Tuesday was Anthony Rizzo's first regular season game hitting leadoff. He responded by hitting a home run to lead off the game against the Mets. The Cubs won, 14-2, so he hit leadoff again on Wednesday. The Cubs lost, but Rizzo hit another leadoff homer—this time on the first pitch of the game.
In their 30 road games before Tuesday, the Cubs had zero leadoff home runs. Across baseball, 32 games have started with a home run. Rizzo is the sixth player to have multiple homers to leadoff a game; the other five are George Springer (3), Manuel Margot, Cesar Hernandez, Corey Dickerson, and Mookie Betts. While 32 games have started with a home run, 29 have ended with one. Bryce Harper is the only player with multiple walk-off homers this year. And George Springer is the only player with both.
Since 1979, the year that he made his big league debut, Rickey Henderson is the leader in home runs to start a game with 39. Alfonso Soriano (31), Jimmy Rollins (27), Curtis Granderson (26), Brady Anderson (23), and Craig Biggio (23) are next. 2016 saw 86 leadoff homers, 25 more than any previous year.
The leader for walk-off home runs since 1979 is Jim Thome with 13. Albert Pujols (12) and David Ortiz (11) are right behind him. Rizzo has three. 2,248 games have ended with a home run since then, while only 1,545 have started with one. Barry Bonds is one of only a few players to appear high on both lists; he hit nine leadoff homers and 10 walk-off shots.
Baseball is here! And more importantly, that means the over/under game is back. It seems as though everyone is an expert this time of year. Somehow we convince ourselves that we are better at predicting baseball outcomes than everyone else. Well, AFITB is putting that to the test for the third year in a row. Think you know more about baseball than us? You probably do. But go ahead and prove it anyway.