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
If the reports are true, the Colorado Rockies and long-time Twins first baseman Justin Morneau have agreed on a two-year $13 million deal. After signing Morneau the Rockies will have two players on their roster that spent all or parts of 10 or more season wearing a Twins uniform. Morneau will join Michael Cuddyer in Colorado. Former Twins LaTroy Hawkins who logged nine seasons with Minnesota and has played with 10 different major league teams will also call Colorado home this season .
Now days with arbitration and free agency players don’t stay with an organization that long and to play for a team for 10 years is getting to be a tougher and tougher task. Since the Twins started here in 1961 there have been 22 players that logged 10 or more season in a Twins uniform with Tony Oliva leading the pack with 15 notches in his belt. The only active player on the list is Joe Mauer and if he stays in Minnesota through 2018 when his current contract expires, he will also wear that Minnesota across his chest for 15 years.
Players that played in Minnesota for all or parts of 10 seasons
The Twins have been in Minnesota for 53 years and have played 8,455 games winning 4,204 and losing 4,243. (just a FYI, the Angels who also started play in 1961 have won 4,220 games). Over the 53 years and 8,455 games Twins starters have pitched 9 innings or more in a start exactly 300 times (3.55%). Keep in mind that I am talking 9 innings or more pitched in a start, not complete games.
But sometimes just going 9 innings does not get the job done as you can see in the table below. In these 71 games the Twins starter took the mound in inning number 10 and sometimes even innings 11 and 12. The last Twins starter to hurl more than 9 innings in a start was Brad Radke in 1997.
But only one starting pitcher for the Twins, Jim Merritt has gone 13 innings and that remains a team record that in today’s pitch count world will probably never be broken. The franchise record is 18 innings held by Hall of Famer Walter Johnson who went the distance in a 1-0 Washington Senators win over the Chicago White Sox at Griffith Stadium in just 2 hours and 50 minutes on May 15, 1918.
But it is not just starting pitchers that have toiled long and hard to win a game. Here I look at relievers who have pitched 7 or more innings of relief in a game and Ray Corbin holds the team record for pitching 10.1 innings of relief against the Tigers in 1975. Corbin who was a starter/reliever during his five years in Minnesota pitched in just 11 more big league games after this long relief outing allowing at least one earned run in each appearance and never again pitched in a big league game.
The Twins will have three starters that will start 20 or more games during this 2013 season. Kevin Correia, Mike Pelfrey, and Scott Diamond have all passed that mark and there is no chance of anyone else joining that group. Samuel Deduno had 18 starts but he is done for the season. In 2012 the Twins had just one starter with 20 or more starts and that was Scott Diamond. 2012 was the first time in Twins history that they had only one starter with 20 or more starts. The Twins had only two starters with 20 or more starts only twice and those were the strike shortened 1981 and 1995 seasons. The Twins have had three starters start 20 or more games 12 times, four starters with 20 or more starts 17 times and five starters with 20 or more starts on eight occasions with the last two being 2010 and 2011. Only 6 teams in AL history have had 6 starters with 20 or more starts in a season and they were the 1937 White Sox, the 1942 Tigers, the 1944 Philadelphia A’s, the 1962 Senators, and the 2001 Rays. The Rays will be joining that group again on Monday when Alex Cobb makes his 20th start of 2013.
Justin Morneau hit two homers and drove in five runs in the Twins’ win over the White Sox in the day portion of the day/night doubleheader at U.S. Cellular Field. Morneau is the first Twins player in almost two years to hit two homers and drive in at least five runs in a game. Luke Hughes was the last Twins player to do it on Aug. 28, 2011. It’s the sixth time in his career that Morneau has accomplished this, five of them have come in road games. Only two other players in Minnesota Twins history had six games with at least two homers and five runs batted in: Harmon Killebrew and Gary Gaetti had six each.
Brian Duensing
Twins reliever Brian Duensing picked up the win in both games as the Twins swept their day/night doubleheader against the White Sox at U.S. Cellular Field. Duensing is only the second pitcher in the history of the Twins franchise to win two games in one day. Walter Johnson won both games of a doubleheader against the Browns on September 17, 1923. “The Big Train” won the first game with three shutout innings in relief and then went out and threw a seven-inning complete game in the nightcap. Game 1 box score. Game 2 box score. The last major-league pitcher to win twice in one day was Luis Vizcaino for the Yankees against Tampa Bay in 2007.
However, I think a case could be made that Jim Perry was actually the first Twins pitcher to win two games in one day. According to MLB the Twins did not win two games on July 20 but if you are splitting hairs, here is what happened.
