August 8, 2016: Giants’ Brandon Crawford records 7 hits in a game, becomes fifth NL/AL player to reach milestone

The Miami Marlins began their home series against the San Francisco Giants in August 2016 with a pregame celebration. The previous day, August 7, Miami’s 42-year-old Ichiro Suzuki tripled for his 3,000th major-league hit in the Marlins’ road trip-capping 10-7 win over the Colorado Rockies. Ichiro presented his jersey, gloves, cleats and elbow pad from that game to National Baseball Hall of Fame President Jeff Idelson, who told the Marlins Park crowd, “Ichiro is a renaissance man. There’s no current player I’ve encountered that has as deep an appreciation for baseball as Ichiro does.”1

Both the Giants and Marlins were in the postseason chase. San Francisco was 64-48, one game ahead of their National League West Division rival Los Angeles Dodgers. The Giants led by 6½ games at the All-Star break but had gone 6-15 since then. Miami returned home with a 59-52 record, one-half game ahead of the St. Louis Cardinals for the NL’s second wild-card spot. The Marlins had climbed into second place in the NL East Division after the All-Star Game but remained seven games behind the Washington Nationals.

The Giants took the field without manager Bruce Bochy, who had been admitted to the hospital earlier in the day.2 Bench coach Ron Wotus – a member of San Francisco’s coaching staff since 1998 – managed in Bochy’s absence. “We talk all year about the lineup,” said Wotus, who texted Bochy a lineup before the game. “I just told him the lineup we expected to use and he said it was a go.”3

Batting fifth on Wotus’s lineup card was 29-year-old Brandon Crawford, a Bay Area native and the Giants’ starting shortstop since their 2012 World Series championship season. In the 2014 NL Wild Card Game, Crawford had hit the first grand slam by a shortstop in National or American League postseason history, a key blow in San Francisco’s drive to its third title in five seasons, and he received Gold Glove and Silver Slugger honors in 2015. Crawford was hitting .265 in 2016, 16 points above his career average to that point. With 10 home runs, he had already attained his third consecutive double-digit homer campaign.

Against 24-year-old Marlins right-hander José Fernández, Crawford recorded the Giants’ only hits in the first four innings: a second-inning infield single and fourth-inning double down the first-base line.4 Fernández, making a comeback in 2016 after missing most of the previous two seasons as he recovered from Tommy John surgery, earned his second career All-Star selection and entered the game 12-6 with a 2.87 ERA.5 He began the day with 192 strikeouts, second in the NL to Washington’s Max Scherzer. Besides Crawford’s two hits, Fernández’s four scoreless innings to begin the game included two walks and three more strikeouts.

Another 2016 All-Star, Johnny Cueto, started for the Giants.6 The 30-year-old right-hander had signed with San Francisco in the offseason. He spent eight years with the Cincinnati Reds before being dealt to the Kansas City Royals at the 2015 trade deadline.7 Cueto entered the game with a 13-3 record and 2.73 ERA.

Miami’s Dee Strange-Gordon let off the bottom of the first with a single and attempted to steal second. Catcher Buster Posey grabbed Cueto’s pitch in the dirt and, from his knees, threw behind batter Christian Yelich to Crawford, who tagged Strange-Gordon. Second base umpire Cory Blaser called Strange-Gordon out, but Miami manager Don Mattingly challenged the call and it was overturned.

Cueto struck out Yelich and Giancarlo Stanton to strand Strange-Gordon. He retired the next six Marlins before getting into trouble in the fourth.

Martín Prado led off with a walk. Yelich doubled, scoring Prado. Stanton singled to score Yelich. Cueto hit Marcell Ozuna before striking out the next two batters and getting Adeiny Hechavarría to ground out to end the frame, but the Marlins were ahead, 2-0.

The Giants broke through against Fernández in the fifth when Denard Span singled and scored on Posey’s double. Crawford ended the frame by striking out, the only time he failed to get on base in the game.

