Giants' Brandon Belt Works Historic 21-Pitch Plate Appearance, To No Avail

Brandon Belt of the Giants worked an insane 13-minute, 21-pitch plate appearance in the top of the first inning today, against Angels starter Jaime Barria. This strikes me as almost a troll move! Barria faced six batters in the inning, gave up three singles, and loaded the bases—he threw 28 pitches to players not named Brandon Belt! And Belt didn’t even get on base! The at-bat ended with a harmless line out to right field.

Here is the ridiculous at-bat, which featured 16 foul balls, including 11 straight. Note that this sped-up video is almost two minutes long:

Hey, how about some graphics?

MLB.com says Belt’s plate appearance was the longest, in terms of pitches thrown, in the last 20 years. Poor Barria was called up to the majors today, as a spot starter for the Angels. I think it I were him, I would want to intentionally walk Belt in his next plate appearance. Or serve him a grapefruit. Or plunk him. Anything but endure another marathon standoff.