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
Ervin Santana threw his fifth complete game of the season, a four-hitter, in the Twins’ 5–2 win in San Diego on Wednesday. In four of those complete games he’s allowed fewer than five hits, tying the highest total for any major league pitcher over the last six seasons (2012 to date). Clayton Kershaw had four in 2014 and Jake Arrieta had four in 2015.
Santana is 3–0 with a 1.40 ERA in five starts in National League parks over the last two seasons, including a four-hit shutout in San Francisco on June 9 this season.
Ervin Santana went all the way in a losing effort, throwing 117 pitches in the Twins’ 2-1 loss to the Angels at Target Field last night. Santana became only the second big-league pitcher this season to toss a nine-inning, complete-game loss; Marcus Stroman threw 100 pitches in a 2-0 loss to the Brewers on April 12. But it’s nothing new for Santana, who tossed a 97-pitch, nine-inning, complete-game loss against the Braves last July 26. He’s the first major-leaguer to throw nine-inning, complete-game losses in each of two consecutive seasons since James Shields did it for the Rays in 2012 and for the Royals in 2013.
Never mind a wing and a prayer; Angels win on a homer and a steal
Kole Calhoun homered in the first inning and Cameron Maybin stole home as part of a double steal in the sixth to account for the Angels’ runs in their 2-1 victory over Ervin Santana in Minneapolis.
You have to go back 14 years to find the last major-league game won by a team that scored just two runs—one on a homer and the other on a steal. On June 12, 2003, Cincinnati’s Austin Kearns took care of both ends of the equation in a 2-1 victory over the Devil Rays in St. Petersburg: Kearns stole home as part of a double steal in the second inning, then homered in the sixth. Wednesday’s contest was the first in Angels history in which they scored two runs on a game, on a homer and a steal of home.
Vargas, 6-0 in June, wins 12th and evokes Saberhagen
Jason Vargas
A much-anticipated pitching duel between the Royals’ Jason Vargas and the Twins’ Ervin Santana turned out to be no contest, as Kansas City scored seven runs off Santana en route to an 8-1 win. Vargas had entered the game at 11-3 and Santana at 10-4, in what was only the second matchup of pitchers with double-digit wins totals before July 1 over the last 20 seasons. (The other such meeting came on June 16, 2002, in a Red Sox-Braves game in which Derek Lowe, at 10-2, opposed Tom Glavine, 11-2.)
Bret Saberhagen
Vargas secured his 12th win on Friday night, becoming only the second pitcher in Royals history to win 12 games before July 1 (Bret Saberhagen stood at 13-2 entering July in 1987). Vargas finished off a clean sheet for the month of June: six starts and six wins. The last Kansas City pitcher to win six games in a month was Saberhagen in September of 1989, after Bret had earned seven victories in August of that year!
The MLB non-waiver trade deadline of July 31 is coming up fast, just slightly over a month away. I am an old-timer, I admit it, I miss the good old days when baseball trades were made based on the skills of the players and the needs of your ball club. Today it is about the money, how long you can control the player, no trade clauses, free agency and who knows what else. Today’s star players are often traded for minor league players with potential for the future. I hate those kind of trades because you are giving up a known commodity for a player or players that might be a star in the future, you are giving up a sure thing for a maybe. But that is baseball today so we need to accept it and move on.
What about our Minnesota Twins, what will they do? I think the Twins find themselves in a very difficult position. The team is winning just enough to stay in the weak AL Central Division race but yet I think management realizes that this is not a playoff team. On the other hand, their attendance and fan interest has been falling since 2010 and they can ill afford to send up the white flag and signal the start of another rebuild process. So what do you do, buy, sell, or do nothing? So what are the odds that the team will make some moves prior to the trade deadline?
Ervin Santana
This will be the first trade deadline for the Twins under the Derek Falvey and Thad Levine regime so there is no real track record to go on. The Twins have players that would interest other teams and they also have players like Miguel Sano, Max Kepler and Jose Berrios that they won’t trade. The team listened to offers for second baseman Brian Dozier all winter and when all was said and done and decided to keep him. The ace of the starting staff Ervin Santana, 34, would be a nice pick-up for a contender but can a team as pitching starved as the Twins afford to give him up? Some would argue that the Twins can’t afford not to trade him because he is having a great season, maybe a career season and he is signed at a very team friendly deal through 2018 with a team option in 2019.
No matter who the team trades they need to get pitching in return and acquiring pitching is such a risky proposition. It is almost a damned if you do and damned if you don’t scenario.
