The Colorado Rockies became the first team in Major League Baseball history to score a walk-off victory on a pitch-clock violation in an 8-7 win on Saturday night against the Washington Nationals (box score). Ryan McMahon secured his place in the record books when he was awarded the bases-loaded walk after Nationals reliever Kyle Finnegan failed to begin his delivery within the allotted 18 seconds. (Finnegan, for his part, delivered a pitch after the clock struck zero; said pitch didn't count, but missed the zone and would've led to the same result anyway.)
"I'm just trying to focus on the pitch and then location," Finnegan told reporters after the game. "I thought I picked up the clock. I guess by the time I picked up and looked at the catcher and delivered the pitch, I was just a hair too late. Those situations, it just can't happen. We deserved to win, and I wasn't able to do my job."
"The Rockies and the Nationals are part of history," Rockies manager Bud Black said. "How about that?"
MLB first installed the pitch clock prior to last season, giving pitchers up to 20 seconds before offerings when runners were on base. They modified that to 18 seconds this year. According to Baseball Reference's data, the Nationals are one of the three most frequent violators of the pitch clock, tied with the Milwaukee Brewers at 1.2 auto balls per 1,000 pitches.
The Nationals took a 7-5 lead in the top of the eighth inning when second baseman Luis García Jr. launched a two-run home run to break a tie. McMahon then hit his own home run, albeit a solo shot, to reduce that lead to 7-6 in the bottom of the eighth. The Rockies would plate two in the bottom of the ninth to steal the win: one on a Brenton Doyle single, then the other on McMahon's pitch-clock walk-off.
