June 16, 2015: Brock Holt, Mookie Betts chase cycles as Red Sox end losing streak

In mid-June 2015, the Boston Red Sox were trying to end a seven-game skid. In last place in the American League East Division, they had been swept in back-to-back series by two of their divisional foes, the Baltimore Orioles and Toronto Blue Jays.

Four consecutive interleague games against the Atlanta Braves were next. The first two were in Boston, followed by two in Atlanta.

After playing .500 baseball for the first two months of the season (25-25), Atlanta had started to dip in June. The Braves came to Boston stuck in third place in the National League East. They won the opener on June 15, 4-2, for the Red Sox’ seventh straight loss.

A Fenway Park crowd of 35,662 turned out for Tuesday’s miniseries finale, a late afternoon start on a travel day. They saw big days from two Red Sox – Brock Holt, an All-Star-bound utilityman, and Mookie Betts, an emerging star – as Boston overpowered Atlanta with an 18-hit attack and snapped the losing streak.

Lefthander Wade Miley started for Boston. He had been traded to the Red Sox in the offseason, after four seasons with the Arizona Diamondbacks.1 Miley’s 5-6 record reflected inconsistent work. He had earned the win in four of his past six starts, going at least 6⅔ innings and allowing two or fewer earned runs in each, but had not made it to the fifth the other two times out, including his last start, against the Orioles.

Atlanta manager Fredi Gonzalez gave the start to Julio Teheran. The 24-year-old Teheran was a 2014 All-Star and had twice started on Opening Day for the Braves. His 4.78 ERA coming into the game, however, was nearly two runs higher than his 2014 total. Teheran was in search of his fifth win of the season.

Miley pitched a perfect first inning, but Teheran was not so lucky. Boston second baseman Holt – weeks from being selected to the American League All-Star team for his super-utility work in seven positions – was playing for injured second baseman Dustin Pedroia.2 Holt led off the bottom of the first by lining a two-strike pitch off the scoreboard in left field for a double. This brought up Betts, who at age 22 was Boston’s everyday center fielder in his first full major-league season.3 After taking a strike, Betts traded places with Holt with an RBI double to the gap in left-center.

David Ortiz walked and Xander Bogarts singled up the middle to load the bases, still with no outs. Pablo Sandoval grounded into a double play, with Betts scoring Boston’s second run.

Miley continued his success, working around Nick Markakis’s second-inning single with three strikeouts. Both pitchers efficiently pitched three-up, three-down innings until the top of the fourth, when the Braves rallied to tie the game. Cameron Maybin led off with a walk and took second on a wild pitch by Miley. Freddie Freeman lined the ball deep down the right-field line for a run-plating-double. The Braves then manufactured the tying run, as Freeman moved to third on Jonny Gomes’s fly out and scored when Markakis grounded out to second.

Holt, who had grounded out in the third inning, came to the plate with two down in the bottom of the fifth and singled to right. With Betts batting (he had also grounded out in the third), Holt was caught trying to steal second base, ending the inning, so the game remained tied.

That meant that Betts led off the bottom of the sixth. He stroked a fly ball to left-center and legged out a triple. An out later, Bogaerts hit a dribbler to second baseman Jace Peterson, who threw home in an attempt to get Betts coming from third base. Betts was safe, but catcher Ryan Lavarnway threw to second in time to catch Bogaerts, who was trying to advance on the play. Teheran was then touched for another single and two doubles. Alejandro da Aza’s two-bagger resulted in a pair of Red Sox runs and a 5-2 lead.

Miley struck out Chris Johnson to start the seventh inning, but after back-to-back singles by Juan Uribe and Pedro Ciriaco, Boston manager John Farrell made a pitching change. Junichi Tazawa relieved Miley. Tazawa retired A.J. Pierzynski and Peterson, keeping the runners from scoring.

With one out in the home half, Holt launched an opposite-field home run into the left-field seats atop the Green Monster, giving the Red Sox a 6-2 lead. It was his second (and final) home run of the season.4 (Before this game, Holt had never hit a ball into the Monster seats;5 in fact, he had not homered at all since April 24, a stretch of 117 at-bats.) Betts singled to right. Ortiz also singled, putting Red Sox runners at the corners, but Bogaerts bounced into an inning-ending double play.

With the end of the seventh inning, the “Red Sox dugout was on a Mookie Betts watch.”6 Betts had a single, double, and triple in his four at-bats. Meanwhile, Holt also had three hits, but his missing piece of the cycle was a triple, so Betts appeared the better bet to enter the history books by hitting for the cycle.

Each hitter got his chance as Boston had another “flurry of runs”7 in the eighth inning. Sugar Ray Marimon was the new Atlanta pitcher. Sandoval doubled to start the offense. After Napoli flied out, de Aza lined a triple down the right-field line, and Sandoval scored easily. Marimon retired Blake Swihart on a comeback-grounder, but Rusney Castillo kept the rally going with an RBI single deep into the hole at short.

Needing that triple to hit for the cycle, Holt settled into the batter’s box. He drove an 0-and-1 fastball toward Fenway’s triangle in center field. The ball one-hopped high off the wall, just to the left of the garage door, and came down into Maybin’s outstretched throwing hand, but Holt had been running hard out of the batter’s box and would not be denied his three-bagger.

Boston television announcer Don Orsillo exclaimed, “[T]he Brock Star hits for the cycle.” Co-host Jerry Remy added, “You knew as soon as this ball left the bat, he had three. There was no question about it.”8

Holt was halfway between second base and third before Maybin hit the relay man. In the locker room after the game, Holt told reporters, “Obviously, I knew I needed a triple, I didn’t expect to hit one. But as soon as my barrel hit ball, it was, ‘Oh, my God.’”9 Castillo scored Boston’s ninth run of the game on the play.

