Tag: Bert Blyleven

What “they” said about Bert in 1976

January 31, 2010 – An interesting story about Bert Blyleven written by Pat Jordan in the June 14, 1976 issue of Sports Illustrated magazine. It is a fun read and I hope you enjoy it. I wonder what Bert would say about that story today? To read the story just click on the Sports Illustrated cover.

Keep’em Dancing

Jim Kaat

To be a good pitcher they say, you need to keep the hitters off-balance and you can’t let the hitters get comfortable at the plate. If you look at the Twins pitching history, you will see that some of the Twins top pitchers were not afraid to plunk a hitter now and then. I can’t tell you for sure if these pitchers threw at batters on purpose or if they just felt that they owned the plate and they were not afraid to pitch inside, but either way, the pitchers on this list hit their share of batters and a number of these pitchers pitched in the days when they themselves had to step up to the plate to hit. Jim Kaat hit the most batters when he pitched for the Twins, hitting 89 batters (plus 7 more as a Washington Senator before he became a Minnesota Twin) but he also pitched just under 3,000 innings and he averaged a hit batter once every 33.25 innings. Mike Smithson, who certainly was not afraid to pitch inside hit 46 batters in his time with the Twins and he did this in just 816 innings so he hit a batter every 17.74 innings, far and away the most hit batters per innings pitched. Let’s take a look at the Twins top ten.

  Name Batters hit Innings Innings per hit batter
1 Jim Kaat 89 2,959 33.25
2 Bert Blyleven 80 2,566 32.08
3 Brad Radke 62 2,451 39.53
4 Jim Perry 50 1,883 37.66
5 Mike Smithson 46 816 17.74
6 Kyle Lohse 44 908 20.64
7 Scott Erickson 42 979 23.31
8 Dave Boswell 34 1,036 30.47
9 Frank Viola 29 1,772 61.10
10 Johan Santana 27 1,308 48.44

Now let’s take a look at the Twins current starters and see how they compare.

  Name Batters hit Innings Innings per hit batter
1 Scott Baker 25 915 36.60
2 Francisco Liriano 20 617 30.85
3 Nick Blackburn 17 668 39.29
4 Carl Pavano 12 397 33.08
5 Brian Duensing 6 289 48.17

 

Swarzak throws a gem

Anthony Swarzak

Three Twins pitchers – starter Anthony Swarzak (8 innings and 1 hit), Matt Capps, and Alex Burnett – held the Angels to one hit in 10 innings yesterday. Since the American League adopted the designated hitter in 1973, there has been only one other game in the league in which a team had no hits or one hit in a game of more than nine innings. On June 21, 1976, the Rangers’ Bert Blyleven threw a 10-inning one-hitter in a 1-0 Texas win in Oakland. The Athletics’ only hit in that game was a fifth-inning single by Ken McMullen. The Angels have been held to one hit in an extra-inning game once previously, against the Yankees on May 22, 1962. Whitey Ford left with an injury after seven no-hit innings; Buck Rodgers had the Angels’ lone hit in the ninth inning, and the Yankees won it in the 12th inning. Source: Elias