog

But Ben Petrick was as good once as he ever was.

On September 20, 2000, the San Diego Padres visited Petrick's Colorado Rockies in a pretty meaningless game -- the Padres were 74-78, the Rockies 76-75. The two teams were battling for the rights to not call themselves the worst in the NL West.

But on that fateful September night, Petrick accomplished something nobody else has in the last fifty years and perhaps ever: He racked up 4 RBI despite not getting a single hit.

The paradigm of Playing For The Team, Petrick advanced his teammate runners while advancing himself (by earning a walk) just once.

• In the bottom of the second, Petrick grounded out to the shortstop, scoring Todd Hollandsworth from third.
• In the fourth, Petrick sacrifice flied out to center field, again scoring Hollandsworth from third.
• In the sixth, Petrick grounded out again to the shortstop. This time, nobody scored. If Butch Huskey hadn't preceded Petrick's appearance with a home run, instead opting for the more honorable triple, Petrick would have two more RBI without a hit than anyone else in history.
• In the eighth, Petrick decided to change things up. He grounded out to second base this time, again scoring the selfish Hollandsworth.
• In the ninth, Petrick came up with the bases loaded. He walked, scoring Todd Walker and forever etching his name into the history books.

How did I get the PI Report in question?

1. From the Play Index home page, click on Batting Game Finder.
2. Once there, click on the dropdown tab in the far-right column called "Sorted by:" and change it to "RBI."
3. Directly below that, under "Additional criteria to match," click any of the dropdown tabs called "Choose a stat" and select "H" for hits. Since it's already set for H = 0 (no hits in the game), we'll leave the rest of that row alone.
4. We're done. Click "Get Results" in that same far-right column to pull up the same query I've linked to.

My inspiration for this post?

Travis Hafner, who has gotten two RBI with zero hits twice already in 2007. Once on May 16, once on June 9.

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