Our weekly look at the interesting and unusual in MLB couldn't help but notice the "hits" column.

• Although there hasn't been a no-hitter since Tim Lincecum's on June 25, this week kept us on watch. Since Monday we've seen more than a dozen no-hit bids get into the fifth inning-- including Saturday's game between the Houston Astros and Texas Rangers where both pitchers did it. Four of those bids persisted into the seventh inning, and two into the eighth.

One of the two was Tuesday's gem by Madison Bumgarner, who retired 21 straight Colorado Rockies before Justin Morneau doubled to start the eighth. That would be Colorado's only baserunner as Bumgarner fanned 13 and walked zero. It was the third game in Rockies history where their only hit was a double; the last was against Tom Glavine and the Mets on May 23, 2004 (the double was by Kit Pellow).

Lincecum issued one walk in his no-hitter, and Ryan Vogelsong faced just 28 batters in a complete game August 1.

• That makes the Giants just the second team in the live-ball era to have three 28-batter, nine-inning complete games in the same season; Joel Piñeiro and Chris Carpenter teamed up for the Cardinals in 2009.

More From This Week

• Speaking of one double, the New York Yankees were held to that in Saturday's loss to the Toronto Blue Jays. The last time the Yankees were one- (or no-) hit at all was on September 4, 2009, also by the Jays, and a double (by Ramiro Peña) was also the one hit. The last such game where they struck out 12 times was on June 11, 2003, when they were on the wrong end of the Astros' six-pitcher no-hitter.

All's fair in love and the American League East, however. The Boston Red Sox also got one-hit on Saturday by the Tampa Bay Rays, the blemish being Will Middlebrooks' fourth-inning single. It's the third time Boston's been one-hit this season, their most since 1992.

Middlebrooks entered the game after Dustin Pedroia was involved in a collision. Nine days earlier, Middlebrooks had the lone hit in another one-hitter, against the Angels, and also off the bench.

That makes the Red Sox the first team in at least 100 years to have a bench player provide their only hit twice. (Brandon Inge had Pittsburgh's only hit twice last season, but he started one of the games.)

Saturday was just the second time the AL East rivals had both been one-hit on the same day. The other was May 25, 1989, when Chuck Finley of the Angels shut out Boston, and Todd Burns and two A's relievers blanked the Yankees (whose lone hit was by Rickey Henderson).

• Jorge Soler had one big hit this week also. On Wednesday the Chicago Cubs' highly-touted 21-year-old sent the fourth pitch he saw in the majors over the wall in Cincinnati and became the first Cubs batter since Starlin Castro (2010) to homer in his first plate appearance. He's the fifth Cuban-born player to homer in his first game in the bigs. The others are Rays minor-leaguer Eddy Rodriguez (who played two games with the Padres in 2012), Kendrys Morales (2006), A's legend Bert Campaneris (1964), and Phillies outfielder Tony Gonzalez (1960).

Two games later, Soler hit two more homers, one of only two players this season to have a multi-homer outing within his first three MLB games. The other is his teammate, 22-year-old Javier Baez (August 7). Baez also had one homer in his debut; together they made the Cubs the first team ever to have two players, each 22 or younger, homer in their major-league debuts in the same season.

• From one-hit wonders to the team that's never had a no-hitter, we couldn't end without mentioning the San Diego Padres.

Rene Rivera on Wednesday, Yasmani Grandal on Friday, and Alexi Amarista on Saturday all hit extra-inning singles around an off-day on Thursday. It was the Padres' first streak of three walk-off wins since doing four straight from April 13-16, 1986, and the first time they've ever had three straight in extra innings. Their weekend opponent, the Dodgers, hadn't lost consecutive extra-inning games via walk-off since August 2003. Of the Padres' 10 walk-offs this year, seven have been in extras, one shy of their team record set in 2006.