Baseball Reference Confirms Longest Last Name Pitching Matchup In MLB History

On Tuesday night, the stars aligned to give baseball fans one of the strangest pitching matchups in the history of Major League Baseball.

In the second leg of a three-game series at Target Field, the Atlanta Braves had rookie Spencer Schwellenbach as the starter, while the Minnesota Twins gave the ball to Simeon Woods Richardson. While it was not an All-Star pitching matchup, it's one that made MLB history, alphabetically speaking.

“Can confirm: Schwellenbach vs. Woods Richardson is the longest last name SP matchup in our database 😳,” the X (formerly Twitter) account of Baseball Reference posted.

Baseball Reference’s post was a reaction to the research done by Lindsay Crosby of First Pitch , who said he couldn’t find a starting pitching matchup whose last names are longer than the 29 characters from the combined surnames of Schwellenbach and Woods Richardson.

As for the actual pitching matchup, Schwellenbach came up with a better performance. Schwellenbach pitched 4.2 scoreless innings while allowing three walks and striking out eight Twins. Woods Richardson, on the other hand, gave up four earned runs on three hits with three free passes issued and three punchouts.

Atlanta won the game, 8-6, to improve to 72-60. Minnesota dropped to 72-60.

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