Monthly Archives: March 2020

Keeping Track

1991 Rewind: Game One Hundred Fifty-two

CHICAGO 6, MINNESOTA 1 IN MINNESOTA

Date:  Wednesday, September 25.

Batting star:  Brian Harper was 3-for-4.

Pitching stars:  David West struck out two in two shutout innings, giving up a walk.  Tom Edens pitched a perfect inning.  Rick Aguilera pitched a scoreless inning, walking one and striking out one.

Opposition stars:  Alex Fernandez pitched 7.2 innings, giving up one run on eight hits and six walks and striking out seven.  He threw 135 pitches.  Bo Jackson was 2-for-4 with a walk.

The game:  With two out and none on in the second, Lance Johnson walked and Mike Huff and Scott Fletcher hit back-to-back RBI doubles to give the White Sox a 2-0 lead.  In the bottom of the second, Kent Hrbek doubled, Chili Davis walked, and Harper singled, loading the bases with none out.  Shane Mack struck out but Mike Pagliarulo singled.  One run scored, but Harper was trapped off third and that pretty much killed the rally with the Twins still trailing 2-1.

Chicago put the game out of reach in the fourth.  A walk, a single, and a ground out put men on second and third with one out.  A sacrifice fly scored one, then Tim Raines had an RBI double, Robin Ventura walked, Frank Thomas reached on an error to score a run, and Jackson had an RBI single.  It was 6-1 White Sox, and that was where it would stay.  The Twins had two on in the third, two on in the fourth, two on in the fifth, and two on in the eighth, but they did not score again.

WP:  Fernandez (9-12).  LP:  Allan Anderson (5-10).  S:  None.

Notes:  Randy Bush pinch-hit for Greg Gagne in the eighth, but after a pitching change Pedro Munoz pinch-hit for Bush.  Al Newman went to shortstop in the ninth.

Kirby Puckett was 1-for-4 and was batting .321.  Harper raised his average to .315.  Mack was 0-for-4 and was batting .306.

Carl Willis gave up two unearned runs in 1.2 innings.  His ERA went to 2.43.  Aguilera's ERA was 2.10.  Edens lowered his ERA to 5.57.

The Bo Jackson here is post-injury Bo Jackson.  He missed most of 1991, playing six minor league games and getting a September call-up.  He did not play at all in 1992, then was a part-time player in 1993 and 1994 before having to give it up.

Anderson pitched 3.1 innings, giving up four runs on four hits and three walks and striking out two.  He got a pretty quick hook--he was pulled in the fourth with the score 2-1, runners on second and third, and one out.  His line looks worse because Willis allowed both of the runners to score.

This was Alex Fernandez' first full year in the majors.  He's pretty much been forgotten about now, but he was a really good pitcher for several years.  From 1993-1997 he was 74-46, 3.53, 1.23 WHIP, averaging 220 innings per year.  He then got injured, missed all of 1998, and was able to make just 32 more starts from 1999-2000 before his career ended.  For five years there, though, he was about as good as anyone.

Record:  The Twins were 91-61, in first place in the American League West, eight games ahead of Chicago.

Toronto won and Boston did not play, so the Blue Jays' lead in the East was 2.5 games.

 

Keeping Track

Happy Birthday–March 7

Ed Willett (1884)
Dave Danforth (1890)
Andy Phillip (1922)
Bobo Holloman (1923)
Red Wilson (1929)
Galen Cisco (1936)
Jimmie Hall (1938)
J. R. Richard (1950)
Jeff Burroughs (1951)
Albert Hall (1958)
Joe Carter (1960)
Jose Cano (1962)
German Gonzalez (1962)
Mauro Gozzo (1966)
Jeff Kent (1968)
Tyler Ladendorf (1988)

A member of the basketball Hall of Fame, Andy Phillip played minor league baseball in 1947, 1949, and 1952, batting .281 in 123 games.

Bobo Holloman is sometimes referred to as the worst pitcher ever to throw a major league no-hitter.

The father of Robinson Cano, Jose Cano appeared in six games for Houston in 1989.

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

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Friday Music Day

FMD 3/6/2020: Music For A Quarantine

7 Comments

Well I've got my daughter in the office for the second day in a row - yesterday daycare was closed because of illness and today she's with me because she had a high enough fever that she couldn't go to daycare (though it came down with meds pretty quickly).

