Giovanny Urshela now has a 12-game hitting streak, the second longest by any player on the Indians this season, behind only Jason Kipnis' MLB-best 20-game streak that ended a few days ago. As hitting streaks go, 12 games is a nice one, but not especially notable, as while it is the 2nd-longest the Indians have had this year, it's only tied for 23rd league wide.
What makes Urshela's streak worth mentioning is that it has the strange distinction of having including exactly one hit in each of those twelve games.
During Kipnis' streak, he had 6 multi-hit games, and he hit .400/.489/.507. During Urshela's streak, which has including 11 singles and a home run, and featured only 2 walks, he's batting .293/.326/.366. His wRC+ for those 12 games is 98, which means that despite hitting safely in all dozen contests, he's actually been a slightly below average hitter. (Not that I would complain about an average hitting with plus defense at third base who's only a rookie.)
Even having exactly one hit in each game of the streak wouldn't seem worth pointing out, if not for Urshela's current exactly-one-hit hitting streak being the longest in franchise history since at least 1914 (which is as far back as Baseball-Reference has game-by-game data.
That's right, none of us has ever watched a Tribe hitter do what Monstro has done during the last two weeks.
The previous record belonged to Rocky Colavito, who had exactly one hit in 11 straight games back in 1958. Ray Chapman in 1918 and Ray Mack in 1940 each had a 10-game streak of this sort, while 8 games each by Michael Brantley and Carlos Santana represented the previous longest streak by a current Tribe player.
Longest one-hit hitting streaks since 1914:
- 1) Ted Sizemore (1975): 16 games
- t2) Alex Gonzalez (2005): 15 games
- t2) Jimmy Rollins (2014): 15 games
- t4) Larry Doyle (1917): 14 games
- t4) Red Schoendienst (1958): 14 games
- t4) Don Blasingame (1962): 14 games
- t4) Brian Downing (1987): 14 games
- t8) Dee Fondy (1957): 13 games
- t8) Jeff Gardner (1993): 13 games
- t8) Dante Bichette (1995): 13 games
- t8) Willy Aybar (2006): 13 games
I wouldn't be upset if Urshela collected 3 or 4 hits each of the next couple games, but I kind of hope he just gets one.