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
Jered Weaver threw a no-hitter against the Twins last night, while Angels batters scored nine runs on 15 hits off Minnesota’s pitchers. It was only the second major-league game in the past 40 years in which one team had at least 15 hits and the other had none. On June 27, 1980 Jerry Reuss no-hit the Giants at Candlestick Park, an 8-0 game in which the Dodgers collected 17 hits. Source: Elias
As I was preparing to write this post just before the Twins/Orioles game today, I had a sudden bloody nose. I seldom get a bloody nose but for some reason today was that day and I just could not get it to stop bleeding. We were supposed to go to out for Easter dinner prepared by our son and his wife but my wife had to go alone because the blood just kept coming. I spent three hours in front of the television watching the Twins lose to the Orioles and almost get no-hit in the process all the while applying pressure to my nose to stop the bleeding. I even called a doctor for advice but all he told me to do was to keep applying pressure or to go to an urgent care center. He did not specify if he was talking about the Twins game or my nose. The bleeding in my nose finally stopped but I don’t think the Twins are as lucky as they ended up getting swept in Baltimore and now they have lost seven straight to the Orioles over two years and scored two runs or less in each game. Before all you Twins fans jump off the nearest bridge, you should be aware that the Twins are not the only team to get swept this week-end, the Yankees and Red Sox join the Twins at 0-3 in the American League and in the National league the Braves and the Giants are also without a win in 2012 with 3 losses. What are the odds huh? But we need to keep in mind it is only three games and if this is the longest losing streak the Twins encounter in 2012, we will be ecstatic. On the negative side you can say we have played three games and are already 3 games down in the standings to the Tigers who stand at 3-0. Let’s hope the team can turn it around at Target Field but it will not be easy against the Angels and the likes of CJ Wilson, Jared Weaver, and Dan Haren on the mound. We will be out there cheering the home team on.
A few notes about the Twins
The Twins sold out 10 of their 16 Spring home games and surpassed the 100,000 mark in attendance for the 11th consecutive year and 14th time since they started training in Ft. Myers.
The Twins opened the 2012 season with 14 players on their 25-man roster who were not on the 2011 Opening Day roster: Ryan Doumit, Sean Burroughs, Jamey Carroll, Luke Hughes, Chris Parmelee, Trevor Plouffe, Ben Revere, Josh Willingham, Anthony Swarzak, Jared Burton, Jeff Gray, Alex Burnett, Liam Hendriks, and Matt Maloney. Of the players on the 25 man opening day roster, 14 players started their career as Minnesota Twins.
Manager Ron Gardenhire starts the 2012 season with 866 wins and needs 34 wins to reach 900.
Jamey Carroll’s 50 errors as an infielder since 2003 ties him for fifth-fewest in all of baseball.
Josh Willingham’s was charged with two errors on Saturday after making only two errors in all of 2011.
The Twins have now lost seven consecutive games against Baltimore dating back to last season. Oddly enough, the Twins have scored two runs-or-less in each of the seven games, having been outscored by the Orioles 37-7 during the seven-game stretch. This to one of the worst pitchings staffs in baseball.
The Twins were swept for the first time this season. In 2011, they were swept a total of 14 times, 1 one-game, 3 two-game series, 9 three-game series and 1 four-game series. The 14 sweeps were the most of a Twins team since the 1978 team when they were swept 17 times.
The Twins traded 7-time batting champion 2B Rod Carew to the California Angels for outfielder Ken Landreaux, catcher Dave Engle, and pitchers Paul Hartzell and Brad Havens. A trade was demanded by Carew after team owner Calvin Griffith made his infamous speech to the Lions Club in Waseca, Minnesota back in September of 1978. According to some reports, Griffith first agreed to trade Carew to the San Francisco Giants but Carew had veto power and nixed that deal. At the time of the trade to California, Carew had been a fixture in the Twins line-up for 12 seasons hitting .334 with 2,085 hits and being named an All-Star each of those 12 seasons. Carew went on to play for the Angels for seven more seasons making post season play in 1979 and 1982 but Rodney never won a batting title as an Angel.