7/19/1969 – The Twins and the Seattle Pilots play for 16 innings and the game is deadlocked at 7-7 at Sick’s Stadium and the game is suspended by league curfew and resumed the next day (July 20). I believe there was also a 20 minute delay in the game for the Apollo 11 moon landing. Box score.
Jim Perry
7/20/1969 – The Twins and Seattle Pilots resume play in the 17th inning. The pitchers in the 17th inning are todays scheduled starting pitchers, Jim Perry for Minnesota and John Gelnar for Seattle. After a scoreless 17th inning, the Twins break through for 4 runs in the top of the 18th and win the game 11-7. The team’s end up stranding 44 base runners, the Twins had 16 hits and 18 walks in the game. Gelnar was pulled after pitching 1 1/3 innings and was the loser. In the regularly scheduled game, Jim Perry again faced off against John Gelnar and Perry pitched a complete game shutout with the Twins winning 4-0 and Gelnar took the defeat. So in reality, Jim Perry won two games on this date and John Gelnar lost both games on this date. Box score.
Winning and losing on the same day
Ray Moore
5/20/1962 – The Twins split a double-header at Yankee Stadium losing the first game 4-3 and winning the second game 4-2. Twins reliever Ray Moore becomes the first Twins pitcher to lose and win a game in the same day. Box score game 1. Box score game 2.
On the losing end twice in one day
5/27/1983 – Twins reliever Rick Lysander becomes the first Twins pitcher to lose both games of a double-header as the Tigers beat the Twins 7-4 and 2-1 at Tiger Stadium. Box score game 1. Box score game 2.
Many of us that watch the Twins day in and day out complain about the number of hits that the Twins pitchers allow and bemoan the Twins so-called pitching philosophy of “pitch to contact”. The baseball glossary defines “pitch to contact” as “a pitcher who doesn’t try to strike out batters but instead tries to get them to hit the ball weakly, especially on the ground“. Pitch to contact is probably not the preferred Twins method but you have to work with what you have and the Twins just don’t have the strikeout type pitchers right now but they have had some over the years and here are some of the best.
Looking back at the Twins pitching history there have been numerous Twins pitchers that either never heard of this approach or choose not to embrace it. Here is a list of the Twins pitchers that allowed the fewest hits per inning pitched (minimum of 500 innings) during their time in Minnesota. The Twins career leader here is Dave Boswell and I think that Boswell would have ripped your heart out if you ever asked him to pitch to contact.
The best individual season in franchise history going back to 1901 was Tommy Hall’s 1970 season when he pitched in 52 games starting 11 and allowed just 5.45 hits per 9 innings in 155.1 innings pitched to go with his 184 strikeouts. Hall was 11-6 that season with a 2.55 ERA. During Hall’s 10 year career, he allowed just 656 hits in 852.2 innings. Amazing numbers. Hall didn’t pitch enough innings in Minnesota to make the above list but during his time in Minnesota he allowed 7.78 hits per 9 innings.
Kevin Correia hurled eight shutout innings and earned the victory in the Twins’ 5-0 win over the Rangers yesterday afternoon. Correia has now pitched at least seven innings and allowed three or fewer runs in each of his five starts this season. Since the Twins moved to Minnesota in 1961, they have had only three other pitchers that have opened a season with five consecutive starts with at least seven innings pitched and three or fewer runs allowed: Jim Perry in 1965 (first five), Scott Erickson in 1991 (first seven) and Brad Radke in 2001 (first seven).
In baseball, a switch-hitter is a batter that bats either from the right side or the left side depending on if the pitcher is right or left-handed. Most curveballs break away from batters hitting from the same side as the opposing pitcher making such pitches often harder to hit than those from the other side. History tells us that most right-handed batters hit better against lefty pitchers and left-handed batters hit better against right-handers. This so-called platoon benefit is why managers use pinch hitters and LOOGY’s and why some players want to become switch-hitters.
Switch-hitting at its best
Switch-hitters have been around for ever it seems and yet according to sources that I have researched, only about 6% of baseball batters have been switch-hitters. You have to wonder if switch-hitting is such an advantage, why haven’t more of baseball best hitters been switch-hitters? The best career batting average for a switch-hitter is .316 by Frankie Frisch and he currently ranks 71st all-time. Some of the best switch-hitters in our era have been Chipper Jones at .306 and Pete Rose at .303. Detroit Tigers DH Victor Martinez has a career average of .302 making him the highest currently active switch-hitter. Switch-hitters have been around for a long time and there have been some pretty good ones over the years, in addition to the players I just mentioned, you have to add players like Mickey Mantle, Eddie Murray, Roberto Alomar, Bernie Williams, George Davis, Lance Berkman, Tim Raines and Chili Davis to the list of switch-hitting greats.
