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
One big league debut in a Minnesota uniform on July 31.
Willie Banks (P) – July 31, 1991 – Drafted by the Minnesota Twins in the 1st round (3rd pick) of the 1987 amateur draft. Big league debut was in New York against the Yankees in a Twins 12-3 win. Banks tossed two innings of relief allowing two runs (none earned) on 3 hits and 2 walks.
Chattanooga Lookouts (AA) right-handed pitcher Fernando Romero has been named Twins minor league Player of the Week. Romero made two starts for the Lookouts, going 2-0, 0.90 ERA (10.0 IP, 1 ER) with seven hits, four walks and 15 strikeouts in starts against Mobile last Saturday and Birmingham on Friday. He has appeared in 20 games (19 starts)
for the Lookouts this season, going 10-6, 2.64 ERA (105.2 IP, 31 ER) with one complete game shutout, 41 walks and 112 strikeouts.
Romero was signed by the Twins out of the Dominican Republic on November 4, 2011 as a 16 year-old for a reported $260,000. Romero has TJ surgery in June 2014 and missed the entire 2015 season.
Yonder Alonso hit a 12th-inning walk-off homer off the Twins’ Tyler Duffey. It was the Athletics’ seventh walk-off home run this season, the most in the majors (the Blue Jays stand second with five, including one on Sunday). That total of seven walk=off homers is the highest prior to the beginning of August by any team in major-league history! Sunday’s walk-off blast came on the heels of Rajai Davis’s walk-off home run Saturday night. It was the second time this season that the A’s have hit walk-off home runs in back-to-back games: they did it on May 7 (Ryon Healy against the Tigers) and May 8 (Jed Lowrie against the Angels). The A’s are the first team in major-league history to have two separate instances of back-to-back games with walk-off home runs in the same season.
Alonso’s blow was the third walk-off homer in the majors on Sunday, the most on one day since there were three on June 7 of last year.
Two big league debuts as Minnesota Twins on July 27.
Brian Buscher (3B) – July 27, 2007 – Drafted by the Minnesota Twins from the San Francisco Giants in the 2006 rule 5 draft on December 7, 2006. Two for four including singles in his first two big league at bats at Jacobs Field in a 10-4 Twins loss to the Indians.
Denny Neagle (P) – July 27, 1991 – Drafted by the Minnesota Twins in the 3rd round of the 1989 amateur draft. Neagle made his debut in a start at the Dome in front of 47,632 fans against the Brewers and struck out 5 in 3 innings while allowing 2 runs on 4 hits and a walk. The Twins ended up winning the game 7-4 but Neagle had a ND.
Today’s debuts are lesser known players that made their big league debut as Twins on July 26.
Alex Prieto (2B/SS/3B) – July 26, 2003 – Signed as a Free Agent with the Minnesota Twins on January 24, 2002. Struck out in his big league debut at Jacobs Field in a Twins 9-2 loss to the Indians.
Shane Bowers (P) – July 26, 1997 – Drafted by the Minnesota Twins in the 21st round of the 1993 amateur draft. Twins starter against the Orioles at the Dome and pitched 5.2 innings allowing 4 hits and 3 walks but just one run but got a ND for his efforts in a 12 inning 2-1 loss to the O’s.
Bert Cueto (P) – July 26, 1961 – Signed as an amateur free agent in 1956. One of the early MLB debuts as a Minnesota Twin, number 7 on the list. Debuted in relief against the Washington Senators at the Met and faced just one batter, retiring him on a fly ball and thus earning his first and only big league win.
According to manager Cal Ermer about 1/3 of the Twins roster was a bit lighter in the wallet after Ermer fined them for curfew violations. The Twins who took on the Yankees in a scheduled doubleheader today were on a 8 game winless streak which included yesterdays tie game.
In game one,Twins left fielder Bob Allison batting lead-off, hit a home run off Yankee starter Steve Barber but it turned out to be the only run the Twins would score, it was the fifth consecutive game, all losses, that the Twins would score just the one run. The Yankees won the game 6-1 with Joe Pepitone hitting two home runs and Steve Whitaker contributing another. Twins starter Jim Perry took the defeat.
Game two however; had a happier ending but the Twins had to play 18 innings before they could finally say their eight game losing streak was over with a 3-2 win over the Bronx bombers.
The Yankees scored 2 runs in the bottom of the fifth inning off Twins starter Jim Merritt and the Twins scored one in the second and one in the sixth of Yankee starter Fred Talbot and no one crossed home plate after that until the top of the 18th inning when Rich Rollins singled off Yankee reliever Thad Tillotson to score Rod Carew with an unearned run on the Yankees third error of the game.
Twins starter Jim Merritt pitched the first 13 innings for the Twins and came away with a ND. Al Worthington was credited with the win and Jim Roland notched his first save of the season.
The 18 inning game was the longest the Twins had ever played to that point in their history. In terms of time the game only lasted 4 hours and 24 minutes.
