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The Twins and their strikeouts – a look back

Twins K vs R charts — Twins strikeouts versus runs scored history. Feel free to click on the chart to make it larger and easier to see.

Our Minnesota Twins and the Atlanta Braves both stand at 0-7 and the race is on to see can win a game first. It is tough when you have just played seven games into a new season and find yourself five games out of the division lead. Never-the-less, Paul Molitor‘s gang will try again tonight.

The Twins might have to consider changing their name to the Minnesota Flailers. Joe Mauer is hitting .375 and Eduardo Escobar is hitting .370 but the rest of the line-up is hitting between .125 and .192 with a combined team OBP of .290. Byron Buxton, Miguel Sano and Byung-ho Park have each struck out in 50% of their plate appearances.

OH! but the strikeouts. Needless to say the team is on a record pace and after seven games, admittedly a small sample size, they have struck out once every 3.29 PA’s and 11.29 times a game. It is hard to miss the ball that often. Their previous worst for strike-outs per PA was 4.34 in 2013, that same Twins team struck out an all-time franchise high of 1,430 times. But if you use the current running rate of 11.29 strike outs per game the 2016 Twins will strike out a record-breaking 1,829 times. I know that is unlikely to happen but right now that is exactly what is happening.

Paul Molitor and Terry Ryan have a huge mess on their hands but things can’t stay this bad for ever. Can they? Everything levels out so we all need to be patient and ride this storm out.

Let’s talk about strikeouts, how bad are they really? We could discuss the pro’s and con’s of strikeouts forever and cases can be argued that a strikeout by a batter is terrible and you could argue that there are worse things than a strikeout. Teams usually tolerate high strikeout rates if power is also involved but what if a batter has mediocre power and still strikes out frequently? What impact do strikeout really have on runs scored? After all, that is the object of the game isn’t it? Score more runs than the opponent and you win the game assuming your pitchers do their jobs.

Let’s take a look at the previous 55 seasons of Twins play. If you look at the numbers nothing really jumps out at you to tell you that strikeout are OK or horrendous. The Twins had an OK season by some standards last year and yet they still struck out 1,264 times and in 2002 they won 94 games and still struck out 1,089 times. On the other side of the coin the Twins only struck out 684 times in 1978 and still only won 73 games. Strikeouts in themselves will not determine if your team will win or not.

The Twins have only scored more runs than they have had strikeouts on four occasions in 55 seasons, in 1976 when they finished 85-77, in 1977 when they finished 84-77, in 1979 when they finished 82-80 and in their 1995 championship season when they were 95-67. Twins history seems to indicate that if you score more often than you strike out than you will have a winning season.

I think it is interesting to note here that Gene Mauch managed the Twins from 1976-1980, none of his team struck out more that 754 times. Just a coincidence or was it his managing style? Yet only three of those five years that Mauch managed the Twins, did they have a winning record and they never won more than 85 games under his leadership.

Strikeouts are obviously up across the board for a variety of reasons, since 2000 the Twins have played 15 seasons, during 11 of those they struck out over 1,000 times, the only other season they struck out of 1,000 times was in 1964.

During the Twins AL championship season of 1965 they struck out 969 times, in 1987 they struck out 898 times, and in 1991 they struck out only 749 times. The Twins have made the playoffs 11 times and they averaged 944 strikeouts during those years. Keep in mind too that six of those 11 playoff years were on this side of 2000.

If you added in the running rate of strikeouts in 2016 after just seven games you would see a sharp dive of that blue line to 3.29.

What changes can you expect to find at Target Field

The Twins will open their seventh season in Target Field on Monday and the biggest changes are noted here.

Minnie & Paul’s

The newest renovation is the replacement of seating in the centerfield area, below the Minnie & Paul Celebration sign and above the “batters-eye”. The upper level (Club Level) will be named Minnie & Paul’s and will be open to all fans. Minnie & Paul’s, a Twins-themed pub will feature Minnesota-branded food options while serving as a stylish gathering space for fans of all ages.

