TWINS TRIVIA is hopefully a fun and informative site that will help you to better enjoy the Minnesota Twins and their wonderful history. “History never looks like history when you are living through it” – John Gardner, former Secretary of Health
Phil Hughes struck out six without walking a batter over seven innings, earning a victory in the Twins’ 4-1 win over the Royals at Target Field last night. It was the 13th start this season in which Hughes didn’t issue a base on balls, the highest such total in the majors. The only other pitchers in double figures are Hisashi Iwakuma (11) and Tim Hudson (10).
The Twins record for most starts in a season with no walks is held by Carlos Silva who had 18 games with no walks in 2005. That same season, Brad Radke had 17 starts with no walks. That same year Johan Santana and Joe Mays had seven games with walks and Kyle Lohse had six games with no bases on balls. Twins opponents had to hit their way on base back then. In 2005 Twins starters had a total of 58 games where they did not walk a batter and is an all time best. In 2014 Twins starters have 30 games todate with no walks. The Twins worst season for starters not allowing a walk was back in 1976 when they had only six games with zero walks.
Josh Willingham knocked in three runs in his first game against his former team in the Royals’ win over the Twins last night. Willingham is the fifth former Twins player to drive in at least three runs in his first game against his former team and that game was played in Minnesota. The others to do that were Russ Nixon in 1968, Don Baylor in 1988, Darrin Jackson in 1997 and Carlos Gomez in 2010.
In 14 years in the majors I pitched in 602 games but started just 69 of them. That in itself is kind of strange because when I started my big league career with the Giants my first two games in the big leagues were complete game shutouts. In the next three starts I gave up a total of four earned runs but lost all three games.
I pitched for the Minnesota Twins for six seasons. In those six seasons I pitched in 327 games and never started a single game. In those 327 games I pitched more innings and won more games than any pitcher in Twins history that had zero starts on his resume. Who am I?
Now that our mystery pitcher has been identified, you can learn more about him in aJanuary 2010 interviewI did with him.
Joe Mauer‘s first-inning single was the 1,500th hit of his career and his sixth-inning homer gave the Twins a lead they never relinquished in a 3-1 win over the Astros yesterday. Mauer’s .320 career batting is the highest for any player at time of his 1,500th hit since Albert Pujols reached that milestone in 2008 with a .334 lifetime average. Aside from Pujols, the only player who entered the major leagues in the past 15 years and had a higher average than Mauer’s when he collected his 1500th hit was Ichiro Suzuki (.332).
Mauer become the sixth Twins player to reach the 1,500 hit pinnacle, can you name the other five? Pretty simple I would think for most Twins fans. Here is a table that shows how they compare.
Players with 1,500 or more hits in a Minnesota Twins uniform
Harmon Killebrew and Rod Carew obviously had more hits than you see above but I am only comparing the time they actually played in Minnesota. For all the criticism that Mauer has received the last few years for his lack of power, only Harmon has a higher OPS.
Seems to be some validity to the complaining that the Twins best paid player Joe Mauer isn’t hitting with runners on base. Joe Mauer had the go-ahead single in the ninth inning for Minnesota on Monday, after he entered the game hitting .171 (7 for 41) in Late Inning Pressure Situations. Over the past six seasons (2008-2013), Mauer hit .339 in LIPS, the highest in the major leagues among players with at least 100 plate appearances.
The Ft. Myers Miracle the Twins High-A team is now calling JetBlue Park their new home for the rest of the regular season and the playoffs as Hammond Stadium undergoes the second phase of their two-year remodeling effort. It will be interesting to see what Hammond Stadium will look like next spring.
The Cedar Rapids Kernels the Twins Low-A club and the Minnesota Twins extended their player-development contract (PDC) through the 2020 season. Another nail in the coffin for those that had hopes of St. Paul landing a Twins minor league affiliation in their new ballpark that is being built.
Minneapolis provided MLB with free rent and discounted services for the All-Star FanFest at the Minneapolis Convention Center when the Twins hosted the 2014 All-Star game.
Ron Davis – Twins pitcher from 1982 – 1986 (courtesy of the Minnesota Twins)
Twenty eight years ago today the Twins traded closer Ron Davis along with minor league pitcher Dewayne Coleman to the Chicago Cubs for relievers George Frazier and Ray Fontenot and shortstop Julius McDougal. Davis was the Twins closer from 1982 until he was traded in 1986. Davis saved 108 games for the Twins but it was the games that he didn’t save that made Davis one of the biggest villans in Twins history. Here is a piece about Davis in the LA Times. The Twinstrivia interview with Ron Davis can be found here.