Outfielder Ken Landreaux only played in Minnesota for two years before the Twins traded him to the Los Angeles Dodgers on March 30, 1981 for Mickey Hatcher and minor leaguers Kelly Snider and Matt Reeves, neither of whom ever played in a big league game. Landreaux hit .294 with 22 home runs and 145 RBI’s and had 19 stolen bases but what Ken Landreaux is best remembered for is his 31 game hitting streak early in 1980 which is still a Minnesota Twins record. Landreaux was an All-Star in 1980 while a Minnesota Twin. Landreaux played for the Dodgers from 1981-1987 and won a World Series ring there in 1981.
Dave Engle began his career with the Twins as an outfielder but was converted to a catcher in 1982 when his hitting was not considered up to par for an outfielder. Engle played for the Twins from 1981 through 1985 making the All-Star team in 1984 but he did not get a chance to appear in the game at Candlestick Park. In 1985 Engle started having throwing issues and his troubles appeared to have begun during batting practice one day when one of his throws glanced off the top of the protective screen and broke his pitcher’s nose. Engle then began lobbing his throws with a pronounced arc. Engle had the misfortune of having a base runner (Alfredo Griffin) stealing a base on one of his tosses back to the mound. Engle caught jst 17 games for Minnesota in 1985 and the Twins traded him to the Detroit Tigers in January of 1986. Dave went on to play for the Montreal Expos in 1987-1988 and closed out his big league career with the Milwaukee Brewers in 1989 but he only caught 18 games after he left Minnesota. Dave is the brother-in-law of another former Minnesota Twin, Tom Brunansky.
Right-handed pitcher Paul Hartzell only pitched in Minnesota during the 1979 season putting up a 6-10 record with a 5.36 ERA in 26 starts. The 6’5″ Hartzell was one of those pitch-to-contact pitchers who gave up 193 hits in 163 innings while striking out just 44 batters which was also the number of batters he walked that season. The Twins released Hartzell in April of 1980. Hartzell appeared in a handful of games with the Orioles in 1980 and the Brewers in 1984.
Lefty Brad Havens pitched for the Twins from 1981-1983 posting an 18-28 mark with a 5.00 ERA in 58 starts. The Twins sent Havens to Toledo in 1984 and he spent the entire season there before the team traded him to Baltimore in the spring of 1985 for pitcher Mark Brown. Havens pitched for the Orioles in 1985-1986 before moving on to the Dodgers in 1987-1988, the Indians in 1988-1989 and Havens closed out his big league career with the Tigers in 1989. Havens put in the big leagues for all or parts of eight seasons and finished his career with a 4.81 ERA and a 24-37 record.
The same day, the Twins make another deal when the Red Sox shipped outfielder Dave Coleman to Minnesota and the Twins give up 3B Larry Wolfe. Coleman spent the 1979 in AAA Toledo and never put on a Minnesota Twins uniform. In 1980-1981 Coleman played for the Yankees AAA team in Columbus but there is no information on how he ended up there.
Rodney Cline Carew, who was born in Gatun in the Panama Canal Zone on October 1, 1945 becomes only the 22nd player in MLB history to be voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame on the first ballot, garnering 90.5% of the votes.
The left-handed hitting Carew made the Twins team as the starting 2B in the spring of 1967 and went on to win the AL Rookie of the Year award in 1967 and was selected to his first All-Star game that season. Who would know at the time that Carew would be an All-Star for 18 consecutive years, missing out on the All-Star team in only his last season (1985) as an active player. Although Rodney started out as a 2B, a serious knee injury in 1970 started the process of Carew moving to 1B. By the time Carew’s 19 year big league career was over, Carew actually played at more games at 1B than he did at 2B. Carew had a magical season for the Twins in 1977 making a serious run at hitting .400 but finished the season at .388 and won the AL MVP award.
Rod Carew and owner Calvin Griffith frequently disagreed about the salary that Carew was earning with Griffith arguing that Carew was nothing but a singles hitter and Carew arguing that if he wanted to hit for power he could. But it was the ill-fated Lion’s Club speech in Waseca, Minnesota that Griffith made on September 28, 1978 that was the final nail in the coffin as far as Carew was concerned and owner Griffith had no choice but to trade his best player. According to some reports, Griffith first had a trade worked out with the San Francisco Giants but Carew had veto power and nixed that deal so on February 3, 1979 the Twins owner and GM sent Carew to the California Angels for catcher Dave Engle, outfielder Ken Landreaux, and pitchers Paul Hartzell and Brad Havens. Carew finished his career as an Angel playing there from 1979 to 1985.
