Nick Kurtz’s run of reaching base in 48 straight games ended Tuesday night when he went 0 for 4 with three strikeouts in a 4-1 loss to the Seattle Mariners.
Emerson Hancock retired Kurtz on a strikeout in the first inning, forced a fourth-inning lineout, then struck him out again in the sixth. Gabe Speier then fanned Kurtz in the eighth on his final chance to extend the streak.
The sequence stopped a streak that had tied Mark McGwire’s Athletics club record of 48 straight games set in 1996. Kurtz’s run was also the longest in the majors since Shin-Soo Choo reached base in 52 consecutive games in 2018.
The weight of the streak was in the numbers: Kurtz leads the majors with a.437 on-base percentage and 52 walks this season. He has eight home runs, 37 RBIs and a.270 batting average—production that underpinned his run of consistency at the plate.
Context matters: Ted Williams still owns the major-league record, reaching base in 84 straight games in 1949, a mark well beyond the modern runs currently being chased. But within the present season and recent memory, Kurtz’s 48 games were the clearest evidence of an elite ability to get on base.
There is a tension in the record itself. Reaching base in consecutive games is a blunt statistic—it counts hits, walks and hit-by-pitches alike—but it does not track the same kind of sustained power or run production every time. Kurtz’s streak combined patience and contact to pile up walks and on-base events; those same patient approaches can also leave him vulnerable to strikeouts, as Tuesday night demonstrated.
The end came without theatrics: three strikeouts, each recorded by a different hurler’s sequence, and a loss that left him unable to add another game to the ledger. For the Athletics, the streak trimming closed a chapter that had pushed the team record alongside McGwire’s decades-old mark and revived comparisons to Choo’s 2018 run for Texas.
What happens next is simple and consequential: the statistics remain. Kurtz still leads the majors in on-base percentage and walks and adds value every time he reaches. The 48-game streak will stay in the books as a rare stretch of sustained plate discipline and production—one that tied a franchise legend and stood as the longest major-league streak in eight years.
Nick Kurtz leaves this stretch having matched Mark McGwire’s club high and having written his name into the season’s ledger; the streak is over, but the numbers that made it possible—.437 OBP, 52 walks, eight homers, 37 RBIs—will keep him at the center of the season’s story lines going forward.
