Monthly Archives: January 2018

Keeping Track

2002 Rewind: Game One Hundred Seventeen

MINNESOTA 5, BOSTON 4 IN BOSTON

Date:  Friday, August 9.

Batting stars:  Cristian Guzman was 3-for-5.  Torii Hunter was 2-for-4 with a double and a stolen base, his eighteenth.  Luis Rivas was 2-for-5.

Pitching stars:  J. C. Romero pitched 2.2 scoreless innings, giving up one hit.  Eddie Guardado struck out two in a scoreless inning, giving up one hit.

Opposition stars:  Nomar Garciaparra was 3-for-4 with a home run, his twentieth.  Brian Daubach was 2-for-3 with a triple.  Cliff Floyd was 2-for-4 with a double.

The game:  It was close all the way.  Garciaparra homered in the first to give Boston a 1-0 lead.  The Twins tied it in the second when Hunter doubled, took third on a ground out, and scored on a Doug Mientkiewicz sacrifice fly.  The Red Sox regained the lead in the third when Daubach tripled and scored on a ground out.  The Twins tied it again in the fourth when Hunter singled, went to third on a stolen base-plus-error, and scored on a Mientkiewicz single.  The Twins took their first lead in the fifth, as Rivas doubled and Guzman singled to put men on first and third with one out.  Corey Koskie singled in one run and another scored on a ground out, putting the Twins up 4-2.  The Red Sox opened the sixth with two walks and a wild pitch put men on second and third.  RBI singles by Garciaparra and Manny Ramirez then tied the game 4-4.  The Twins led off the seventh with consecutive singles by Rivas, Guzman, and Koskie to give the Twins a 5-4 lead.  A double play took them out of the inning, but it was enough, as the Red Sox managed only two singles the rest of the game.

WP:  Romero (8-1).  LP:  Frank Castillo (5-12).  S:  Guardado (34).

Notes:  Jacque Jones was not in the lineup, although he entered in the eighth inning for defense.  Michael Cuddyer was in right, with Dustan Mohr moving to left.  Luis Rivas went into the leadoff spot.  Cuddyer wetn 0-for-3 with a walk.

Tom Prince was the catcher in place of A. J. Pierzynski, going 0-for-4.

Hunter brought his average back up to .309.

Twins starter Kyle Lohse pitched five innings, giving up four runs on five hits and two walks and striking out one.

LaTroy Hawkins pitched a third of an inning and dropped his ERA 2.14.

Romero's ERA fell to 1.70.

Guardado's ERA was now 2.42.

Boston's starter was Casey Fossum.  He pitched 5.2 innings, giving up four runs on eight hits and a walk and striking out five.

People seem to have forgotten what a great player Nomar Garciaparra was.  He peaked early, which may be some of it--after batting .357 in 1999 and .372 in 2000, when he was 25 and 26, respectively, he never batted higher than .310 the rest of his career.  He had the bad luck to have his best years when Alex Rodriguez was just entering his prime, and as Rodriguez increased and Garciaparra decreased he lost some of his luster.  Still, he batted .313/.361/.521 over a fourteen-year career, made six all-star teams, was rookie of the year, and finished in the top ten in MVP voting four times.  That's a pretty darn good career.

Frank Castillo is another guy who turned a few good years into a long career.  He came up to the Cubs at mid-season in 1991 and turned in respectable numbers for a twenty-two year old:  5-6, 4.35, 1.25 WHIP.  He followed that up by going 10-11, 3.46, 1.18 WHIP in 1992.  He struggled through a sub-par (or so it seemed) 1993, missed much of 1994 due to injury, but came back in 1995 to go 11-10, 3.61, 1.23 WHIP.  Still just twenty-six, his future looked bright.  It wasn't.  He posted ERAs over 5.00 the next three seasons, which included time with Colorado and Detroit.  He was in AAA with Pittsburgh in 1999 and didn't do well there, either.  Given what might have been his last chance with Toronto in 2000, he went 10-5, 3.59, 1.22 WHIP.    He then went to Boston for 2001 and went a respectable 10-9, 4.21, 1.27 WHIP.  It was his last respectable season, though.  He struggled through a poor 2002, was in AAA with Oakland and Atlanta for all of 2003, and spent most of 2004-2005 in AAA as well, although he made two appearances with Boston in 2004 and one with Florida in 2005.  He pitched for York in the Atlantic League in 2007-2008 before ending his career.  He was 82-104, 4.56, 1.36 WHIP for his career.  He played for thirteen seasons, made 268 starts, and pitched 1595.1 innings.  He was a minor league pitching coach for a couple of seasons.  Sadly, his life story came to an end at the age of forty-four, as he drowned in Bartlett Lake in Arizona in 2013.

Record:  The Twins were 70-47, in first place, fourteen games ahead of Chicago.

Keeping Track

Happy Birthday–January 27

Ray Hayworth (1904)
Pancho Coimbre (1909)
Bill Rigney (1918)
Hank Edwards (1919)
Frank Gravino (1923)
Bobby Bolin (1939)
Sergio Ferrer (1951)
Steve Sax (1960)
Mike Aldrete (1961)
John Habyan (1964)
Jason Schmidt (1973)

Pancho Coimbre was a star in the Caribbean Leagues and the Negro leagues in the 1940s.  Roberto Clemente said that Coimbre was a better player than Clemente was.  Coimbre played two full seasons in the Puerto Rican League in which he did not strike out.

