Welcome to The Opener, where every weekday morning you’ll get a fresh, topical column to start your day from one of SI.com’s MLB writers.
There are two primary ways that a line score can be interesting. The first involves weird numbers—uncommonly big, in most cases, like a bloated error total or an awkwardly high score. The second involves a weird cadence—innings with reasonable scoring totals grouped in a seemingly unreasonable order. This one is special. It is rarer than the first category, and it is also much richer, a mystery for anyone trying to decipher the game from the line score alone.