Then it was Betts’s turn to swing his bat. Due to the Betts watch, he seemed to notice “all the eyes on him from the dugout.”10 After the game he said, “Everybody was kind of looking at me. Then I looked up at the scoreboard and saw it. At that point, I was pretty much trying to hit a homer.”11 He swung at a two-ball pitch from Marimon and lofted it into center field. The ball did not leave the park but instead settled into Maybin’s glove for the final out of the inning.

Atlanta narrowed the margin of defeat with a ninth-inning flurry. Koji Uehara was now on the mound for Boston. With one out, Uehara gave up two runs on three consecutive doubles, to Uribe, Ciriaco, and Pierzynski. Peterson flied out, but Atlanta kept fighting. Maybin reached on an infield single, sending Pierzynski to third. With Freeman batting, Maybin took second base on defensive indifference. Finally, Uehara struck out Freeman to end the game and preserve the victory for Boston.

In the 9-4 win, the Red Sox matched a season-high 18 hits. Every batter contributed a hit, and six Boston batters recorded multiple safeties, led by Holt and Betts. Betts kept on hitting, and on June 23 was named American League Player of the Week.12 And Boston’s losing streak was over. Holt said, “I think today was a good day offensively for us. We’ve just got to kind of take the mind-set going forward.”13 Not known for his power, in one game he had raised his slugging percentage 53 points, from .401 to .454, and his batting average from .293 to .309.14

Miley had held the Braves to two runs on five hits through 6⅓ innings pitched. His dominance included eight strikeouts. He had retired nine of the first 10 Atlanta batters.

Teheran also pitched 6⅓ innings, but he was tagged for 13 hits and six earned runs. This was his fifth straight start without a victory. His earned-run average shot up to 5.07, Miley’s pregame mark.15

The two teams also split the series in Atlanta. For the remainder of the season, neither could improve its place in the standings; Boston finished in last place in the AL East, while Atlanta dropped to fourth in the NL East (even though the Red Sox finished the 2015 with 11 more victories than the Braves).

Author’s Notes 

Fun fact number one: Holt completed the cycle by keeping it “in the family.”16 His first three hits (double, single, and home run) were off Teheran, and the cycle-completing triple came against Marimon, Teheran’s second cousin.

Fun fact number two: Three seasons later, Mookie Betts did accomplish the rare feat of hitting for the cycle. On August 9, 2018, Betts joined the Cycle Club, unfortunately in a losing cause to the Toronto Blue Jays.

Fun fact number three: Holt became the first Red Sox player to hit for the cycle since John Valentin on June 6, 1996. Holt’s accomplishment marked the 21st time in franchise history that a Red Sox batter had hit for the cycle. It was the first of four cycles in 2015; the others were accomplished by Shin-Soo Choo (Texas Rangers, July 21), Adrián Beltré (Texas Rangers, August 3), and Matt Kemp (San Diego Padres, August 14).

Fun fact number four: On October 8, 2018, Brock Holt became the first player to hit for the cycle in the postseason, when he did so in Game Three of the American League Division Series against the New York Yankees. It was his second career cycle. As of the end of the 2022 regular season, Holt remained the only player to have hit for the cycle in the postseason.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Bruce Slutsky and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources  

In addition to the sources mentioned in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com, MLB.com, Retrosheet.org, and SABR.org.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS201506160.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2015/B06160BOS2015.htm

Video highlights of Holt’s 2015 cycle can be viewed at https://www.mlb.com/video/holt-hits-for-the-cycle-c169253483.

Notes

1 Miley was traded by the Diamondbacks to the Red Sox on December 12, 2014, for Rubby de la Rosa, Allen Webster, and Raymel Flores.

2 Holt entered the season without a true defined role with the Red Sox, but he gained a good deal of playing time, either due to injuries to teammates or just to give others a rest.

3 Betts was returning from an injury himself (lower back strain) and entered play hitting just .182 with three extra-base hits (one homer) in his last 10 starts. However, he was 5-for-9 in his last three games and seemed to be heating up.

4 Holt played in 751 major-league games and hit 17 triples and 25 homers.

5 Julian Benbow, “Holt’s Cycle Helps Sox Halt Skid at Seven,” Boston Globe, June 17, 2015: D1, D5.

6 Benbow.

7 Benbow.

8 Don Orsillo and Jerry Remy, June 16, 2015, Boston Red Sox broadcast, found online at https://www.mlb.com/video/holt-hits-for-the-cycle-c169253483. Accessed November 2022.

9 Benbow.

10 Benbow.

11 Benbow.

12 Betts tied his career high with three hits in the game. For the week, Betts was 18-for-31 (.581) with three doubles, two triples, two home runs, eight runs scored and seven runs batted in. He amassed 31 total bases.

13 Benbow.

14 This was only Holt’s second full season in the majors. In 2014 he batted .281, with just 4 homers and 29 RBIs (in 449 at-bats), and only 25 percent of his hits went for extra bases (32 out of 126). In 2015 he batted .280, with 2 round-trippers and 45 RBIs (in 454 at-bats), and only 28 percent of his hits went for extra bases (35 out of 127). His performance also kept him in the Boston lineup, and he finished the season with 129 appearances.

15 Teheran’s road ERA soared to a National-League worst 7.59 (see O’Brien).

16 David O’Brien, “Another Rough Teheran Start,” Atlanta Constitution, June 17, 2015: C1, C5.