The 8 game winless streak which included a tie game would be the longest the Twins would encounter in 1967.
The Yankees second pitcher of the game Bill Monbouquette pitched 9 innings of scoreless relief allowing just 3 hits and a walk.
Cesar Tovar and Yankee Roy White who both went 0 for 8 would just as soon forget this game was ever played.
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The rest of the stories that I have done on the 1967 AL pennant race can be found here.
Just one MLB debut as a Minnesota Twin on July 25.
Mark Guthrie (P) – July 25, 1989 – Drafted by the Minnesota Twins in the 7th round of the 1987 amateur draft. Guthrie threw 36 pitches in his big league debut pitching 1.2 innings and giving up 2 hits but he also struck out three Orioles in the Dome and held Baltimore off the scoreboard in a 9-3 Twins victory over the visiting birds from Baltimore.
Cody Bellinger reached Taylor Rogers for a three-run homer on an 0-2 pitch in the eighth inning, turning a 4-3 deficit into a 6-4 lead, the same score by which the Dodgers went on to dispatch the Twins. It was the major leagues’ first lefty-on-lefty, 0-2-pitch, go-ahead homer in the sixth inning or later this season. The blow was Bellinger’s 28th home run of the season, and of his big-league career, and it came in his 80th game. He tied Jose Abreu for the second-highest homer total over a player’s first 80 big-league games (Abreu did it three years ago); Rudy York set the record with 30 homers over his first 80 games with the Tigers back in the 1930s.
The Minnesota Twins and Detroit Tigers are used to playing long 9 inning games. The Twins have played 11 nine inning games of 239 minutes or longer and the Tigers have been the opponent on five occasions and to make matters worse the Twins have won just one of those games and they had to score 20 runs to win that one.
Sunday afternoon’s 9-6 loss to the Tigers now stands as the Twins longest 9 inning game, fortunately the weather was great at Target Field. Paul Molitor and the Twins burned through seven pitchers, certainly not the kind of game anyone wants on getaway day when you are heading out to face the best team in the National League, the Los Angeles Dodgers.
| Rk | Date | Tm | Opp | Rslt | IP | H | R | Pit | BF | # | Attendance | GmLen ? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2017-07-23 | MIN | DET | L 6-9 | 9.0 | 16 | 9 | 192 | 47 | 7 | 28,373 | 259 |
| 2 | 2016-07-23 | MIN | BOS | W 11-9 | 9.0 | 15 | 9 | 196 | 48 | 7 | 37,600 | 251 |
| 3 | 2014-08-24 | MIN | DET | L 4-13 | 9.0 | 18 | 13 | 196 | 53 | 5 | 23,983 | 250 |
| 4 | 1987-07-25 | MIN | TOR | W 13-9 | 9.0 | 16 | 9 | 47 | 5 | 36,395 | 245 | |
| 5 | 2014-08-03 | MIN | CHW | W 16-3 | 9.0 | 8 | 3 | 134 | 37 | 2 | 23,471 | 241 |
| 6 | 2017-04-22 | MIN | DET | L 4-5 | 9.0 | 11 | 5 | 189 | 47 | 7 | 25,719 | 240 |
| 7 | 1993-05-26 | MIN | OAK | W 12-11 | 9.0 | 14 | 11 | 205 | 48 | 6 | 18,276 | 240 |
| 8 | 1992-06-04 | MIN | TEX | W 15-12 | 9.0 | 16 | 12 | 171 | 46 | 6 | 31,848 | 240 |
| 9 | 2000-10-01 | MIN | DET | L 11-12 | 8.0 | 19 | 12 | 178 | 46 | 7 | 28,293 | 239 |
| 10 | 2014-08-22 | MIN | DET | W 20-6 | 9.0 | 15 | 6 | 172 | 44 | 6 | 29,394 | 239 |
| 11 | 2008-07-09 | MIN | BOS | L 5-18 | 8.0 | 23 | 18 | 159 | 49 | 5 | 37,470 | 239 |
The Tigers received great production from the bottom of their batting order, with James McCann, Alex Presley and Jose Iglesias each producing three hits and scoring twice in the team’s 9-5 victory over the Twins on Sunday. It marked the first time in nearly six years that a team’s starters in the bottom three slots in the batting order each registered at least three hits and two runs scored in the same game, since Texas did it against Minnesota on July 25, 2011. The Rangers’ 7-8-9 hitters in that game were Mike Napoli, Mitch Moreland and Endy Chavez.
The Tigers had not had their bottom three hitters produce in that fashion in over 30 years, since Pat Sheridan (three hits, two runs), Chet Lemon (three hits, three runs) and Tom Brookens (three hits, two runs) each had three or more hits and multiple runs scored in a win over the Indians on June 3, 1987.
It just goes to show that Twins pitchers can make any opposing hitter better.