CATCH

The lower tier (Mezzanine Level) will be known as CATCH, an intimate all-inclusive club with limited access for approximately 120 season ticket members. This new premium space will be all-inclusive with beverages and a variety of tapas-style foods included in the season ticket price.

Safety Netting

New safety netting to comply with Major League Baseball’s Fan Safety Recommendations. Target Field’s current backstop net is in compliance with the stated MLB recommendations, which call for netting to protect seats between the dugouts within 70-feet of home plate. In contrast to other MLB ballparks, Target Field’s dugouts are the closest to home plate of any in the league, because of the proximity of seats within the dugout box seating sections (sections 3 through 6 and sections 11 through 14), the Twins will add protective netting above the dugouts in advance of the 2016 season. This new safety netting will extend approximately seven-feet high and run the length of the first and third base dugouts.

Twins way-back machine looks at April 1963

1961 – 1969 primary logo

It is fun to look back at the Sporting News and see what was up with the Minnesota Twins back in the day. The Twins started their 1963 season with a 9-10 record in April but went on to win 91 games. That however; only earned them third place (15 1/2 games back) in the AL standings behind the AL champ New York Yankees and 5 games behind the second place Chicago White Sox.

Jack Kralick had an “interesting” month of April, in his first three starts the Twins scored zero runs on his behalf but he also gave up 18 runs so he deserved his 0-3 start, but in his fourth start of the month he pitched a complete game 3-0 shutout of the Washington Senators. Little did he know but on May 2 the Twins would trade him to the Cleveland Indians for pitcher Jim Perry and the man that threw the Minnesota Twins first no-hitter was history.

1963 Twins roster

Sporting News April 13, 1963

By the way, there is a nice piece about Twins 2014 first round selection (and fifth over-all) shortstop Nick Gordon in the Ft. Meyers News-Press today that you should check out if you get a minute.

How will the Twins fare in 2016

I know I am a bit late with my Minnesota Twins prediction this year and I blame it on the Panama Canal cruise that I returned from yesterday. In the 2016 Minnesota Twins I see a fun young team but a team that takes a small step back this season. The good news however; is that the lessons the younger players learn this year will help them to become solid contenders in 2017 and beyond.

The most pleasant surprise this year will be the hitting of Eduardo Escobar who has finally taken over the shortstop role on a full-time basis and turns out to be a much better hitter than most expected. The biggest disappointment of the year will be the back-end of the Twins bullpen with Glen Perkins and Kevin Jepsen not performing up to their abilities, Jepsen due to injury and Perkins more due to attitude than anything else. What most had viewed as a strength going into 2016 turns out to actually be a weakness.

How about the AL Central Division? Here is how I see them in the standings come early October.

Royals
Tigers
White Sox
Twins
Indians

GO TWINS!

Looking forward to Opening Day 2016

When the umpires call “Play Ball” for the Twins/Orioles game on Monday it will Twins opening day number 56. No I have not attended all the openers but I usually watch them on TV or listen to them on the radio, this time I will be listening or watching on my computer in Cape Coral, Florida.

So who will be in the Twins opening day line-up this year? You can never know for sure until they run on the field but I think that it is a safe assumption that only four players that were in the 2015 season opening loss in Detroit will be in Paul Molitor‘s starting line-up for the start the 2016 season for Minnesota in Baltimore. Those player’s being Kurt Suzuki catching, Joe Mauer at 1B, Brian Dozier at 2B and Trevor Plouffe at 3B. You probably can’t even remember the Twins 2015 opening day line-up, can you?

Here is a chance for you to look back to the last 10 years worth of Twins opening day line-ups. Some players are obviously familiar and others you probably have forgotten even played for Minnesota and some younger fans may have never even heard of some of these guys. For me it is interesting to see how much baseball teams turn-over from year to year and what positions the Twins seem to have trouble with.