Miami responded with a power display in the bottom of the inning. Fernández, a .243 hitter on the season, led off with a single.8 One out later, Prado connected on his sixth homer of the season, and Yelich followed with his 12th home run, giving the Marlins a 5-1 lead. It was second consecutive start that Cueto had given up back-to-back home runs.9

Fernández pitched around Eduardo Nuñez’s two-out single for a scoreless sixth.10 His pitch count was 106, and Mattingly pinch-hit Ichiro for Fernández with Derek Dietrich on second and two outs in the sixth. Ichiro’s groundout ended the inning, and Miami’s relief corps were entrusted with the four-run lead in the top of the seventh.11

The first Marlin out of the bullpen was rookie left-hander Hunter Cervenka. He gave up a pair of singles and Brandon Belt’s two-run double to narrow Miami’s lead to two.

Mattingly brought in another rookie, right-hander Nick Wittgren. Posey drove in Belt with a single, then took third on Crawford’s third hit of the game, a single that bounced between first baseman Dietrich and second baseman Strange-Gordon and into right.12 Hunter Pence singled home Posey with the tying run. After Joe Panik’s sacrifice left runners at second and third, Mattingly called on right-hander Brian Ellington. Ellington’s first pitch was wild, scoring Crawford to give San Francisco a 6-5 lead.

The Giants’ five-run seventh was the first of three successive bullpen breakdowns. Wotus called on lefty Will Smith in the seventh. Three batters later – Strange-Gordon’s single, Prado’s double, and Yelich’s two-run single – Miami had retaken a 7-6 lead.

Mattingly’s next reliever, rookie righty Kyle Barraclough, walked Span and Ángel Pagán to begin the eighth, then struck out Belt and Posey. Crawford hit a looping liner to right that fell just out of Stanton’s reach for a single.13 His fourth hit of the night scored Span and tied the score, 7-7.

At this point, relievers on both sides found their bearings, and the teams matched zeros through the 13th inning. Wotus turned to Sergio Romo for a scoreless eighth, Hunter Strickland in the ninth and 10th, Santiago Casilla in the 11th and 12th, and George Kontos in the 13th.

Mattingly’s relievers – Fernando Rodney in the ninth, Mike Dunn in the 10th and part of the 11th, and Dustin McGowan during the 11th – likewise contained the Giants, even as Crawford continued to rack up hit after hit.

In the 11th, Posey led off with a walk against Dunn, and Crawford lined a single to center for his fifth hit of the game. Posey reached third but ended up with abrasions on his face and a jammed finger “as his face beat the throw to the bag,” noted the San Francisco Examiner.14

McGowan replaced Dunn and struck out Pence. The Giants loaded the bases when Panik was intentionally walked, but McGowan got out of the inning on two groundouts.

With one out in the 13th, Crawford drove McGowan’s pitch into the right-field corner and raced to third, beating the relay throw with a head-first slide.15 The triple, his seventh of the season, made Crawford the first Giant with a six-hit game since Mike Benjamin in 1995.16 Two intentional walks loaded the bases. Giants starting pitcher Madison Bumgarner hit for Casilla. Bumgarner, whose 11 hits so far in 2016 included two home runs, struck out to end the scoring threat.

McGowan picked up two outs in the 14th when Pagán’s double play erased Span’s leadoff single. But Belt and Posey walked, pushing McGowan’s 3⅔-inning pitch count to 62. Mattingly called on righty Andrew Cashner, the Marlins’ starting pitcher two days earlier in Colorado,17 to face Crawford.

Crawford lined Cashner’s second pitch into center for a single, giving him a 7-for-8 night and the Giants an 8-7 lead when Belt crossed the plate ahead of Ozuna’s throw. Kontos pitched a scoreless 14th inning, and the Giants finally earned the win after  five hours and 34 minutes.

San Francisco left 18 on base. Wotus and Mattingly used 21 players each. Outside of starting pitchers, only one Giant, reliever Javier López, did not play. “Boch[y] picked a heck of a day to take off, didn’t he,” said Wotus.18

Crawford had been struggling at the plate, getting just six hits in his previous 35 at-bats. “I got a couple to drop in and squeak past and then I hit a few balls hard that found holes,” he said. “That’s just baseball. One day you feel like you can’t square anything up and the next day you get a couple that squeak through and you barrel a couple up.”19

Crawford became the first player since Rennie Stennett of the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1975 with at least seven hits in a game and the fifth National or American Leaguer to accomplish that feat since 1901.20

The win kept the Giants in first place in NL West. But they struggled through the rest of August. After two four-game losing streaks, they fell behind the Dodgers. Despite their second-place finish, the Giants made the postseason but lost to the eventual World Series champion Chicago Cubs in the NL Division Series.21

Crawford hit .295 from his seven-hit game through the end of the 2016 season. His final .275 average, 67 runs scored, and 11 triples set career highs, and his 84 RBIs matched his career best from the previous season.22 He received his second consecutive Gold Glove and finished 12th in the NL’s MVP voting.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Bruce Slutsky and copy-edited by Keith Thursby.

