Monthly Archives: December 2017

Keeping Track

2002 Rewind: Game Eighty-three

MINNESOTA 5, OAKLAND 4 IN MINNESOTA

Date:  Monday, July 1.

Batting stars:  A. J. Pierzynski was 3-for-4.  Jacque Jones was 2-for-5 with a double.  Cristian Guzman was 2-for-5.

Pitching stars:  Jose Rodriguez pitched two shutout innings, giving up two hits.  LaTroy Hawkins pitched two shutout innings, giving up one hit and striking out one.  Eddie Guardado pitched a scoreless inning, giving up one hit and striking out one.

Opposition stars:  John Mabry was 2-for-3 with a double and a three-run homer, his third.  Eric Chavez was 2-for-4 with a stolen base, his third.  Greg Myers was 2-for-4 with a double.

The game:  David Ortiz singled home a run in the first inning to give the Twins a 1-0 lead.  Oakland came back in the second, as Mabry hit a three-run homer to put the Athletics up 3-1.  The Twins tied it with productive outs, getting a sacrifice fly from Doug Mientkiewicz in the third and a run-scoring ground out by Corey Koskie in the fourth.  Oakland regained the lead in the fifth on David Justice's RBI single.  It stayed 4-3 until the seventh, when Mientkiewicz delivered a two-out two-run double to give the Twins a 5-4 advantage.  The Athletics got a man to second base in both the eighth and ninth, but that was where he stayed.

WP:  J. C. Romero (4-1).  LP:  Mike Venafro (2-2).  S:  Guardado (25).

Notes:  Torii Hunter was 2-for-5 to make his average .306...Bobby Kielty was 1-for-3 with a walk and was batting  .326...Pierzynski raised his average to .330...Twins starter Kyle Lohse pitched 3.2 innings, giving up four runs on six hits and five walks and striking out two...Jose Rodriguez made his first appearance as a Twin.  He would make only three more.  The two innings he pitched here were half his total as a Twin...Oakland starter Aaron Harang pitched five innings, giving up three runs on nine hits and a walk and striking out three...There will not be a player profile today, and there may not be for a few days.  I don't really have the time, and none of the Oakland players mentioned today is all that interesting to me anyway.  Sorry about that.

Record:  The Twins were 47-36, in first place, leading Chicago by 6.5 games.

Keeping Track

Happy Birthday–December 26

Due to personal time constraints, this is a reprint from last year which has not been updated.

Morgan Bulkeley (1837)
Dad A (1922)
Stu Miller (1927)
Al Jackson (1935)
Wayne Causey (1936)
Ray Sadecki (1940)
Carlton Fisk (1947)
Chris Chambliss (1948)
Dave Rader (1948)
Ozzie Smith (1954)
Mike Sodders (1958)
Storm Davis (1961)
Jeff King (1964)
Esteban Beltre (1967)
Omar Infante (1981)
Yohan Pino (1983)

Morgan Bulkeley was the first president of the National League.

Mike Sodders was a first-round draft choice for the Twins in 1981. A star third baseman at Arizona State, he never could adjust to wooden bats, never hit, and never made the major leagues.

Dad A has been a Twins fan ever since the team started, and was a baseball fan before that. He coached, he ran the public address system, and he was on the board of the local baseball association. One of the many gifts he has given me is a love of baseball. Dad, I know you'll never read this, because you don't have a computer and can't think of a reason why you'd want one, but thank you and happy birthday. May you have many more.

Continue reading Happy Birthday–December 26 →

Keeping Track

2002 Rewind: Game Eighty-two

MINNESOTA 4, MILWAUKEE 3 IN MINNESOTA

Date:  Sunday, June 30.

Batting stars:  Denny Hocking was 3-for-4.  Torii Hunter was 2-for-4 with a double.  Matthew LeCroy was 2-for-4.

Pitching star:  Eric Milton struck out eight in eight innings, giving up two runs on four hits and two walks.

Opposition stars:  Ryan Thompson was 2-for-4 with a double.  Robert Machado was 1-for-3 with a triple.

The game:  In the third, the Twins loaded the bases with two singles and a walk.  LeCroy then delivered a two-run single to put the Twins ahead 2-0.  Machado's two-run triple in the fifth tied it 2-2.  There was no more scoring until the eighth.  The Twins again had the bases loaded, this time with two out.  Dustan Mohr walked to bring home  the go-ahead run and a balk was called on Luis Vizcaino to bring home an insurance run.  The Twins needed it, because in the bottom of the ninth a two-out walk and a double by Thompson made the score 4-3.  Alex Ochoa then struck out to end the game.

WP:  Milton (9-6).  LP:  Glendon Rusch (5-6).  S:  Eddie Guardado (24).