	C	1B	2B	3B	SS	LF	CF	RF	DH	SP	YEAR
2015	Kurt Suzuki	Joe Mauer	Brian Dozier	Trevor Plouffe	Danny Santana	Oswaldo Arcia	Jordan Schafer	Torii Hunter	Kennys Vargas	Phil Hughes	2015
2014	Kurt Suzuki	Joe Mauer	Brian Dozier	Trevor Plouffe	Pedro Florimon	Josh Willingham	Aaron Hicks	Oswaldo Arcia	Chris Colabello	Ricky Nolasco	2014
2013	Joe Mauer	Justin Morneau	Brian Dozier	Trevor Plouffe	Pedro Florimon	Josh Willingham	Aaron Hicks	Chris Parmelee	Ryan Doumit	Vance Worley	2013
2012	Joe Mauer	Chris Parmelee	Alexi Casilla	Danny Valencia	Jamie Carroll	Josh Willingham	Denard Span	Ryan Doumit	Justin Morneau	Carl Pavano	2012
2011	Joe Mauer	Justin Morneau	Tsuyoshi Nishioka	Danny Valencia	Alexi Casilla	Delmon Young	Denard Span	Mike Cuddyer	Jason Kubel	Carl Pavano	2011
2010	Joe Mauer	Justin Morneau	Orlando Hudson	Nick Punto	J.J. Hardy	Delmon Young	Denard Span	Mike Cuddyer	Jason Kubel	Scott Baker	2010
2009	Mike Redmond	Justin Morneau	Alexi Casilla	Joe Crede	Nick Punto	Denard Span	Carlos Gomez	Mike Cuddyer	Jason Kubel	Francisco Liriano	2009
2008	Joe Mauer	Justin Morneau	Brendan Harris	Mike Lamb	Adam Everett	Delmon Young	Carlos Gomez	Mike Cuddyer	Craig Monroe	Livan Hernandez	2008
2007	Joe Mauer	Justin Morneau	Luis Castillo	Nick Punto	Jason Bartlett	Rondell White	Torii Hunter	Mike Cuddyer	Jeff Cirillo	Johan Santana	2007
2006	Joe Mauer	Justin Morneau	Luis Castillo	Tony Batista	Juan Castro	Shannon Stewart	Torii Hunter	Jason Kubel	Rondell White	Johan Santana	2006
	C	!B	2B	3B	SS	LF	CF	RF	DH	SP

I am writing this from the Norwegian Pearl as we cruise in the Caribbean Sea on our way to dock in Roatan, Honduras tomorrow morning after leaving Costa Rica last night. Then on to Belize City, Belize and Costa Maya, Mexico before returning to Miami and Cape Coral Florida on Monday. Hot and humid here, I hope you have the same where ever you are when you attend a 2016 baseball season opener. I can’t wait for REAL baseball again.

I almost forgot to mention that while I am in the Caribbean stopping in places like Columbia, Panama, Costa Rica, Honduras, Belize, and Mexico I have and will continue to be on the lookout for some potential ace pitchers that the Minnesota Twins can sign. But sadly, I must report that like most of the Twins scouts that have looked for good pitching for the last 56 years I too have struck out.

Cuba Béisbol

The Tampa Rays played (and defeated) the Cuban National team yesterday in Havana and President Barak Obama and his family were in attendance along with Raul Castro and a host of other dignitaries. The game marks the second time since 1959 that an American team has played in Cuba — the Baltimore Orioles defeated the national team, 3-2, in Havana in 1999. It will be interesting to see how the baseball relationship between these two baseball loving countries takes shape in the next few years.

The Minnesota Twins and the island of Cuba have a long history and it goes back to the 1960’s prior to the Washington Senators becoming the Minnesota Twins in 1961. The relationship between Calvin Griffith and Joe “Papa Joe” Cambria was an interesting one. The Senators/Twins had a nice Cuban pipeline going for a number of years.