Photo credit: Brandon Crawford, Trading Card Database.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author used Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for the box score and other material.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/MIA/MIA201608080.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2016/B08080MIA2016.htm

Notes

1 Andre Fernandez, “Ichiro Donates Uniform to Cooperstown,” Miami Herald, August 9, 2016: B1. Ichiro was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2025.

2 The team did not disclose the reason for Bochy’s hospitalization at the time. Bochy had two stents placed in his heart to remedy blockages back in 2015. “Giants Manager Bruce Bochy Admitted to Hospital,” ktvu.com, August 8, 2016, https://www.ktvu.com/sports/giants-manager-bruce-bochy-admitted-to-hospital.

3 “Bochy Hospitalized in Miami,” Palm Beach Post, August 9, 2016: C1.

4 “SF@MIA: Crawford Makes History with Seven Hits,” YouTube video (MLB.com), 1:20, accessed May 17, 2026, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48cgT86_YtY.

5 Fernandez pitched 1⅓ innings in the All-Star Game and gave up one run on two hits.

6 Cueto started for the National League. He allowed three runs and five hits in 1⅔ innings.

7 The Reds traded Cueto with cash for Brandon Finnegan, John Lamb and Cody Reed on July 26, 2015.

8 Fernández had homered against San Francisco’s Matt Cain in July 2015.

9 Ryan Howard and Cameron Rupp of the Philadelphia Phillies hit back-to-back homers against Cueto in the seventh inning of a no-decision on August 3.

10 San Francisco acquired Núñez from the Minnesota Twins on July 28, 2016, to provide infield depth and speed for a postseason push due to injuries to starters Matt Duffy and Joe Panik

11 Fernández made seven more starts before dying in a boating crash in Miami Beach, Florida, on September 25.

12 “SF@MIA: Crawford Makes History with Seven Hits.”

13 “SF@MIA: Crawford Makes History with Seven Hits,”

14 “Crawford Makes History,” San Francisco Examiner, August 9, 2016: A9; “SF@MIA: Crawford Makes History with Seven Hits.”

15 “SF@MIA: Crawford Makes History with Seven Hits,”

16 Benjamin, playing third base, went 6-for-7 in the Giants’ 4-3 win over the Chicago Cubs in 13 innings on June 14, 1995. Five other Giants (besides Benjamin) had six hits in one game: Kip Selbach on June 9, 1901; Dave Bancroft on June 28, 1920; Frankie Frisch on September 10, 1924; Jesús Alou on July 10, 1964; and Andrew McCutchen on April 7, 2018.

17 Cashner allowed seven runs in five innings and took the loss on August 6.

18 Henry Schulman, “Crawford Delivers Win with His 7th Hit.” The Giants’ win was credited to Bochy despite his being absent from the dugout. The team announced that he would be back in the dugout for the next game.

19 Patrick Pinak, “Crawford sets Giants record with 7 hits,” MLB.com, August 9, 2016, https://www.mlb.com/news/brandon-crawford-1st-giants-player-with-7-hits-c194390562.

20 Stennett is the only National or American League player since 1901 with seven hits in a nine-inning game. Johnny Burnett of the Cleveland Indians had nine hits in an 18-inning game in July 1932. Rocky Colavito of the Detroit Tigers had seven hits in a 22-inning game in June 1962, and the Tigers’ César Gutiérrez had seven hits in a 12-inning game in June 1970. Stennett and Gutiérrez were the only players to go 7-for-7 in a game.

21 Miami failed to make the postseason when they fell to third in the division when they were 12-21 over the final five weeks of the season.

22 In 2021 Crawford established new career highs in batting average (.298), runs (79), and RBIs (90). Outside of a 28-game stint with the Cardinals in 2024, he spent his entire career with the Giants.