So what is my best guess? I would say that the team will move Ervin Santana, Robbie Grossman and probably some minor league players for pitching. If you go by what Falvey and Levine did this past winter, they will do nothing and wait for their young players to get better.
It’s 2017 and we’re realists. Although we love a complete-game shutout as much as the next fan, we don’t expect to see them very often these days. But Ervin Santana has pitched three this season, a major-league high, and on Sunday he went six innings in the Twins’ 4–0 win at Cleveland—a “new millennium shutout,” if you will.
In fact, Santana didn’t allow a run in seven of his 13 starts this season. In the live-ball era, only four other pitchers made as many as seven starts without allowing a run by the end of June: Sandy Koufax in 1963, Don Drysdale in 1968 (when he set an MLB record, since broken, with 58 2?3 consecutive scoreless innings), Jeff Locke in 2013, and Adam Wainwright in 2014. The only other pitcher to do so in Senators/Twins history was the Big Train himself, Walter Johnson, with Washington in 1913.
Ervin Santana, for the third straight month, threw a complete-game shutout, limiting the Giants to four hits in the Twins’ 4-0 victory in San Francisco. Santana had thrown a one-hitter against the White Sox on April 15 and a two-hitter at Baltimore on May 23; no other major-leaguer has thrown as many as two shutouts this season. Santana’s total of 91 pitches against the Giants was the lowest in any of the 22 nine-inning complete games in the majors this season, and it was the lowest in a complete-game shutout since Jeff Samardzija used 88 pitches in a one-hit shutout for the White Sox at Detroit on Sept. 21, 2015.
Rich Robertson
It has been more than 20 years since the last time that a Twins pitcher threw as many as three shutouts in an entire season. Rich Robertson was the last three-timer, back in in 1996. And to find the last Minnesota pitcher who shut out three opponents within his first 13 starts of a season—which is what Santana has done—you have to go back to 1971, when Bert Blyleven blanked three opponents in his first eight starts.
BONUS: Here is what todays’ Twins Game Notes had to say:
Ervin Santana tossed his third complete game shutout of the season last night against the Giants. He is the first Twin to toss three complete games in a single season since Carl Pavano had seven in 2011 and he is also the first Twin to toss three shutouts
in a single season since Rich Robertson had three in 1996.
The shutout in Interleague play was the ninth in Twins history (last: Pavano in 2010). Ervin also had a career night at the plate, doubling his career RBI total with three RBI (bases loaded double). He is the first Twins pitcher with three-plus RBI in a single game since Luis Tiant had three on May 28, 1970 vs. Milwaukee, in fact, his three RBI on the season are the most by a Twins pitcher since Jim Kaat (4) and Bert Blyleven (7) in 1972.
Albert Pujols hit his 600th major-league home run in the Angels’ 7-2 win over the Twins, a long grand slam off Ervin Santana. The only player in major-league history who hit a “100th” home run of 400-or-higher that was a grand slam was Carlos Delgado, whose 400th home run was a grand slam, for the Mets at home off Jeff Weaver of the Cardinals on August 22, 2006. Delgado hit number 399 off Weaver earlier in the game and also homering twice in that game was Pujols himself: the 238th and 239th of his career off of John Maine.
Pujols is the ninth player to join the 600 home run club, and he had 1,223 extra-base hits leading up to his 600th homer. That’s the second-most for a player at the time of his 600th homer, behind Hank Aaron (1,233). Willie Mays had the next-most (1,193). Pujols was batting .308 entering the 600th home run, third-highest at the time of accomplishing the feat, below Babe Ruth (.349) and Hank Aaron (.312). Ruth started his career before RBIs became in official statistic in 1920. Among the 8 members of the 600 home run club who debuted since 1920, Pujols’s 1,855 RBIs at the time of number 600 rank second to only Aaron, who had one more (1,856).
Ervin Santana is a former teammate of Pujols; they played together for the Angels in 2012. Pujols is the third player to hit a “100th” home run of 500-or-higher off a former teammate. Jimmie Foxx hit number 500 while playing for the Red Sox in Philadelphia in 1940, off his former A’s teammate George Caster, and Manny Ramirez hit number 500 while playing for the Red Sox in 2008 in Baltimore off his former Red Sox teammate Chad Bradford.
