MINNESOTA 3, TORONTO 2 IN MINNESOTA
Date: Friday, July 17.
Batting stars: Al Newman was 2-for-4 with a double and a stolen base (his seventh), scoring once and driving in one. Gary Gaetti was 1-for-4 with a home run, his seventeenth. Tim Laudner was 2-for-2 with a walk.
Pitching stars: Frank Viola struck out nine in seven innings, giving up two runs on eight hits and no walks. Juan Berenguer pitched a perfect inning with one strikeout. Jeff Reardon struck out two in a scoreless inning, giving up one hit.
Opposition stars: Lloyd Moseby was 2-for-4 with a two-run homer, his fifteenth. Tony Fernandez was 1-for-3 with a run. Jim Clancy pitched 5.1 innings, giving up two runs on four hits and three walks with four strikeouts.
The game: Moseby's home run came in the first inning, putting the Blue Jays up 2-0 two batters into the game. Gaetti homered in the bottom of the second to cut the lead to 2-1. Newman created the tying run in the sixth, singling to right, stealing second, taking third on a fly ball, and scoring on a wild pitch. In the seventh, a pair of singles put men on first and second with two out and Newman hit a ground-rule double to right-center to put the Twins ahead. Berenguer and Reardon shut the door from there.
Of note: Kirby Puckett was 0-for-3 with a walk to make his average .330...Roy Smalley was 0-for-3 with a walk to make his average .304...Newman was at shortstop in place of Greg Gagne. He batted second.
Record: The Twins were 50-41, in first place by a game over Oakland.
Player profile: Lloyd Moseby was a pretty good ballplayer whom nobody talks about any more. He was drafted by Toronto with the second overall pick in 1978 and was in the big leagues by 1980. He came up in late May of that year and was the regular right fielder the rest of the season. He shifted to center in 1981, which is where he spent most of his career. He struggled at the plate in his first three seasons, batting just .234 with OBPs less than .300 each season. Oddly, he hit exactly nine home runs in each of those years. In 1983, however, something clicked, or maybe he just matured (he was still only twenty-three). He batted .315/.376/.499 that season and was fourteenth in MVP voting, winning his only Silver Slugger award. He never matched those numbers, but he remained a very productive player for four more seasons. Oddly, he followed the three seasons of exactly nine homers with three seasons of exactly eighteen homers. The only thing he ever led the league in was triples, with fifteen in 1984, and he only made one all-star team, in 1986, but he would hit around twenty homers each season and have OBPs in the mid-.300s. 1987 was his last good year, as he batted .282/.358/.473 with a career-high twenty-six homers. He was only twenty-seven, and one would've expected him to remain productive for several more years. Instead, he fell off significantly. He hit around .230 for the next two seasons, went to Detroit for two more years in which he wasn't terrible, but wasn't really good either, and then was done in the United States at age thirty-one. He went to Japan for two seasons--the first one (1992) was very good, but the second one wasn't. His career numbers don't stand out: .257/.334/.414--but for five seasons he batted .277, slugged .456, averaged twenty homers, and also averaged thirty-five stolen bases. I'm not touting him for the Hall of Fame or anything, but for five years he was a darn good ballplayer.