Notes:  Jacque Jones was given the day off.  Luis Rivas moved into the leadoff spot, going 1-for-4...Brian Buchanan was the DH rather than David Ortiz, going 1-for-4...Tom Prince caught in place of A. J. Pierzynski, going 0-for-3...LeCroy was at first base in place of Doug Mientkiewicz.  He raised his average to .337...Hunter raised his average to .305...Bobby Kielty was 0-for-3 with a walk and was batting .326...Milton's game score was tied for his second highest of the season, behind only his first start of the season...This was the last of Ryan Thompson's nine seasons in the majors.  Only one of them was a full season, 1994.  He was drafted by Toronto in the thirteenth round in 1987, but was traded to the Mets late in the 1992 season alone with Jeff Kent for David Cone.  He made his major league debut as a September call-up for the Mets and became the regular center fielder for them in the second half of 1993.  He did okay--not great, not terrible--but enough that he remained the starting center fielder in 1994.  He hit eighteen homers and drew a decent number of walks, but batted just .225 and was injured in mid-August, missing the rest of the season.  He was a part-time outfielder for the Mets in 1995 and was traded to Cleveland for 1996.  He was in AAA most of 1996 and all of 1997, then went to Japan for 1998.  He came back to the United States, playing for Houston in 1999, the Yankees in 2000, and Florida in 2001, getting a handful of games in the majors each season.  He was hitting well in AAA in 2002 when the Brewers called him up in mid-June.  What he did for them seems to have been the pattern for his career--he hit well for a month or so, then tailed off and made a slow slide into mediocrity or worse.  He was in AAA in Tampa Bay in 2003 and Houston in 2004, also spending a little time in the Mexican League.  Again, he did well at times, but for his career he batted .243/.301/.433 with 52 home runs in 1257 at-bats.  He is the father of Trevor Thompson, who played basketball at Ohio State.  He became a youth baseball coach in Indianapolis, but in 2013 was arrested for being part of an identity theft scheme.  I could not find out what happened to his case.

Record:  The Twins were 46-36, in first place, leading Chicago by six games.

Keeping Track

2002 Rewind: Game Eighty-one

MILWAUKEE 10, MINNESOTA 2 IN MINNESOTA

Date:  Saturday, June 29.

Batting stars:  Corey Koskie was 1-for-4 with a home run, his eighth.  Luis Rivas was 1-for-2 with a double and a walk.

Pitching stars:  None.

Opposition stars:  Matt Stairs was 3-for-4 with two home runs (his third and fourth) and a double, driving in three.  Richie Sexson was 3-for-4 with a double and a hit-by-pitch, scoring three times.  Alex Sanchez was 4-for-6.

The game:  Milwaukee did not have a big inning, but scored two runs four times and one in two other innings.  The Twins actually led in the first, getting a home run from Koskie to take a 1-0 lead.  The Brewers tied it in the second on Stairs' first homer.  It was still 1-1 after three, but Paul Bako hit a two-run homer to make it 3-1 in the fourth.  Stairs hit his second homer, a two-run shot, in the fifth to increase the lead to 5-1.  The Twins got a run back in the sixth to cut it to 5-2, but any thoughts they had of getting back into the game were quickly squelched when Milwaukee scored two in the seventh and Ryan Thompson hit a two-run homer in the eighth.  Sanchez singled in the game's final run in the ninth.

WP:  Jose Cabrera (4-5).  LP:  Matt Kinney (2-7).  S:  None.

Notes:  Torii Hunter was 0-for-4 and was batting .302...Dustan Mohr was 0-for-4, dropping him to an even .300...A. J. Pierzynski was 0-for-3 and fell to .323...This would be Kinney's last appearance for the Twins in 2002.  He made it through six innings, giving up five runs on eleven hits and two walks and striking out three.  He apparently was pitching injured, as he would make rehab starts in the GCL, Fort Myers, and AA New Britain, but would not come back to the Twins, being traded to Milwaukee after the season...Tony Fiore came in and allowed four runs on four hits and a walk in two innings.  He was in the middle of a stretch in which he would give up ten runs in six innings (five games).  His ERA went from 2.12 to 3.59 in that stretch.  I would imagine some people thought he'd turned back into a pumpkin, but he got it going again and pitched well in the second half of the season...Milwaukee's starter, Cabrera, pitched six innings, giving up two runs on three hits and no walks and striking out one...Alex Sanchez was a pretty good major league player for four years.  A native of Cuba, he came to the United States on a raft in 1994 at age eighteen.  He was drafted by Tampa Bay in 1996 and reached the majors in 2001.  2002 was his first full season.  A mostly-regular outfielder, he batted .289/.343/.358.  As you can see from that, he had very little power and never developed any, but he hit for a high average.  He had a similar year in 2003 when he was traded to Detroit in May.  He then kicked it up a notch in 2004, batting .322/.335/.386.  Surprisingly, however, Detroit released him in mid-March of 2005.  He signed with Tampa Bay a few days later, but a couple of weeks after that we found out why Detroit released him--on April 3, 2005, he was suspended for ten games for steroid use.  He came back and was batting .346 when Tampa Bay waived him on June 23.  Nominally it was because of concerns about his defense, but one has to assume that steroid use carried a much higher stigma at the time.  Whatever the reason, he was never the same player after that.  He was claimed by San Francisco but batted just .256 in 19 games and then missed the rest of the season due to injury.  He never played in the  majors again.  He was in the minors for Cincinnati for 2006, for the White Sox in 2007, played in the Atlantic League in 2008, and was in the Mexican League in 2009-2010.  His lifetime numbers are .296/.330/.372 in 1527 at-bats.

Record:  The Twins were 45-36, in first place by five games over Chicago.