In the last three weeks Terry Ryan and Rob Antony have been busy house-cleaning and they have cut about $8 million from the Twins payroll. First the Twins traded DH/1B Kendrys Morales to the Seattle Mariners for RHP Stephen Pryor. Then they traded outfielder Sam Fuld to the Oakland A’s for LHP Tommy Milone. Then RHP Kevin Correia was sent out to La La land where he will pitch for the Dodgers and the Twins will receive a PTBNL or cash. Their latest trade has outfielder/DH Josh Willingham headed south to the Kansas City Royals in exchange for minor league RHP Jason Adam. Here is what a KC blog site called Cover the Bases had to say about the deal. Are there still more trades on the horizon? You never know but if I was Jared Burton I might not be too quick to send out my clothes to the dry cleaners. Joe Mauer is now the oldest position player on the team, Wow!
Jim Merritt
A lot is being made of King Felix Hernandez and his run of history making starts this season where he has pitched seven innings or more and allowed two runs or fewer. There is even talk of him as a serious MVP candidate. Have any Twins pitchers had a nice run like that? Turns out that Jim Merritt had 11 games in a row back in 1967. This is actually a pretty amazing run by Hernandez, since 1961 there have only been 10 pitchers that have had a streak of 10 games or more that fit this criteria. Check out the list, there are some pretty good pitchers here.
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Streaks of seven innings pitched and two or fewer runs allowed since 1961
Take a moment to check out Bob Gibson‘s numbers in the table above, they are absolutely incredible. His streak was 11 games long, his record was 11-0 and he had 11 complete games with 8 shutouts and a total of three runs allowed. No wonder Cardinals catcher Tim McCarver said that Gibson was the luckiest pitcher ever, he only pitched when the other team was not hitting.
The Minnesota Twins are still on track to have over 2.3 million fans at Target Field this summer. I think as the cooler weather approaches, the state fair gets in full swing and school begins, the attendance will fall off and the Twins will be around the 2 million mark but that is still an amazing mark for a team that has played as badly as the Twins have for the last four years.
So what about Ron Gardenhire and his staff? I think they are history within a week of the season ending. Who will be the Twins new skipper, it won’t be anyone currently associated with the Minnesota Twins today. Who would I like it to be? I think the Twins should swing a deal with the Marlins and bring Mike Redmond in as the Twins manager in 2015. The man had done well with the players he has been given. Will it happen? Nooooooo
Rochester (AAA-International league) outfielder Daniel Ortiz is the Twins Minor League Player of the Week. In six games with the Red Wings, he hit .455 (10-for-22) with three doubles, a home run, and five RBI. Ortiz, a left-handed batter also walked twice and scored seven runs to go with a .500 on-base percentage. The 24-year-old Cayey, Puerto Rico-native was selected by the Twins in the fourth round of the 2008 First Year Player Draft out of Benjamin Harrison (PR) High School and signed for a $253,000 bonus.
Trevor May walked seven batters without recording a strikeout in his major-league debut, a 9-4 Twins loss at Oakland last night. No pitcher had issued that many bases on balls without a strikeout in his first big-league game since the White Sox Ken Kravec (7 walks) on September 4, 1975 versus the Royals. And the only other pitcher in Twins franchise history with such an inauspicious debut was the Washington Senators’ Joe Krakauskas, against the Philadelphia Athletics on September 9, 1937 (7 BB).
No major-league pitcher had issued 7+ walks without a strikeout in any game since the Blue Jays’ Ricky Romero (8 BB at Detroit) on August 21, 2012. And the last Twins pitcher to put up a line like this was Willie Banks (7 BB at Boston) on July 25, 1992.
8/8/1962 – With the score tied at 3 apiece at Municipal Stadium in Kansas City, A’s rookie third baseman Ed Charles steals home with two out in the ninth to score the winning run in a A’s 4-3 win over the Twins. Ray Moore and Jerry Zimmerman were the Twins battery at the time.
8/8/1974 – The Royals – Twins game at Royals Stadium is briefly interrupted by President Nixon’s resignation speech. The speech is broadcast after it begins and the next inning is delayed until the conclusion of the speech. The Twins prevail over the host Royals‚ 3 – 2 in 14 innings when Tony Oliva‘s sacrifice fly drives home Rod Carew. Bill Campbell pitches 7 innings of relief for the win.
