Month: October 2012

Tyler Herr to play for Sydney Blue Sox

Tyler Herr

The Sydney Blue Sox of the Australian Baseball League have announced that Twins farm-hand Tyler Herr will be their first import player from the United States and will join the team as they prepare to start their season. ABL teams are allowed to have up to six import players on the 35-man roster, and a maximum of four import players in the lineup at any given time. The 21-year old right-hander was a Twins 44th round pick in 2009 and has been in the Twins organization for 3 years playing for the GCL Twins in 2010-2011 and for the Elizabethton Twins this past season. With the E-Twins this year the 6’8″ Herr came out of the bullpen 21 times and posted a 3-0 record with a 2.56 ERA and struckout 29 batters in 31.2 innings.

Sydney’s ABL team will be working under new manager Jason “Pops” Pospishil, a current coach with the Minnesota Twins minor league system. Penrith local Pospishil will be preparing the Blue Sox for a three-game exhibition series against Australia from the 26th-28th of October. The Australia Series will serve as a warm-up for the forty-nine game Australian Baseball League schedule, with the three-game home opener against the Brisbane Bandits from November 9-11th.

This Day in Twins History – October 2

10/2/1974 – Harmon Killebrew wears the Twins uniform for the last time as a Twins player and appears as a pinch-hitter with two out in the bottom of the ninth but takes a called third strike from Steve Foucault for the final out of the game and the 1974 season. Only 2,570 fans see Harmon play his last game as a Minnesota Twin. Texas Rangers manager Billy Martin elects not use a designated hitter, and allows starting pitcher Ferguson Jenkins to bat for himself. Although Fergie gets a hit in the Texas 2-1 victory over the Twins at Metropolitan Stadium, the Rangers manager refusal to use a DH prevents the position from being employed for the entire game according to the rules.

10/2/1981 – The HHH Metrodome is inflated for the first time. It took two hours to inflate over 310 tons of fabric, covering the world’s largest air-supported multi-use stadium.

10/2/1988 – The Twins draw 35,952 fans in their season finale against the California Angels to become the first American League team to pass 3 million in attendance in a single season. They finish the season with a total attendance of 3,030,672. By the way, the Twins won the game 3-2.

10/2/1992 – Chili Davis hits home runs from each side of the plate against the Royals at Kauffman Stadium in a 5-1 Twins victory and becomes only the second Twins batter to accomplish this feat.

10/2/2002 – The Twins lose game 2 of the 2002 ALDS in Oakland to the A’s by a score of 9-1. Joe Mays was the losing pitcher and the Twins scored their only run on a Christian Guzman home run.

10/2/2004 – The game against the Indians at the Metrodome was suspended after 11 innings with the game tied at 5 because the playing surface had to be prepared for a Gophers football game. I was there and walked away feeling like I got cheated, baseball games are not supposed to end in a tie. The Twins won the game 6-5 in the 12th inning the next day. Kyle Lohse who pitched the 12th inning was the winning pitcher and he went on to start the regularly scheduled game for that day but he only lasted 4 innings and was the losing pitcher. Box score for suspended game.

10/2/2009 – Joe Nathan recorded his 46th save of the season and in the process broke the club single season save record held by Eddie Guardado who had 45 saves in 2002. Joe finished the 2009 regular season with 47 saves

Don’t forget to stop by daily and check out what transpired on our Today in Twins History page.