Anibal Sanchez has given up three home runs before. He did it last month in Pittsburgh, in fact. He had never given up three homers in an inning.
On Tuesday, he gave up home runs to three consecutive batters, nine pitches apart.
“Today is one of those days when everything happens so fast, you don’t realize what happened,” he said afterwards.
The home-run trend this season, by contrast, has been long developing, though it seemed to be done until Tuesday. He gave up seven home runs in Spring Training, then five homers in a two-start span in mid-April.