Switch-hitting and the rules
A question often asked is can a batter switch for right to left or left to right during an at bat. The only rule that I can find that seemingly applies is 6.06(b) which states that “A batter is out for illegal action when he steps from one batter’s box to the other while the pitcher is in position ready to pitch.” Based on that, it appears you can switch from one batters box to the other as often as you want as long as you do it before the pitcher gets in his pitching position.
In the Twins 53 years of existence the team has had 62 players that were switch-hitters but not all of them actually batted and we will touch more on that later. The Twins very first switch-hitter was actually a pitcher, Pedro Ramos. Ramos pitched and batted (1 for 4 with 2 RBI) in the Twins very first game when Ramos and the Twins shut out the New York Yankees 6-0 on April 11, 1961 at Yankee Stadium. The first Twins switch-hitting position player to appear in a game was SS Marty Martinez when he had an at bat against the Yankees at Met Stadium on May 30, 1962 in game 2 of a doubleheader. Martinez actually appeared in 3 earlier games as a Twins but was used strictly as a pinch-runner by manager Sam Mele. It wasn’t until 1976 however; that the Twins actually had a regular position player switch-hitting and that year they had two, rookie catcher Butch Wynegar and SS Roy Smalley. The Twins are playing their 53rd season and there has only been one year, 1973 that they have not had a switch-hitter step into the batters box wearing a Twins uniform. On the other hand, they had nine switch-hitters (Cristian Guzman was the only starter) at one time or another on their 1999 team that finished 63-97.
Twins switch-hitting pitchers
Looking at the Twins 62 switch-hitters, eleven of them were pitchers and claimed to be switch-hitters but only Pedro Ramos, Jim Perry, Dan Serafini, JC Romero, and Joe Mays actually set foot in the batters box. The other six, Stan Perzanowski, Darrell Jackson, Pete Filson, Jason Ryan, Pat Neshek, and Eric Hacker were switch-hitters only on the back of their baseball cards because they never batted in a Twins game. Jim Perry actually hit five home runs as a Twin.
Home runs from each side of the plate club
The Twins switch-hitter with the most home runs is Roy Smalley and he hit 163 career home runs and 110 of them were when he was a Minnesota Twin. The “home runs from each side of the plate” club is relatively exclusive but three of the members were Twins. Roy Smalley accomplished that rare feat twice, once against the Boston Red Sox at the Metrodome on May 30, 1986 and once earlier in his career as a New York Yankee in 1982. Chili Davis became the second Twin to join the club when he did it against the Royals on October 2, 1992. Ryan Doumit became the third Twin to do so when too joined the exclusive fraternity against the Royals on July 22, 2012. Chili Davis hit a home run from each side of the plate 11 times in his illustrious 19 year career. Just for comparisons sake, Mickey Mantle did it on 10 occasions.
One oddity that seems to stand out to me is how few of the switch-hitters employed by the Twins over the years actually threw left-handed. If you exclude the 11 switch-hitting pitchers from the list you are left with 51 switch-hitters and only one of the 51 threw left-handed, the other fifty were right-handed. Kind of strange. The lone left-handed position player was John Moses. But keep in mind that John Moses an outfielder by trade, actually pitched in 3 games for the Twins and it gets even stranger.
Twins best switch-hitters
So let’s take a look at the Twins top switch-hitters, there is no good way to rank them so I will list here all the Twins switch-hitters that have 1,000 or more plate appearances in a Twins uniform. The chart also shows positions played, games played, home runs and batting average. All the numbers on this chart are their Twins career numbers. Many of these players played for other teams but those numbers are not included here, I am only interested in their numbers as Minnesota Twins for this story.
Some interesting numbers and players on this chart, about half the players were starters and half were utility players. No surprise that Smalley is the leader in home runs or that Chili Davis is second on that list but finding that Cristian Guzman is number 3 in the Twins switch-hitter home run list really surprised me.
A bonus question for you, this Twins switch-hitter had a career .425 batting average albeit in just 43 plate appearances, do you know who he is?