Players born in Cuba that have pitched for the Twins

Rk	Player	Year	From	To	Age	G	SHO	W	L	SV	IP	SO	ERA
1	Livan Hernandez	2008	2008	2008	33-33	23	0	10	8	0	139.2	54	5.48	Villa Clara, Cuba
2	Luis Tiant	1970	1970	1970	29-29	18	1	7	3	0	92.2	50	3.40	Marianao, Cuba
3	Camilo Pascual	1966	1961	1966	27-32	184	18	88	57	0	1284.2	994	3.31	La Habana, Cuba
4	Mike Fornieles	1963	1963	1963	31-31	11	0	1	1	0	22.2	7	4.76	La Habana, Cuba
5	Julio Becquer	1961	1961	1961	29-29	1	0	0	0	0	1.1	0	20.25	La Habana, Cuba
6	Bert Cueto	1961	1961	1961	23-23	7	0	1	3	0	21.1	5	7.17	San Luis, Cuba
7	Pedro Ramos	1961	1961	1961	26-26	42	3	11	20	2	264.1	174	3.95	Pinar del Rio, Cuba

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 3/23/2016.

Cuban players with at least on plate appearance for the Twins (includes pitchers)

Rk	Player	Year	From	To	Age	G	PA	R	H	HR	RBI	BA
1	Kendrys Morales	2014	2014	2014	31-31	39	162	12	36	1	18	.234	Fomento, Cuba
2	Livan Hernandez	2008	2008	2008	33-33	23	3	0	1	0	1	.500	Villa Clara, Cuba
3	Tony Oliva	1976	1962	1976	23-37	1676	6880	870	1917	220	947	.304	Pinar del Rio, Cuba
4	Leo Cardenas	1971	1969	1971	30-32	473	1938	193	453	39	210	.263	Matanzas, Cuba
5	Minnie Mendoza	1970	1970	1970	36-36	16	16	2	3	0	2	.188	Ceiba del Agua, Cuba
6	Luis Tiant	1970	1970	1970	29-29	18	36	7	13	0	4	.406	Marianao, Cuba
7	Jackie Hernandez	1968	1967	1968	26-27	112	247	14	39	2	20	.172	Central Tinguaro, Cuba
8	Hank Izquierdo	1967	1967	1967	36-36	16	28	4	7	0	2	.269	Matanzas, Cuba
9	Sandy Valdespino	1967	1965	1967	26-28	259	491	58	99	4	34	.220	San Jose de las Lajas, Cuba
10	Zoilo Versalles	1967	1961	1967	21-27	1065	4500	564	1046	86	401	.252	La Habana, Cuba
11	Camilo Pascual	1966	1961	1966	27-32	186	509	35	100	4	52	.215	La Habana, Cuba
12	Julio Becquer	1963	1961	1963	29-31	58	87	14	20	5	18	.238	La Habana, Cuba
13	Mike Fornieles	1963	1963	1963	31-31	11	6	1	1	0	1	.167	La Habana, Cuba
14	Marty Martinez	1962	1962	1962	20-20	37	24	13	3	0	3	.167	La Habana, Cuba
15	Bert Cueto	1961	1961	1961	23-23	7	8	1	0	0	0	.000	San Luis, Cuba
16	Pedro Ramos	1961	1961	1961	26-26	53	100	8	16	3	11	.172	Pinar del Rio, Cuba
17	Jose Valdivielso	1961	1961	1961	27-27	76	158	15	29	1	9	.195	Matanzas, Cuba

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 3/23/2016.

I think it is interesting to note that in the 60’s the Twins had a rich pipeline to Cuban players but the last Cuban player to play in a Twins uniform that was actually signed as an amateur free agent by the club was Tony Oliva in 1976, that is a long dry spell.

Did Fidel Castro really have a big league tryout with the Washington Senators?

Cuba Baseball Hall of Fame

Why not bat Joe Mauer first?

The season opener is not far away and in my mind (such as it is) the Twins line-up is pretty well set short of any last-minute injuries. But before spring training ends I would like to see manager Paul Molitor tinker with a few different batting orders to see what might work best.

