MINNESOTA 5, PHILADELPHIA 1 IN PHILADELPHIA
Date: Sunday, June 23.
Batting stars: Corey Koskie was 3-for-4 with a double, a home run (his seventh), and a stolen base (his sixth). Torii Hunter was 1-for-1 with a three-run homer, his seventeenth. Bobby Kielty was 1-for-3 with a walk.
Pitching stars: Johan Santana struck out five in 4.2 innings, giving up one run on two hits and six walks. Tony Fiore pitched three shutout innings, giving up only a walk and striking out two. Travis Miller pitched a scoreless inning, giving up one hit and striking out one.
Opposition stars: Randy Wolf pitched seven innings, giving up two runs on seven hits and no walks and striking out six. Todd Pratt was 1-for-3 with a double and a walk.
The game: The Twins left two on in the second and the third, finally breaking through in the fourth on a Koskie home run to take a 1-0 lead. The Phillies tied it in the bottom of the fourth on two walks and a Scott Rolen single. Philadelphia loaded the bases in the fifth on three walks, but Fiore came in to strike out Pat Burrell and end the threat. Dustan Mohr led off the sixth with a home run to put the Twins ahead 2-1. The Twins put the game out of reach in the ninth when Hunter, who had not started but had come in for defense in the bottom of the eighth, hit a three-run homer to make it 5-1.
WP: Fiore (6-2). LP: Wolf (3-6). S: None.
Notes: The Twins won with one of Ron Gardenhire's B lineups. Jacque Jones and Hunter both were out of the lineup, with Mohr in left, Kielty in center, and Brian Buchanan in right. A. J. Pierzynski also sat out, with Matthew LeCroy behind the plate. Cristian Guzman went into the leadoff spot and LeCroy batted fourth...Mohr was 1-for-4 to make his average .311...LeCroy was 1-for-3 and was batting .342...Kielty raised his average to .325...Fiore dropped his ERA to 2.12...This was Miller's fourth appearance of the season. He had thrown three scoreless innings, giving up two hits and two walks and striking out two...Hunter's home run came off a rookie who pitched the last two innings. The rookie's name was Carlos Silva. Twenty-three at the time, he had a really good year out of the bullpen for the Phillies, going 5-0, 1 save, 3.21, 1.31 WHIP. He was not as good in 2003, and after the season he was traded to the Twins along with Nick Punto and a player to be named later (Bobby Korecky) for Eric Milton. The Twins, of course, made him a starter. He was fairly good in 2004 and then had his astonishing 2005 season, in which he simply did not issue walks. Out of the 749 batters he faced, he walked exactly nine. Two of those were intentional walks, so in reality he only walked seven. He walked 0.4 batters per nine innings. He led all of baseball in K/W ratio despite the fact that he only struck out 71 batters in 188.1 innings, simply because he almost never allowed a walk. If there was a Pitch To Contact Hall of Fame, Carlos Silva would be in it just based on this one incredible season. He pitched for two more seasons for the Twins, then became a free agent and went to Seattle. He didn't take his magic with him, as he pitched poorly in 2008 and was injured much of 2009. He was traded to the Cubs before the 2010 season and had a good year for them, going 10-6, 4.22, 1.27 WHIP. After that, though, injuries came back to get him. The Cubs released him in late March of 2011. He signed with the Yankees but made just a handful of minor league appearances before being released. He tried to come back with the Red Sox in 2012, but just couldn't do it. He made one winter ball appearance in 2014 and then was done for good. At last report, he was living in Medina. Minnesota. He was not a star, but he will always be remembered fondly by Twins fans of that era.
Record: The Twins were 42-33, in first place by six games over Chicago.
In your estimation, is Scott Rolen a Hall of Famer? According to JAWS, of the top-10 at the hot corner, the only non-HOF ahead of him are Beltré and Chipper.
I can see an argument for him. He made seven all-star teams and won eight gold gloves, so certainly people at the time saw his as one of the top players in the game. His problem, I suppose, is that he never really did anything that made people sit up and take notice. He was just consistently really good for a long time. He only hit .300 twice and only hit 30 homers three times. His lifetime numbers are .281/.364/.490 with 316 homers. Very good numbers, especially when you account for his superior fielding, but again, nothing that really screams Hall of Famer. I wouldn't have a problem with it if he went in, but I'm afraid people will look at the career batting numbers and say "Hall of Very Good". I guess we'll see.
I think we have our next project after the Half-Baked Hall.
"[Carlos Silva] was not a star, but he will always be remembered fondly by Twins fans of that era."
I won a belt-clip
pocketwatch in an essay-writing contest at SethSpeaks.com (or whatever his site was) about how Silva was my favorite player in baseball.I loved the GIDP-heavy pitchers, and Silva was the best at it in those two seasons, being able to count runners on first as potential outs. I loved the 3-pitch inning with a hit.