MINNESOTA 4, NEW YORK 3 IN MINNESOTA
Date: Sunday, May 3.
Batting stars: Gary Gaetti was 2-for-4 with a home run, his eighth. Kirby Puckett was 2-for-4 with a home run, his seventh. Dan Gladden was 1-for-3 with a home run and a walk.
Pitching stars: Keith Atherton pitched 2.2 scoreless innings, giving up two hits and a walk with one strikeout. George Frazier pitched a perfect inning with one strikeout. Jeff Reardon pitched a scoreless inning, giving up one hit.
Opposition stars: Rickey Henderson was 3-for-4 with a walk and four stolen bases, his ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth. Willie Randolph was 2-for-4 with a run and an RBI. Joel Skinner was 1-for-3 with a double and two RBIs.
The game: I guess solo home runs can hurt you if you give up too many of them. The Twins scored four runs, all on solo homers, and it was enough to win. The Yankees scored all three of their runs in the fourth to go up 3-0. Gaetti homered in the bottom of the fourth to make it 3-1, Gladden homered in the sixth to make it 3-2, Tom Brunansky homered in the sixth to tie it up, and Puckett homered in the eighth to put the Twins ahead. Henderson led off the ninth with a single, but instead of having him try for his fifth stolen base the Yankees had Don Mattingly swinging, and he hit into a double play. Dave Winfield popped to the catcher to end the game.
Of note: Puckett was now hitting .355...Brunansky was 1-for-4 with a home run, his third...Mark Portugal started and went 4.1 innings, giving up three runs on seven hits and three walks with two strikeouts...Dennis Rasmussen started for the Yankees and went 5.2 innings, giving up three runs on six hits and three walks with three strikeouts.
Record: The Twins were 14-10. in first place by a game over California.
Notes: Mark Davidson was again the right fielder, with Brunansky as DH and Roy Smalley on the bench...Tim Laudner pretty much became the regular catcher at this point. He was 0-for-3 and was 1-for-15 for the season (.067). He would go lower than that and would not get his average into triple digits until May 21. He would only have seven days all season where his average was above the Mendoza line. He would end at .191, which led to the forming of the famous "Buck Ninety Fan Club"...Joel Skinner is one of those guys who put in a decent career as a backup catcher. He played for nine seasons (if you count six games in 1983). He played behind some pretty good catchers: Carlton Fisk with the White Sox, Rick Cerone with the Yankees, and Sandy Alomar with Cleveland. He also played behind guys like Don Slaught and Andy Allenson, but such is life when you're a career backup. He hit .228/.269/.311, but still was around for quite a while. As they say, it's nice work if you can get it.
After reading this post – and with relief pitching currently a hot subject in baseball – I ound myself wondering where Reardon fits in the pantheon of Twins relievers this morning. If you were the GM responsible for putting together a bullpen for an All-Time Twins team based solely on each reliever's ability & performance during their time with the Twins, does Reardon get a spot? I'm not sure the answer is entirely clear. Four relievers are pretty clearly ahead of him on my list, so he might not even make the squad's middle relief corps.
Going just by cumulative rWAR, he's 17th. I put the relief appearance percentage at 90% to try to keep Aguilera (who is at ~93%), up from the default 80% where Reardon ranks 20th.
Look at best pure-relief seasons of fewer than 100 innings, Reardon's best season is 19th. I count 11 players with a season better than his best in 1988. I think you could make a case for him to be in the bullpen, especially if using modern tendencies to have 13-man staffs. But he would be at the bottom of that list rather than the top.
Looking at that list, Nathan was pretty good.
of course, that method omits Mike Marshall's ridiculous 1979 season -- 90 appearances (1 start) and 142 2/3 innings, 4.4 rWAR.
He didn't even top the list, Doug Corbett's rookie season in 1980 did. Ron Perranoski's 1969 also barely edged Marshall's season. Furthermore, Marshall did a spot start that season so either restriction would have removed him. I did another search with only requiring the default 80% relief appearances to get everyone. The 100+ IP relief seasons are unlikely to return so I didn't want their inning-dominated WAR to cloud the now usual relief seasons.
Interesting question and hard to tease out. Obviously Aguilera and Nathan top anyone's list. But after that it gets muddy. Right now this second I'd probably rather have Glen Perkins. But do we discount Glen's poor starting or off relief years? And some of the middle relievers of the 00's may be more preferable due to their great K/BB rates, though if Reardon was around today his rate stats would probably climb as well.
Without too much research, my top 5 would be
I was watching parts of the first game of the '87 ALCS the other day, and Tony Kubek wouldn't shut up about how important Reardon was to the Twins, just his "presence" was affecting decisions or Viola was pitching better because he didn't need to save anything for the late innings because of the "presence of Reardon." They were shifting their defense in the third inning because they knew they had Reardon in the bullpen. It got real annoying, real fast.
Do you have access to the 87 ALCS? Or just parts?
It's all on Youtube, I believe.
Full games of everything but Game 4, it looks like.
sweeeeeet
4 is the game I'd really like to watch, but I'll take anything I can get
Well, he was The Terminator afterall
Totally not related to this discussion, but I did not remember one iota of Augie Ojeda, who apparently had an amazing month of September for the Twins in 2004.
He then went to the Cubs and D'Backs, I believe
I don't remember Ojeda being good, but I do remember him. He's filed in the revolving door of Gardy-era futility players, along with L-Rod, Tiffee, Abernathy, and so on.
I'd like to give Tom Burgmeier some love, not necessarily as a closer, but he ate some quality innings in the middle of his four Twins seasons. Even more so for Soupy Campbell, who has the Twins' record for innings in a season (and I think wins) by a reliever.