Tag: Dave Boswell

What do they really talk about on the mound?

A conference on the mound during a Twins – Red Sox game between Twins pitcher Dave Boswell in one of his early career starts, manager Sam Mele and catcher Earl Battey after Boswell’s first three pitches were hit for two doubles and a home run.

Manager Sam Mele: What’s he got?

Catcher Earl Battey: I don’t know, I haven’t caught a pitch yet.

Do you know your Twins pitching history?

baseball pitcher

January 22, 2011 – The 2006 Twins pitching staff holds the team record for strikeouts in a single season with 1,164. Johan Santana led the staff with 245 KO’s. On the other hand, the 1994 Twins pitching staff only struck out 602 opponents and the only pitcher on the Twins staff with over 100 KO’s was Scott Erickson and he had 104. The 1981 Twins pitchers only had 500 strikeouts but then again they only played 109 games that season.

The 2005 Twins pitching staff only walked 348 batters while the Twins 1982 staff allowed 634 batters to get a free base.

The 1996 pitching staff allowed 233 home runs led by Brad Radke’s 40 round trippers. The 1976 staff kept the ball in the ball park the best by only allowing 89 home runs. The 1981 team only allowed 79 home runs but as stated earlier, they only played 109 games that season.

The 1963 and 1967 Twins staffs tied for the most complete games in a single season with 58 and the team with the fewest complete games was the 2006 Twins who ended up with one complete game all season. Who was it you ask? Johan Santana lost 2-0 in Detroit that day so it was only an 8 inning complete game.

The 1972 Twins finished with a 77-77 record but the pitching staff put up an all-time team best seasonal ERA of 2.84. The 1995 team finished with a 56-88 record and posted an ERA of 5.76 and gave up an average of 6.17 runs per game.

In the Minnesota Twins first 50 years they have only had a 20 game winner on 15 occasions and only once have they had more than one pitcher on their staff win 20 or more games in the same season. Camilo Pascual did it in 1962 and 1963, Jim Grant in 1965, Jim Kaat in 1966, Dean Chance in 1967, Dave Boswell and Jim Perry in 1969, Jim Perry again in 1970, Bert Blyleven in 1973, Dave Goltz in 1977, Jerry Koosman in 1979, Frank Viola in 1988, Scott Erickson in 1991, Brad Radke in 1997, and Johan Santana in 2004.

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