Personally I would like to see the Twins move Joe Mauer to the lead-off spot in the batting order. Mauer has hit in the three hole 1,145 times during his career and he has knocked in less than 53 runs a year from that position if you average it out. You have to be honest, that is a pathetic number, some guys have the knack for getting the runners in, Mauer does not posses that skill. I know that the three hole is usually the teams best hitter but Mauer is not the teams best hitter at this point in his career. Mauer however; has shown a skill for getting on base although his OBP has been dropping the last few years, never the less at this time and with an inexperienced Byron Buxton the time has come to slip Mauer in to the lead-off position. Here is the line-up I would try if I was the Twins manager for a day, I know it is not perfect but I think it is worth a try.

Joe Mauer (L) at 1B
Brian Dozier (R) 2B
Eddie Rosario (L) LF
Miguel Sano (R) RF
Trevor Plouffe (R) 3B
Byung Ho Park (R) DH
Eduardo Escobar (S) SS
Kurt Suzuki (R) C
Byron Buxton (R) CF

I know I am asking a lot of Eddie Rosario to hit third but I think he has the skills and the patience to hit there. You could swap Dozier and Rosario in the order and have Rosario bat second but the Twins are heavy from the right-side and I like to see the lefty-righty thing for at least the top of the order. Mauer is going to probably be around for several more years, the Twins have to find a way to maximize his skills.

Joe Mauer’s OBP has been dropping but it is still better than most of the Twins hitters so until someone better comes along, why not put Mauer at the top of the batting order? What have you got to lose by at least giving it a shot for a couple of weeks?

Looking back to the spring of 1961

When I was growing up on the Minnesota side of the St. Croix River about 70 miles north of the Twin Cities and just starting to follow baseball in the late 1950’s we had no TV at home so my sources of information about baseball were the radio, the Minneapolis and St. Paul newspapers and eventually The Sporting News. My parents were not sports fans and they pretty much felt that my interest in baseball was a waste of time that could be put to better use by doing more tasks around the dairy farm that we lived on.

For those of you that were raised on a dairy farm you know how hard the work can be. You started and finished each and every day in the barn milking the cows. You probably got up about 5 AM and went to bed between 10 PM and 11 PM before you started the process all over again the next day. There is no such thing as an eight-hour day, a sick day, a holiday or a week-end, every day is the same, work on a dairy farm is relentless.

We had a radio in the barn that was always tuned to just one station, 830 on the AM dial, the “Good Neighbor”, WCCO radio. Back then WCCO was one of the premier and most powerful radio stations in the country and in 1961 it became the flag-ship station for the Minnesota Twins. There might as well have been no dial on that old tube radio because the station was never changed, it was our source for news, weather and of course the farm reports but my favorite things on the radio were the Twins games and school closings.

The Minneapolis and St. Paul papers were not delivered out to farm country and we couldn’t afford it even if they did, fortunately our school library subscribed to the morning papers and every chance I had I would go to the library and check out the sports pages. One day I ran across a Sporting News at our local dime store magazine rack, Ben Franklin if my memory serves me correctly and I thought I had died and gone to heaven, page after page of baseball news that was published weekly. It took some time but I finally saved up enough money to get a subscription and I was hooked. Out where we lived there was no mail delivery so we had a PO box in out local community and when my parents went grocery shopping on Saturday’s they would stop off at the post office and pick up the mail and hopefully my copy of the Sporting News, my reading material for the next few days. I would read every single article on every single page, sometimes more than once and during baseball season I would spend hours studying the box scores. I continued to get the Sporting News until I graduated from high school and joined the US Navy. The Navy of the mid 1960’s didn’t share my love of baseball and we had no such thing back then as the internet so baseball and I parted ways for the couple of years that I spent on board the USS Shangri-La (CVA-38).

After my naval career came to an end I returned to Minnesota and started to follow baseball once again but I found that the Sporting News was now writing about other sports than just baseball and I didn’t like that at all and I have not subscribed to the Sporting news since 1965 but I still have some great memories of what has often been described as the Baseball Bible.

