SEATTLE 4, MINNESOTA 3 IN MINNESOTA
Date: Wednesday, April 22.
Batting stars: Al Newman was 2-for-4 with a triple, scoring once and driving in two. Dan Gladden was 2-for-4 with a stolen base (his second) and an RBI. Tom Brunansky was 1-for-3 with a walk and a run.
Pitching stars: Bert Blyleven pitched six innings, giving up three runs on eight hits and a walk with three strikeouts. Juan Berenguer struck out four in 1.2 scoreless innings, giving up one hit.
Opposition stars: Mark Langston pitched a complete game, allowing three runs on seven hits and two walks with nine strikeouts. Rey Quinones was 2-for-3 with a home run (his second) and a walk, scoring twice. Harold Reynolds was 2-for-4 with a stolen base (his fourth), scoring once and driving in one.
The game: Blyleven left a pitch up to Quinones in the fourth to tie the game 1-1, but Newman's two-run single in the fifth put the Twins up 3-1. The Mariners tied it with two in the seventh. In the eighth, Seattle got three consecutive singles off George Frazier, with the last a run-scoring hit by Reynolds, to take the lead. The Twins put two on with two out in the ninth, but Mark Davidson popped up to end the game.
Of note: Newman raised his average to .317...Gladden was batting .357...Kirby Puckett was 0-for-4 to drop his average to .351...Kent Hrbek was 2-for-4.
Record: The Twins were 10-5, in first place by a game over California.
Notes: Newman started at second base in place of Steve Lombardozzi...Gladden was in center field, with Davidson in left. Puckett was the DH...It seems highly unlikely that Langston would be allowed to pitch a complete game today in this situation. I don't have a pitch count for him, but he had allowed three runs in eight innings and had a one-run lead, so the closer would almost certainly be brought in to start the ninth. Even if not, it seems like a move would be made after Langston allowed a single and a walk with two out. That's not to say which is better or worse, just that times have changed.
Interesting point, Chaps. Looking at his b-ref page, I'm a little surprised Langston was allowed to pitch with a small lead that late anyway. This was his fourth start of the season and he was only in the beginning moments of becoming the pitcher in we think of him as now. (Probably in his best years with the Angels?) Prior to 1987 he had thrown nearly 600 innings with midling results: 4.24 FIP, 1.482 WHIP, 93 ERA+. His 7.9 K/9 rate was good, but came along with a 5.1 BB/9 (1.57 K/BB).
But in 1987 Langston came on in a big way: 3.69 FIP, 1.309 WHIP, 124 ERA+. He bumped his K/9 up to 8.7 and dropped his BB/9 to 3.8 (2.30 K/BB). Langston finished the year with 5.9 rWAR, with his first All-Star nod and fifth in Cy Young voting.
Of course he had almost the whole season ahead of him at this point, and the Twins had pounded him for 10 hits (2 HR) and 8 runs (7 earned) over 7.1 innings just ten days earlier. Langston had struck out ten batters that day, though, so it wasn't entirely one-sided.
Noteworthy: John Hirschbeck, who was the first base umpire in this game, retired at the end of the 2016 regular season.
Part of the reason may have been that Seattle really didn't have a closer in 1987. Ed Nunez led the team with twelve saves. Bill Wilkinson had ten. Jerry Reed had seven, Steve Shields three, Mike Trujillo one, and that's it. Thirty-three saves for the team. Without a closer he could rely on, Dick Williams, who seems like he was an old-school manager anyway, could easily have decided his best bet was to stick with Langston. I still doubt it would happen today, though.
I agree. Obviously philosophies for both starting pitcher use and employment of a relief corps have both changed since then, but probably particularly so for a pitcher with Langston's track record to that point.
Another factor is that if Langston was taken out and replace by a RHP, then TK I'm sure would have pinch hit with Randy Bush. Considering the M's didn't have a true closer, I think I would prefer even a tired Langston vs. Mark Davidson than a mediocre RHP vs. Randy Bush. That's my guess as to why Williams stayed with Langston with 2 outs. Of course, starting the 9th with Langston is a different matter, but Smalley was on the bench as well, so Williams maybe wanted to keep both of them there. Interesting that Smalley or Lombardozzi didn't bat for Davidson, who had a career 65 OPS+ in parts of 6 seasons.
And it almost certainly would've been a right-hander. The only lefty in Seattle's bullpen at this time was Wilkinson, and while he would get ten saves in 1987 he had none at this point and was a twenty-two-year-old rookie.
This is one of the cool things about baseball--being able to go back and analyze a managerial decision that happened almost thirty years ago.