MINNESOTA 2, OAKLAND 1 IN OAKLAND
Date: Monday, July 6.
Batting star: Cesar Tovar was 3-for-5 with a stolen base, his nineteenth.
Pitching stars: Bill Zepp pitched 6.1 innings, giving up one run on three hits and five walks and striking out one. Ron Perranoski struck out five in 2.2 scoreless innings, giving up two hits and a walk.
Opposition stars: Diego Segui pitched four innings, giving up two runs (one earned) on six hits and three walks and striking out three. Bob Locker pitched two shutout innings, giving up a hit and a walk and striking out one. Mudcat Grant struck out two in two shutout innings, giving up a hit and a walk.
The game: The Twins got a man to third with one out in the first but did not score. In the second, Sal Bando walked and Tommy Davis was hit by a pitch. A double play moved Bando to third and Dave Duncan's RBI single put the Athletics ahead 1-0.
The Twins tied it in the third. Tovar hit a one-out single, and two-out singles by Tony Oliva and Harmon Killebrew produced a run. In the fourth Leo Cardenas walked and two-out singles by Zepp and Tovar produced a run, putting the Twins ahead 2-1.
And that was it for scoring. Oakland had their chances. They had men on first and third in the fifth. They had a man on second with one out in the sixth. They had men on first and second with two out in the seventh. But none of them scored, and the Twins took a 2-1 victory.
WP: Zepp (4-0).
LP: Segui (3-5).
S: Perranoski (19).
Notes: Danny Thompson was at second base in place of Rod Carew. Jim Holt was in left in place of Brant Alyea. Oddly, in a one-run game, the Twins did not put in a defensive substitute for Killebrew.
Oliva was 1-for-4 and was batting .325. Tovar was batting .316. Killebrew was 1-for-3 and was batting .313. Zepp had an ERa of 2.53. Perranoski had an ERA of 1.67,
It was Zepp's first start since May 30. He would stay in the rotation until almost the end of the season. Bill Rigney was obviously not concerned about "stretching him out", as he pitched 6.1 innings.
John McNamara had a pretty quick hook on Segui, pulling him one batter into the fifth inning when he had given up just two runs. He had allowed a lot of baserunners (nine), and maybe McNamara thought he'd pushed his luck as far as he could. It was only Segui's fourth start of the season, as he'd been in the bullpen earlier. He'd gone seven innings in each of his first two starts, so again, "stretching him out" doesn't seem to have been a concern. He'd gone only 1.1 innings in his third start, and gave up four runs, so maybe the manager just didn't have much confidence in him.
Ex-Twin Mudcat Grant was having an excellent year out of the Oakland bullpen. After this game his ERA was 0.87. To no one's surprise, he couldn't do that over the whole season, but he ended up 8-3, 24 saves, 1.86 ERA, 1.06 WHIP. He also ended up in Pittsburgh, as he was traded in mid-September.
Also playing for Oakland was ex-Twin Don Mincher. He went 0-for-4 and was batting just .228. He would raise that to .248 by season's end, and would hit 27 home runs.
The next-to-last batter of the game was a pinch-hitter named Tony LaRussa. I suppose I've heard that LaRussa played in the majors, but I didn't know anything about his career. As it turns out, there's not much to know. He first came up to the Kansas City Athletics as an eighteen-year-old and was used mostly as a pinch-runner/defensive replacement, going 11-for-44 in 34 games. He did not make it back to the majors until 1968. 1970 is when he got most of his big league playing time, batting .198/.301/.255 in 52 games (106 at-bats). For his career he batted .199/.292/.250 in 132 games (176 at-bats).
The Twins had won seven of eight games. This was the first of a ten-game road trip that would take them to Oakland, California, and Baltimore. The Baltimore leg of the trip would come after the all-star break.
Record: The Twins were 50-26, in first place in the American League West, four games ahead of California.