Frank Gravino played in the minors from 1940-1942 and 1946-1954.  He has been called the greatest slugger in Northern League history, hitting 108 home runs in two seasons there.

We would also like to wish a very happy birthday to Beau's son.

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Keeping Track

2002 Rewind: Game One Hundred Sixteen

BALTIMORE 4, MINNESOTA 1 IN BALTIMORE

Date:  Thursday, August 8.

Batting stars:  Jacque Jones was 3-for-5.  A. J. Pierzynski was 2-for-4.  Cristian Guzman was 1-for-3 with a double and a walk.

Pitching star:  Bob Wells pitched a scoreless inning, giving up a hit and a walk and striking out one.

Opposition stars:  Travis Driskill pitched 6.2 innings, giving up one run on seven hits and two walks and striking out three.  Chris Richard was 1-for-3 with a two-run homer, his third.  Jeff Conine was 1-for-3.

The game: Richard hit a two-run homer in the second to give the Orioles a 2-0 lead.  The Twins had a promising start to the third, as Luis Rivas doubled and went to third on Jones' bunt single, but a Guzman sacrifice fly was all they could do, cutting the lead to 2-1.  In the fourth, Conine delivered a two-run single to build the Baltimore lead to 4-1.  The Twins threatened late, loading the bases in the eighth and putting two on in the ninth, but could not score again.

WP:  Driskill (8-5).  LP:  Brad Radke (4-3).  S:  Jorge Julio (23).

Notes:  David Ortiz was at first base, with Bobby Kielty at DH and Doug Mientkiewicz out of the lineup.  Ortiz was 0-for-3 with two walks and Kielty was 1-for-3 with a walk.

Michael Cuddyer was in right field and was 1-for-4.

Torii Hunter was 0-for-5, dropping his average to .307.  He was 1-for-16 in his last four games.  This follows a seven-game hitting streak in which he was 13-for-29.

Kielty was now batting .306.  He had gone 0-for-19 before getting a single in the sixth.

Pierzynski raised his average to .312.

Radke continued to struggle, but made it through seven innings, tied for his second-longest outing of the season to this point.  He gave up four runs on five hits and no walks and struck out one.

The Orioles used a former Twin and a future Twin.  Marty Cordova was 1-for-3 and Tony Batista 1-for-3 with a hit-by-pitch.

Travis Driskill was drafted three times--by Houston in 1990, the Angels in 1992, and Cleveland in 1993.  He reached AAA  in 1997 but didn't do very well there and was sold to Yakult in the Japanese league for 1998.  He came back to the United States in 1999 and had another mediocre year in AAA for Cleveland.  He was then a free agent and signed with Houston, spending two years at AAA for them.  He had a very good year in New Orleans in 2001, but he was twenty-nine then, so the Astros weren't terribly impressed.  A free agent again, he signed with Baltimore for 2002, was outstanding in four AAA starts, and came up to the majors in late April.  He began in the bullpen, but within a month he was in the rotation.  He went 8-8, 4.95, 1.49 ERA, and that was really as good as it got for him.  In 2003 he once again started in AAA and once again was in the majors within a month.  And once again, he didn't pitch very well, although this time he remained a reliever.  He went 3-5, 6.00, 1.48 WHIP, and the Orioles had seen enough.  Most of the rest of his career was spent in AAA, but he got in five games with Colorado in 2004, one with Houston in 2005, and two with Houston in 2007.  He continued to pitch well in AAA, but one assumes it had to do with being a veteran pitching to a lot of younger players.  At any rate, as a big leaguer he was 11-14, 5.23, 1.52 WHIP.  He appeared in 57 games, 19 of them starts, and pitched 196 innings.  All 19 of his starts came in 2002.  In this game, he notched his second-highest game score, second only to a game in May against Seattle.  He has been a minor league pitching coach and it appears he is currently a broadcaster for the Round Rock Express.  His son, Travis Driskill, is a pitcher for Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas.

Record:  The Twins had now lost four straight and were 69-47, in first place, still leading Chicago by fourteen games.

Keeping Track

Happy Birthday–January 28

George Wright (1847)
Ducky Holmes (1869)
Bill Doak (1891)
Lyn Lary (1906)
Bob Muncrief (1916)
Pete Runnels (1928)
Harry Dunlop (1933)
Bill White (1934)
Fredi Gonzalez (1964)
Kevin Tolar (1971)
Jermaine Dye (1974)
Magglio Ordonez (1974)
Lyle Overbay (1977)

Harry Dunlop caught in the minors for fourteen years and was a coach for seventeen years.  He caught the minor league no-hitter in which Ron Necciai struck out twenty-seven batters and the back-to-back minor league no-hitters of Bill Bell.

Fredi Gonzalez managed the Florida Marlins from 2007-2010 and managed the Atlanta Braves from 2011-2016.

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