Leadoff Home Runs in a 1-0 Game

Nick Markakis led off the bottom of the first inning in Baltimore today with a home run off of Seattle's Hisashi Iwakuma (video). Chris Tillman made it stand up with seven strong innings, then new acquisition Andrew Miller and Zach Britton closed it out for a 1-0 Orioles win.

Markakis notched his 1,500th career hit in his next at bat, but let's focus on the homer. It's pretty unusual for a leadoff dinger to represent the only scoring of a game. Of the more than 130,000 games for which we have play-by-play data (over 92 percent of games played since 1940), there have been 3,306 games in which the scoring was opened with a leadoff home run. Only 18 of those stood as the game's only tally: 

Date	Team	Opp	Home Run	Opp Pitcher	Winning Pitcher
8/3/2014	BAL	vs SEA	Nick Markakis	Hisashi Iwakuma	Chris Tillman (7 IP)
7/27/2013	CLE	vs TEX	Michael Bourn	Yu Darvish	Justin Masterson (7.2 IP)
5/18/2013	ARI	at MIA	Gerardo Parra	Tom Koehler	Brandon McCarthy (9 IP)
8/14/2012	PHI	at MIA	Jimmy Rollins	Josh Johnson	Kyle Kendrick (7 IP)
4/23/2009	SEA	vs TB	Ichiro Suzuki	James Shields	Felix Hernandez (7 IP)
5/9/2007	CHN	vs PIT	Alfonso Soriano	Tom Gorzelanny	Jason Marquis (9 IP)
5/12/2004	NYM	at ARI	Kazuo Matsui	Randy Johnson	Tom Glavine (7.2 IP)
9/14/1993	PIT	at FLA	Carlos Garcia	Chris Hammond	Paul Wagner (6 IP) (CG, Rain)
6/19/1992	SEA	at MIN	Greg Briley	Kevin Tapani	Dave Fleming (9 IP)
8/7/1991	SF	at ATL	Darren Lewis	Charlie Leibrandt	Bud Black (8 IP)
4/26/1981	HOU	vs CIN	Denny Walling	Mario Soto	Bob Knepper (9 IP)
8/25/1979	KC	vs BOS	Willie Wilson (ITP)	Mike Torrez	Dennis Leonard (9 IP)
5/20/1979	HOU	vs SD	Terry Puhl	Gaylord Perry	Rick Williams (9 IP)
4/26/1976	MIL	vs CAL	Don Money	Frank Tanana	Jim Colborn (8.1 IP)
9/7/1973	NYM	at MON	Wayne Garrett	Steve Renko	Jon Matlack (8.2 IP)
4/28/1973	SF	at STL	Bobby Bonds	Reggie Cleveland	Jim Willoughby (9 IP)
6/12/1969	PHI	at LAD	John Briggs	Bill Singer	Grant Jackson (9 IP)
9/2/1963	CIN	at NYN	Pete Rose	Jay Hook	Jim Maloney (9 IP)

10 of them were hit in the top of the first and eight came in the bottom of the first. Note Willie Wilson's inside-the-parker in 1979. That's not surprising, since 13 of his 41 career round-trippers stayed in the yard.

Four of the 18 have been hit within the last two years. Run-scoring is plummeting, and while home runs are down as well, they haven't come down at the same rate. I still don't expect these games to happen very often, but they'll probably occur more often than we're used to.