Tag: Scott Baker

Baker on a roll

Scott Baker

Scott Baker pitched five scoreless innings to lead the Twins to a 4-1 victory over the Tigers yesterday afternoon. It marked the third consecutive start that Baker has not allowed an earned run. Over the last 35 seasons, only two other Twins pitchers have had a streak of three consecutive starts without allowing an earned run in a single season. Francisco Liriano had two three-game streaks in 2010 and Johan Santana did it in four straight starts in 2004. Source: Elias

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

 

I still can’t believe the Twins blew a 5-0 lead

Scott Baker

Even in the era of pitch counts, few complete games and relievers used in particular roles; you don’t see many like this. Twins starter Scott Baker threw seven scoreless innings and left with a 5-0 lead, but the Angels scored five in the eighth and one in the ninth against the bullpen and defeated the Twins, 6-5. Baker became the first major-league starter in 13 years to fashion a scoreless outing of at least seven innings and leave with a lead of at least five runs, only to see his team lose. The last pitcher to be so unlucky was the Yankees’ Hideki Irabu, in a game against the Rangers on May 14, 1998; as did Baker on Friday night; Irabu turned a 5-0 lead over to the bullpen at the start of the eighth and watched his relievers implode, as Texas won, 7-5, in 13 innings. (And, yes, Mariano Rivera himself was one of the culprits: he allowed the tying run in the ninth inning.) Now here’s the moral of the story: the Yankees went on to finish the season with a record of 114 wins and 48 losses, and swept the World Series.

It’s also our unhappy duty to report that as badly as things have gone for the Twins this season, Friday night’s game set a new low. It was the only the second time since the team came to Minnesota in 1961 – and the first time in nearly 40 years – that the Twins have lost a game in which they led by five-or-more runs going into the eighth inning. Since their only previous such loss – to the Yankees on July 30, 1971 – the Twins had gone 755-0 in games in which they took a lead of five-or-more runs into the eighth inning! That was the longest winning streak in major league history in games of that type. Source: Elias