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12 hits and 1 run? How strange was the Red Sox win over the Guardians?

The Boston Red Sox delivered one of the most statistically unusual victories of the 2026 season with a 1-0 win over the Cleveland Guardians on September 23rd. The game stood out not just for its razor-thin margin but for the sheer volume of singles—12 in total—all of which contributed to the lone run.

This feat was so rare that it marked the only instance in 2026 where a team achieved at least 12 hits while scoring just one run, a statistical quirk that has occurred only 73 times since the Wild Card Era began in 1995. Even more striking, only five teams in that span have managed to win a game under these conditions, with the Red Sox joining the 2015 Pirates, 2014 Angels, 2000 Rangers, and 1997 Yankees in pulling off the improbable.

The Sox’s ability to sustain a win with such a high hit count but no extra-base hits—let alone a single home run—further cements this as an outlier in modern baseball history. Dating back to 1898, only 368 games have matched this bizarre combination, with teams winning just 22 of them.

The Red Sox’s accomplishment, therefore, wasn’t just a fluke—it was a historical oddity that even defies the odds of small-sample anomalies.

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