3/27/1973 – Twins’ pitcher Jim Perry becomes the first player to use the ’10 and 5 rule’ when he ok’s his own trade to the Tigers for minor league pitcher Dan Fife and cash. Perry won 20 games for the Minnesota Twins in 1969. In 1970, he went 24-12 for the Twins and won the Cy Young Award. The Perry brothers (Gaylord and Jim) are the only set of brothers to both win Cy Young Awards.
3/27/1985 – The Twins move pitcher Brad Havens to the Orioles and receive pitcher Mark Brown.
Bob Casey
3/27/2005 – Bob Casey, the first and only Twins public-address announcer passed away.
3/27/2010 – The University of Minnesota Gophers lost to Louisiana Tech 9-1 in the first baseball game played at the Twins’ new home, Target Field. More than 37,757 people came through the turnstiles after they opened in the morning for fans to take a look, sit in the seats and sample the food. Tickets were $2, with proceeds going to the team’s community fund. Former Gophers and Twins catcher Terry Steinbach threw out the ceremonial first pitch. Louisiana Tech’s Clint Ewing hit the ballpark’s first home run.
The Twins and Terry Ryan have put in a lot of time this off-season to try to round up some pitchers that they can put in the starting rotation so that manager Gardenhire can hopefully call on each of them to start 30-35 games each. That will be no easy task as last season the team leader in pitching starts was Scott Diamond with 27 and he didn’t even join the starting rotation until May 8th.
If you look back through franchise history you will find that the great Hall of Fame pitcher Walter (The Big Train) Johnson pitched for the Wasinhton Senators for 21 seasons from 1907-1927 and he started 666 games, that is an average of 31.71 starts each year for 21 years. He set the the franchise games started in a season record with 42 in 1910. Twins lefty Jim Kaat equalled that mark of 42 starts in the Twins 1965 AL Championship season and followed that up with 41 starts in 1966 making him the only pitcher in franchise history to have back-to-back 40+ starts seasons.
I thought it would be interesting to review the Gardenhire era from 2002 through 2012 to see how many pitchers he has had that have started 30 or more games in a season for the Twins.
2002 – Rick Reed and Kyle Lohse
2003 – Brad Radke, Kyle Lohse, Kenny Rogers, Joe Mays (and Rick Reed chipped in 27 starts)
2004 – Johan Santana, Carlos Silva, Brad Radke, and Kyle Lohse
2005 – Johan Santana and Brad Radke
2006 – Johan Santana and Carlos Silva
2007 – Johan Santana, Carlos Silva, and Boof Bonser
2008 – Nick Blackburn
2009 – Nick Blackburn and Scott Baker
2010 – Carl Pavano and Francisco Liriano
2011 – Carl Pavano
2012 – None, Scott Diamond led the pack with 27
In this 11 year time frame the Twins have had 12 different pitchers provide 30 or more starts in a single season and only three of them were actually drafted by the Twins, the rest were acquired in another manner. Radke was an 8th round pick in 1991, Blackburn was a 29th round pick in 2001, and Scott Baker was a 2nd round pick in 2003.
Chart showing numbers of pitchers with 30 or more starts
(Central Division champs marked with an *)
YEAR
Twins
Tigers
Indians
WSox
Royals
Totals
2002
2*
2
1
3
2
10
2003
4*
2
1
4
1
12
2004
4*
4
3
2
1
14
2005
2
3
5
4*
2
16
2006
2*
4
3
5
0
14
2007
3
2
3*
4
1
13
2008
1
2
1
4*
3
11
2009
2*
3
0
3
1
9
2010
2*
2
1
3
2
10
2011
1
4*
2
2
2
11
2012
0
3*
2
1
2
8
Totals
23
31
22
35
17
128
How big a deal is it to get 30 or more starts out of your starting pitchers? I will let you be the judge of that but the chart seems to indicate that the numbers of pitchers you have starting on a consistent basis will determine where you finish in the standings. The Twins seem to buck the trend a bit as they are the only team to win the Central Division title with fewer than 3 starters taking the mound 30 or more times and they did it 3 times with just 2 starters taking the mound 30 or more times.
LHP Jim Kaat
All this research made me curious as to who the Twins pitchers were over the years with the most starts in a Minnesota Twins uniform and here is what I dug up. There have only been 14 Twins pitchers that have toed the pitching rubber in the first inning in a Twins uniform 150 or more times. Some of these pitchers may have started a number of games in different uniforms including the Washington Senators prior to becoming the Twins but I am only looking for starts while wearing “Minnesota” on their chest. Of these 14 pitchers, only six (Blyleven, Viola, Goltz, Baker, Erickson, and Boswell) were actually drafted by the Minnesota Twins. The only pitcher on the list to spend his entire career as a Minnesota Twin? Brad Radke.