Now as the Minnesota Twins prepare for their 56th season I thought it might be interesting to look back in the archives of the Sporting News and see what they had to say about the Minnesota Twins back in 1961 as the former Washington Senators prepared for their first season of baseball as the Minnesota Twins.

When you look back on baseball history some things never change, the players want to be rewarded for their efforts with more money and the owners want to put what they can in their pockets. The process has obviously changed with “holdouts” a term long forgotten and arbitration, free agency, long-term contracts, and opt-outs are the terms we hear and read about every day. The Sporting News page I have for you talks about Jim Lemon‘s holdout, a rhubarb between the Twins and Dodgers, the expansion and new features at Met Stadium and booming Twins ticket sales. I hope you enjoy this trip down memory lane.

Sporting News 03291961

Twins bonus baseball – long extra inning games

Starting with the 1961 season the Minnesota Twins have been scheduled to play about 8,912 games give or take a couple and only 33 of those games went 15 or more innings, a pretty small (less than 4 tenths of 1 percent) percentage. So if you attended one of these games you were a lucky son of gun. The Twins record in these games is 17-16 and as it turns out 17 games were at home and 16 on the road. Seven took place at Met Stadium, 9 took place at the Metrodome and 1 has taken place at Target Field. If you enjoy baseball you can’t help but enjoy bonus baseball, here is a chance to relive those games. Those pesky Cleveland Indians participated in their share of these games.

Rk	Date	Tm	Opp	Rslt	IP	H	R	SO	HR	Pit	BF	#	Attendance	GmLen
1	1993-08-31	MIN	CLE	W 5-4	22.0	16	4	8	0	288	85	7	17,968	377
2	1972-05-12	MIN	MIL	L 3-4	22.0	13	4	13	0		86	7	8,628	347
3	1967-08-09	MIN	WSA	L 7-9	20.0	14	9	16	2		79	5	16,901	340
4	1976-08-25	MIN	NYY	L 4-5	18.2	16	5	5	1		73	4	24,351	326
5	2004-08-08	MIN	OAK	L 5-6	18.0	16	6	13	0	251	71	7	25,976	297
6	1969-09-06	MIN	OAK	W 8-6	18.0	16	6	12	1		78	4	17,599	317
7	1969-07-19	MIN	SEP	W 11-7	18.0	20	7	9	1		82	5	12,069	341
8	1967-07-26 (2)	MIN	NYY	W 3-2	18.0	10	2	7	0		65	4	21,927	264
9	1976-08-28	MIN	CLE	L 3-4	16.2	13	4	6	0		62	6	6,071	295
10	1969-04-09	MIN	KCR	L 3-4	16.2	11	4	8	0		64	5	13,731	272
11	1995-05-07	MIN	CLE	L 9-10	16.1	26	10	9	3	322	82	9	39,431	396
12	2009-07-03	MIN	DET	L 9-11	16.0	17	11	12	2	218	69	7	33,368	307
13	2005-08-16	MIN	CHW	W 9-4	16.0	12	4	12	1	204	63	6	34,533	309
14	1986-06-11	MIN	TEX	L 2-6	16.0	16	6	7	1		66	5	11,506	272
15	1977-09-17	MIN	TEX	L 4-5	16.0	12	5	10	2		65	5	13,163	312
16	1969-07-25	MIN	CLE	W 4-2	16.0	8	2	14	1		57	3	8,959	266
17	1982-04-20	MIN	OAK	L 3-4	15.2	14	4	10	0		66	3	12,488	303
18	1975-07-12	MIN	NYY	L 7-8	15.2	18	8	7	1		70	5	13,573	311
19	2012-06-17	MIN	MIL	W 5-4	15.0	15	4	7	1	250	66	7	39,206	290
20	2004-06-10	MIN	NYM	W 3-2	15.0	8	2	13	1	231	59	6	16,706	246
21	2004-05-04	MIN	SEA	L 3-4	15.0	13	4	14	1	245	65	8	32,727	288
22	2004-04-06	MIN	CLE	W 7-6	15.0	12	6	10	1	223	59	8	19,832	300
23	2002-06-10	MIN	ATL	W 6-5	15.0	11	5	6	1	209	58	5	24,534	263
24	1999-05-21	MIN	OAK	W 2-1	15.0	8	1	9	0	225	59	5	14,433	295
25	1992-07-04	MIN	BAL	W 3-2	15.0	12	2	8	0	250	64	6	48,028	280
26	1980-08-28	MIN	TOR	W 7-5	15.0	13	5	9	1		60	4	14,035	264
27	1980-06-20	MIN	CLE	L 3-4	15.0	14	4	6	1		63	6	7,668	268
28	1974-09-10	MIN	CHW	W 8-7	15.0	19	7	9	1		62	4	3,285	247
29	1973-06-06 (1)	MIN	CLE	W 7-3	15.0	10	3	8	1		66	3		254
30	1972-06-06	MIN	BAL	W 5-4	15.0	11	4	14	0		63	4	6,203	265
31	1972-05-13	MIN	MIL	W 5-4	15.0	10	4	12	2		54	3	7,871	216
32	1964-09-29	MIN	KCA	L 6-7	15.0	10	7	13	3		61	8	2,999	290
33	1961-05-22	MIN	CLE	L 5-7	15.0	17	7	7	2		63	4	5,425	248