Rod Carew played in the big leagues for 19 season appearing in 2,469 games finishing with 3,053 hits (2,085 as a Minnesota Twin) and putting up a lifetime .328 average to go along with his 353 stolen bases. Carew stole home seven times in the 1969 season to lead the majors, just missing Ty Cobb’s Major League record of eight and the most in the major leagues since Pete Reiser stole seven for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1946. His seven batting titles are surpassed only by Ty Cobb, Tony Gwynn and Honus Wagner, and equaled only by Rogers Hornsby and Stan Musial.
Carew’s number is retired by both the Minnesota Twins and the California Angels and he is a member of the Twins and Angels Hall of Fame. Today Carew is a part of the Twins organization making special appearances and taking part in the Twins Spring training as a coach each season.
Another look at Griffith’s Waseca speech can be found here in the Waseca County News.
Make sure you check out my Today in Twins History page to see all the Twins news for this day in history because I only blog about some of the items you can find there.
The Twins finished the 2011 season with a 63-99 mark and lots of folks including the Twins management blamed the clubs poor finish or at least a big part of it on injuries and that is difficult to argue as the team used the DL list 27 times. The Twins often brought up rookies to fill these openings. How did these rookies perform?
This past season the Twins led all of baseball in games played by rookies with 493, followed by the Mets with 442 and the Mariners with 403. On the other end of the spectrum the rookies only played in 57 Brewers and 73 Rangers games and you know where these teams finished. If you look at rookie plate appearances, the Twins postion playing rookies had 1,805, way ahead of the team closest to them, the Mariners who sent 1,484 rookie batters to home plate. These Twins position rookies ranked in the middle of the pack in base on balls percentage at 6.9%, ranked seventh best in strikeout percentage at 18.2%, were in the middle of the pack with a .245 batting average, and if you look at WAR, the Twins number was 1.0 with the Nationals the highest at 5.8 and the Rockies the lowest at -1.6 .
Looking at the Twins rookie pitchers as compared to all of baseball , the team used fewer rookies there than most teams did this past season. Twins rookie pitchers appeared in 124 games putting them 11 fewest and Twins rookies threw 169.2 innings, only the rookie pitchers for the Cardinals, Pirates, Cubs, Giants and Red Sox threw fewer innings. These Twins rookies finished with a 5-14 record with a BB/9 of 4.03 and 5.36 K/9, hardly something to shout about. On the other end of things, rookies threw 545.1 innings for the Royals, 527.1 for the Astros, 489 for the Mariners, and 426 for the Braves. These same Twins rookie pitchers posted an ERA of 5.15 trailing only the Giants at 6.40 and the 6.10 Red Sox. The Twins rookie pitchers did not pitch a lot but when they did pitch, they pitched poorly.
I took a look at the Twins rookies as compared to the rest of the American League rookies over the last 10 years and where the team finished and here is what I found.
| Year | Rookie plate appearances | AL rank | Rookie innings pitched | AL rank | Division finish |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2011 | 1,805 | 1 | 169.2 | 13 | 5th |
| 2010 | 631 | 7 | 88 | 12 | 1st |
| 2009 | 368 | 11 | 306.1 | 8 | 1st |
| 2008 | 1,512 | 2 | 491.2 | 2 | 2nd |
| 2007 | 520 | 8 | 222.1 | 9 | 3rd |
| 2006 | 305 | 10 | 376.1 | 7 | 1st |
| 2005 | 1,238 | 2 | 246 | 6 | 3rd |
| 2004 | 1,519 | 1 | 95.1 | 12 | 1st |
| 2003 | 426 | 9 | 130.1 | 10 | 1st |
| 2002 | 962 | 4 | 201 | 9 | 1st |
| AVG | 928.6 | 5.5 | 232.7 | 8.8 | 1.9 |
I am not sure you can reach any definitive conclusions from these numbers like rookies = trouble but they are still fun to look at. For example, the Twins finished last in 2011 when their rookie position players had more plate appearances than anyone but you compare that with 2004 when their rookie position players again led the league in PA’s but the team finished first.
But one thing that you can take away from this is that Gardy and pitching coach Rick Anderson are not big fans of young rookie pitchers based on the fact that the Twins rookie pitchers have been consisently in the bottom half of the division in innings pitched each year averaging just 232.7 innings and a ranking 9th of 14 teams. Twins rookie pitchers have only finished in the upper half of league innings pitched 3 three times in 10 seasons.