The Twins finished with a 66-96 record in 2012 and the teams starting pitching was blamed for the teams poor play. The teams starting pitching had a league worst 5.40 ERA and the starters posted a 39-75 record. As a whole the entire pitching staff posted a 4.77 ERA which is the seventh worst in team history. Previous Twins teams that had higher ERA’s than the 2012 Twins were –
The 1995 team had a 5.76 ERA and finished with a 56-88 mark.
The 1994 team had a 5.68 ERA and finished with a 53-60 mark.
The 1996 team had a 5.28 ERA and finished with a 78-84 mark.
The 2000 team had a 5.14 ERA and finished with a 69-93 mark.
The 1999 team had a 5.00 ERA and finished with a 63-97 mark.
The 1997 team had a 5.00 ERA and finished with a 68-94 mark.
It is easy to forget some of the horrendous pitching staffs that Tom Kelly managed in the mid to late 90’s. But this article is not about how bad the Twins pitching has been over the years but instead is just laying some ground work to highlite some of the Twins best pitching performances over the years based simply on ERA. I know that ERA is not necessarily the best way to determine pitching quality but ERA has been around for a long time and provides us with a measurement tool of sort. The Twins have used many pitchers since the team moved to Minnesota after the 1960 season but I can only find 12 Twins pitchers, barely enough to comprise a pitching staff that have thrown 100 or more innings and posted an ERA of 2.50 or under in a single season. So lets take a look at who these pitchers were and the dominating season that they had.
1. Doug Corbett in his first season in the big leagues in 1980 pitched in 63 games, all in relief and posted a 1.98 ERA in 136.1 innings and had 23 saves to go along with his 8-6 record. Corbett was acquired by the Twins in December 1979 as a Rule 5 draftee from the Cincinnati Reds.
2. Bill Dailey in his first season in Minnesota and third in the big leagues in 1963 pitched in 66 games, all in relief and posted a 1.99 ERA in 108.2 innings and had 21 saves to go along with his 6-3 record.
3. Stan Williams in his 12 big league season and first as a Twin in 1970 pitched in 68 games, all in relief and posted a 1.99 ERA in 113.1 innings and had 15 saves to go along with his 10-1 record.
4. Jim Kaat was in his 12th season for the Twins and in 1972 had started 15 games before getting hurt in early July and sitting out the rest of the season. In this 15 games he pitched 113.1 innings and posted a 2.06 ERA to go along with his 10-2 record.
5. Ron Perranoski in his second season in Minnesota in 1969 appeared in 75 games, all in relief and posted a 2.11 ERA in 119.2 innings and had a league leading 31 saves to go along with his 9-10 record.
6. Francisco Liriano in his first full season as a Twin in 2006 appeared in 28 games starting 16 of them and posted a 2.16 ERA in 121 innings. Liriano put up a 12-3 record to go along with his first big league save.
7. Jim Perry in his 10th big league season and his 6th in Minnesota in 1968 appeared in 32 games starting 18 of them and posted a 2.27 ERA in 139 innings while notching 1 save to go along with his 8-6 record. Perry went on to win 20 games in 1969 and a league leading 24 wins in 1970 when he won the Cy Young award.
8. Ron Perranoski is the only pitcher to make this list twice. In 1970 Perranoski had a 2.43 ERA when appeared in 67 games throwing 111 innings and once again led the league in saves with 34 to go with his 7-8 won/lost record.
9. Allan Anderson had a breakout season in 1988 when he started 30 games throwing 202.1 innings and putting up a league leading 2.45 ERA to go along with his 16-9 record.
10. Camilo Pascual was in his 10th season with the Senators/Twins in 1963 when he started 31 games throwing 248.1 innings with a league leading 18 complete games and posted a nifty 2.46 ERA that went well with his 21-9 record.
11. Dave Goltz made the list in 1978 which was his 7th big league season with Minnesota when he had a 2.49 ERA when he started 29 games and pitched 220.1 innings going 15-10 and that was a season after he had won 20 games.
12. Tom Burgmeier was in his 9th big league season and third with the Twins in 1976 when he appeared in relief in 57 games when he pitched 115.1 innings posting a 2.50 ERA to go along with his 8-1 record.
So what kind of ERA did the Twins World Series teams have? The 1965 Twins pitching staff had a 3.14 ERA, the 1991 Twins put up a 3.69 ERA and the 1987 world champs had a 4.63 ERA.