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 3/9/2016.

According to Wikipedia

The longest game by innings in Major League Baseball was a 1-1 tie in the National League between the Boston Braves and the Brooklyn Dodgers in 26 innings, at Braves Field in Boston on May 1, 1920. It had become too dark to see the ball (fields did not have lights yet and the sun was setting), and the game was considered a draw. Played rapidly by modern standards, those 26 innings were completed in 3 hours and 50 minutes.

The longest American League game, and tied for the longest major league game by innings which ended with one team winning, was a 7-6 victory by the Chicago White Sox over the Milwaukee Brewers in 25 innings, at Comiskey Park in Chicago in 1984. The game began at 7:30 p.m. on the evening of May 8, 1984, and after scoring early runs both teams scored twice in the 8th inning; but the game was suspended after 17 innings with the score tied 3-3 due to a league curfew rule prohibiting an inning from beginning after 12:59 a.m. The game was continued the following evening, May 9, 1984, and both teams scored three times in the 21st inning to make the score 6-6; finally, in the bottom of the 25th, the White Sox’ Harold Baines hit a home run to end the contest. Tom Seaver was the winning pitcher in relief.^[5] A regularly scheduled game followed, meaning both nights saw 17 innings played; Seaver also started, and won, the second game. The official time of the entire 25-inning game was 8 hours, 6 minutes, also a major league record

Twins have always been looking for pitching – even back in 1966

David Lowery - photo credit to Historic Images — David Lowery – photo credit to Historic Images

Some thing never change with the Minnesota Twins. Even back in 1966 the Twins were scouting all over the world and looking for baseball players and in this case they thought they had found a real diamond in the rough in Johannesburg, South Africa.

The 23 year-old David Lowery was 6’5″ and tipped the scales about 208 and signed a minor league deal with the Orlando Twins for a $1,000 bonus and round trip transportation for him and his family to give baseball in the United States a try as a right-handed pitcher.

Lowery started 31 games for the 1966 Orlando Twins (Class A) and was second on the team with 12 wins. Lowery only gave up 154 hits in 181 innings while striking out 88 and had a nice 1.20 WHIP with a very good 2.64 ERA. Those kind of numbers would have made Lowery a hot prospect now days but for reasons I have not been able to determine, Dave Lowery returned to South Africa after his one season in pro ball. The PDF below is an interesting read as he talks about how it was in South Africa in 1966.

Dave Lowery1

Category: General Blogging

The Twins and their strikeouts – a look back

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