San Diego Padre (and Minnesota native) left-hander Brad Hand is supposedly on the market. Hand led the NL in appearances in 2016 with 82 pitching 89 plus innings and striking out 111 while giving up just 63 hits and posting a 2.92 ERA. The 6’3″ 27 year-old Hand blossomed last season when he became a full-time relief pitcher. Hand is making just under $1.4 million this season and is arbitration eligible for the first time in 2018. Did I mention that Hand held left-handed opponents to a .123/.234/.221 batting line in that time but also shut down right-handed batters to the tune of a .219/.295/.350 triple slash. You would think that with San Diego rebuilding, the Twins would have someone they could part with to have Brad provide a Hand in the Twins bullpen……. I am not big normally on making up trade proposals but if the price is right, this is a no brainer. Don’t forget, prospects are just that, this is a “Brad in the Hand”. Am I on a roll or what?
Apparently Trevor May isn’t spending all his time rehabbing and based on this article he doesn’t seemed to be too down and out about his injury and TJ surgery.
Glancing Back, and Remembering Bernie Allen is a nice little piece about former Twins 2B Bernie Allen in 1960s baseball, a site I really enjoy. They also have a cool report called “The Top Ten Minnesota Twins (or any team for that matter) of the 1960s” that you can download for free. Take them up on their offer, you can’t go wrong. Click on the book cover to download.
Although the following “According to ELIAS” post is not Twins related, any time you get 20 strikeouts in a nine inning game it is worth mentioning.
MLB records tied: Kimbrel 4 SO in 9th, Red Sox pitchers 20 in game
Craig Kimbrel was credited with four strikeouts in the ninth inning on Thursday night, tying a major-league record and boosting the total of strikeouts by Red Sox pitchers to 20 in their victory over the Rangers, tying the major-league record for strikeouts by a team in a nine-inning game.
Nomar Mazara, first up for Texas in the ninth, swung and missed at the third strike, as the ball apparently hit his left foot. Although he would have been automatically out had that been the call, he ran to first base and was permitted to remain there, as the umpires apparently did not rule that the ball had hit him, so that when it bounced toward the third-base dugout, it was still live. No sweat for Kimbrel, he just struck out the next three batters to join AJ Burnett, Zack Greinke and Chuck Finley as the only major-league pitchers who have struck out more than three batters in an inning more than once. (Kimbrel also did it with Atlanta in 2012; Finley had three such innings in his career.) Red Sox pitchers have now accounted for three of the six instances in which a team accumulated 20 strikeouts in a nine-inning game. Roger Clemens accounted for the two other cases personally, against the Mariners in 1986 and at Detroit in 1996.
I really don’t care who you vote for the 2017 All-Star game, except…..that I do urge you to vote for Twins third baseman Miguel Sano. The man is having a tremendous season and he deserves to represent us Minnesota Twins fans along with Ervin Santana in Miami in July. Click on the image to vote.
Ervin Santana threw a two-hit shutout for the Twins against the Orioles last night, improving to 7-2 with a 1.80 ERA in ten starts this season. Since the franchise moved to Minnesota in 1961, only two Twins pitchers had an ERA that low through their first ten starts of a season: Francisco Liriano was 9-1 with a 1.36 ERA in his first ten starts in 2006 and Scott Erickson was 7-2 with a 1.63 ERA in his first ten starts in 1991.
Santana also improved to 4-0 in four road starts this season. His teammate Phil Hughes has also won his first four road starts this year. It’s just the third time in Twins franchise history that two pitchers each won their first four road starts of a season. It happened in 1913 with Walter Johnson (won first five road starts) and Joe Boehling (four), and in 1979 with Jerry Koosman (five) and Geoff Zahn (five).
The Twins’ two best players this season, Miguel Sano and Ervin Santana, were the stars of a 1-0 victory for Paul Molitor’s squad in Cleveland last night. Sano’s first-inning home run, his 10th homer of the season, provided the game’s only run while Santana went seven innings to lower his ERA to 1.50. That’s the lowest ERA for a Minnesota pitcher through his first eight starts of a season since Scott Erickson began the 1991 season at 1.44 through eight starts. Erickson went on to win 20 games that season and the Twins went on to win the World Series.
How often do you see a 1-0 game in which the only run comes on a first-inning homer? Well, there were no such games in the major leagues all of last season and only one in 2015 (Albert Pujols supplied the home run against the A’s on June 13 of that year, and C.J. Wilson earned the victory). Moreover, it was the first 1-0 victory featuring a first-inning home run in the history of the franchise, dating back to its beginnings in Washington in 1901.