And also there's some sort of health related issue in the news?

So: music for a quarantine. Or illness. I suppose that's generally a time when I don't play music. Should I? Would that help a person get better? Is this topic really any different than cabin fever music or desert island music? I dunno.

Keeping Track

1991 Rewind: Game One Hundred Fifty-one

MINNESOTA 9, CHICAGO 2 IN MINNESOTA

Date:  Tuesday, September 24.

Batting stars:  Chuck Knoblauch was 3-for-5 with three RBIs.  Greg Gagne was 2-for-3 with a walk and two runs.  Kirby Puckett was 2-for-4 with a double, a walk, a stolen base (his eleventh), two runs, and three RBIs.  Kent Hrbek was 1-for-4 with a two-run homer, his nineteenth.

Pitching stars:  Scott Erickson pitched seven innings, giving up two runs on one hit and three walks and striking out four.  He threw 88 pitches.  Mark Guthrie pitched two shutout innings, giving up one hit and striking out one.

Opposition stars:  Wilson Alvarez pitched 5.1 innings of relief, giving up one run on two hits and two walks and striking out two.  Dan Pasqua was 1-for-2 with a two-run homer, his sixteenth.

The game:  The Twins scored early and often.  With one out in the first, Knoblauch singled and scored from first on a Puckett double.  Gene Larkin delivered a two-out RBI single to make it 2-0 Twins.  In the second, again with one out, the Twins got consecutive singles from Gagne, Dan Gladden, and Knoblauch to make it 3-0.  A ground out scored one run and Hrbek delivered a two-run homer to put the Twins up 6-0.  The game was pretty much over at that point.

They played the full nine innings, of course.  The Twins added a run in the fourth when Gagne singled, went to second on a wild pitch, and scored on a pair of infield grounders.  Meanwhile, the White Sox did not even get a baserunner until the sixth, when Craig Grebeck walked.  In the seventh, Robin Ventura walked and, with one out, Pasqua hit a two-run homer, Chicago's first hit of the game, to make the score 7-2.

The Twins added two more runs in the ninth.  Scott Leius singled, was bunted to second, and went to third on a wild pitch.  With two out Gladden walked, and RBI singles by Knoblauch and Puckett followed.

WP:  Erickson (19-7).  LP:  Jack McDowell (17-10).  S:  None.

Notes:  Larkin started in right field in place of Shane Mack.  Junior Ortiz was behind the plate in place of Brian Harper.

Puckett raised his average to .321.  Erickson's ERA went to 3.32.

This was pretty much the White Sox' last stand.  They were already eight games out, so they had to sweep to have any kind of chance at the division, and even then it would have been a long shot.  They had their ace, Black Jack McDowell, on the mound.  And the Twins came out and made him look like a bush leaguer.  His line was 1.2 innings, six runs, seven hits, one walk, and one strikeout.  This wasn't the official clincher, but it was officially just a matter of time at this point.

With the Twins leading 7-2 in the bottom of the eighth, Leius led off with a single and Ortiz followed with a sacrifice bunt.  That would seem like a huge violation of an unwritten rule.  I don't know if anyone cared--enforcement of unwritten rules is pretty random and capricious.  But I would think that someone at least made mention of it.

This was, at the time, a rare good start for Erickson.  He would continue to pitch well the rest of the season, although the rest of the season obviously was not very long.

Record:  The Twins were 91-60, in first place in the American League West, nine games ahead of Chicago.  The magic number was three.

In the East, Toronto won and Boston did not play, so the Blue Jays' lead went up to two games.

Keeping Track

Happy Birthday–March 6

Ring Lardner (1885)
Lefty Grove (1900)
Pete Gray (1915)
Bob Swift (1915)
Ted Abernathy (1933)
Cookie Rojas (1939)
Willie Stargell (1940)
Karl Best (1959)
Scott Stahoviak (1970)
Terry Adams (1973)
Marcus Thames (1977)
Clint Barmes (1979)
Jake Arrieta (1986)
Francisco Cervelli (1986)
Ross Detwiler (1986)

Author Ring Lardner wrote about a variety of subjects, but is probably most famous for writing about baseball.  If you haven't read any of his stuff, you really should.

As you probably know, Pete Gray played in 77 games for the St. Louis Browns in 1945 despite having only one arm.

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