Former Twins closer Joe Nathan has signed a two-year deal $14.5 million with a team option for a third year ($500K buyout) with the Texas Rangers. The 37-year-old Houston born Nathan gets what he seemed to want the most, to pitch for a team with a chance to win it all. There are reports flying around that the Twins offered Joe “similar money” but with the Twins coming off a 99 loss season they apparently did not convince Joe that they can compete in 2012.
Nathan has pitched for the Twins since he was traded to Minnesota by the San Francisco Giants in November of 2003 along with pitchers Francisco Liriano and Boof Bonser for catcher AJ Pierzynski. Nathan has logged a team record 260 saves in 7 seasons in spite of sitting out the entire 2010 season recovering from TJ surgery. Joe had some tough appearances early in 2011 but got stronger as the season progressed.
I would have had no problem with the Twins paying Nathan $7 million on a one year deal but after that I get nervous. I will miss Nathan taking the mound for the Twins in the 9th inning but all good things must come to an end. Historically the Twins have “made their own” closers so I would be surprised if they actually spent free agent money to get one. I wish nothing but the best for Joe Nathan but I think that Joe will find it a bit different pitching in Ranger Ballpark versus pitching in Target Field.
Former Montreal Expos and Minnesota Twins pitcher Charlie Lea who was born to military parents in Orleans, France on December 25, 1956 was found dead yesterday of an apparent heart attack at his home at the age of 54. Lea was drafted by the Montreal Expos in 1978 and made his major league debut with the Expos on June 12, 1980. Lea was a mainstay in the Expos starting rotation between 1980 and 1984 before an arm injury derailed his career. Lea pitched a 4-0 no-hitter against the San Francisco Giants on May 10, 1981 at Stade Olympique Stadium in the second game of a double-header and in the process became the first French born pitcher to pitch a major league no-hitter. Lea was an All-Star in 1984 and was the starting and winning pitcher for the National league. Lea had to sit out the 1985 and 1986 season due to injuries and came back with the Expos in 1987 with little success. Lea signed a free agent contract with Minnesota in February of 1988 and was in the 1988 starting rotation all season, finishing with a 7-7 mark with a 4.85 ERA in 23 starts. Charlie Lea retired from baseball after the 1988 season.
In recent years Charlie Lea served as a radio broadcaster for his home town Triple-A Memphis Redbirds. Broadcast partner Steve Selby remembered Lea’s “easy-going style”.
“It was like you were sitting in a rocking chair on the porch,” Selby said. ”And he was so unassuming. You would have never known he had played major league baseball unless you asked him. So many analysts are quick to tell you ‘When I played major league baseball . . .’ Charlie never did that.
“It’s obvious he had inside knowledge of the game and wanted to tell you what he knew. A lot of players distance themselves from the game because their careers may not have ended the way they wanted. Charlie was positive about everything. We became good friends. There’s a huge hole in my life right there.”
Charlie Lea pitched in the big leagues for seven seasons and finished with a 62-48 record with a 3.54 ERA in 152 games with 144 starts.
March 31, 2011 – I know the season started today and I am a bit slow with my predictions for this year but here is how I see things playing out. Sorry to say, but I don’t see the Twins winning the AL Central this year, the new champs of the Central will be those “dag nabbit” Mighty Whitey’s. I see the Chicago White Sox as just beating out the Twins by 1 ½ games in a season long battle for supremacy. But things aren’t all bad, as the Twins will be the American league wild card winners for the first time in their history. Here is how I see the Division races ending up.
| Finish | AL East | AL Central | AL West |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Red Sox | White Sox | Rangers |
| 2 | Yankees | Twins * | A’s |
| 3 | Rays | Tigers | Angels |
| 4 | Orioles | Royals | Mariners |
| 5 | Blue Jays | Indians | |
| Finish | NL East | NL Central | NL West |
| 1 | Braves | Reds | Rockies |
| 2 | Phillies * | Cardinals | Giants |
| 3 | Marlins | Brewers | Padres |
| 4 | Nationals | Cubs | Dodgers |
| 5 | Mets | Pirates | D-Backs |
| Astros |
* – Wild Card Winner
The Twins will make some progress in the playoffs this year but they will only win one series and get beat out in the ALCS by the Boston Red Sox who will face the Atlanta Braves in the World Series. The Boston Red Sox will become the World Champions in 5 games.