8/8/1976 – This has nothing to do with the Minnesota Twins but still it deserves to be remembered for its “strangeness”. Thirty-seven years ago, on Aug. 8, 1976, the Chicago White Sox made sartorial history by wearing shorts in a win over the Royals. The Bermudas were the idea of—who else?—owner Bill Veeck. The shorts were worn in a total of three games.
8/8/1987 – The Twins beat the Oakland A’s 9-2 at the Metrodome as Twins pitcher Steve Carlton wins the 329th and final game of his Hall of Fame career. Carlton pitches 8 2/3 innings giving up 2 runs while striking out two batters.
8/8/1988 – The Indians and the Twins were scoreless after 3 innings at the Metrodome with Allan Anderson on the mound for the local nine. In the top of the fourth inning with no one out, the Indians Ron Washington and Willie Upshaw singled to put runners on first and second and then Joe Carter smashed a long drive to the left field corner where Twins outfielder Dan Gladden snagged it for an out and wheeled and fired a strike to Steve Lombardozzi at 2B to nail Washington and then Lombo relayed the ball to Gene Larkin at first to get the runner there by at least 5 feet and completed the unusual 7-4-3 triple play. The Twins went on to win the game by a 7-2 score with Galdden going 3 for 5 with a run scored, a stolen base, and a RBI. Catcher Brian Harper was 4 for 4 but played second fiddle to Gladden on this day.
8/8/2004 – The A’s beat the Twins 6 – 5 in 18 innings. It is the second-longest game in the 23-year history of the Metrodome. With the score tied 3 to 3, the A’s score 3 in the top of the 18th off Terry Mulholland to take a 6-3 lead. The Twins come back with 2 in the bottom of the 18th with a Morneau home run but leave Matthew LeCroy stranded on first when Koskie and Cuddyer flyout to end the rally and the Twins hope of a huge comeback victory. The game lasts 4 hours and 57 minutes.
8/8/2005 – One time Minnesota Twins manger (1976-1980) Gene Mauch passes away at the age of 79. Mauch was the seventh manager in Twins history. I think one of my favorite Gene Mauch quotes was “I’m not the manager because I am always right, but I am always right because I am the manager”.
8/8/2009 – The Twins third manager, Cal Ermer passed away at the age of 85 in Chattanooga, Tenn. Ermer replaced the fired Sam Mele in June 1967 with the Twins in sixth place with a 25-25 record. The Twins went 66-46 the rest of the season but lost the American League pennant on the final day of the season. Ermer was fired after the Twins finished in seventh place in 1968 with a 79-83 record.
Seth Smith led off the top of the 10th inning with a home run to give the Padres a 5-4 win over the Twins at Target Field. Smith entered the game with a .658 slugging percentage this season when leading off an inning, the sixth-highest such average in the major leagues (minimum: 75 leadoff at-bats).
The Twins squandered a 4-3 lead in the ninth inning, before Smith’s decisive hit. Minnesota had won the last 82 home games in which it led in the ninth inning or later, which was the longest current streak of that kind in the major leagues entering the day.
As if the Twins’ nine-run eighth inning wasn’t enough, Chris Parmelee, Oswaldo Arcia and Eric Fryer rubbed salt in the wound with consecutive ninth-inning home runs off Andre Rienzo to increase the margin of victory in Minnesota’s 16-3 laugher against the White Sox. The Twins are the third team to hit back-to-back-to-back homers in a major-league game this season, and the two other instances occurred on consecutive days in April. Mike Trout, Albert Pujols and Raul Ibanez did it for the Angels on April 13 (all first-inning shots off the Mets’ Bartolo Colon), as did Evan Gattis, Dan Uggla and Andrelton Simmons for the Braves on April 14 (eighth inning homers, all off Philadelphia’s B.J. Rosenberg).
The Twins record for most starts in a season with no walks is held by Carlos Silva who had 18 games with no walks in 2005. That same season, Brad Radke had 17 starts with no walks. That same year Johan Santana and Joe Mays had seven games with walks and Kyle Lohse had six games with no bases on balls. Twins opponents had to hit their way on base back then. In 2005 Twins starters had a total of 58 games where they did not walk a batter and is an all time best. In 2014 Twins starters have 30 games todate with no walks. The Twins worst season for starters not allowing a walk was back in 1976 when they had only six games with zero walks.
