MINNESOTA TWINS 5, BOSTON RED SOX 2 IN BOSTON

Date:  Monday, June 13, 1994

Batting stars: Jeff Reboulet was 3-for-3 with two doubles and a walk.  Chip Hale was 3-for-3 with a hit-by-pitch.  Chuck Knoblauch was 2-for-4 with a double, a walk, and two RBIs.  Shane Mack was 2-for-5.

Pitching star:  Jim DeShaies struck out seven in six innings, giving up two runs on eight hits and a walk.  Rick Aguilera pitched a scoreless inning, giving up one hit and striking out one.

Opposition stars:  Wes Chamberlain was 3-for-4 with a double.  Carlos Rodriguez was 2-for-3 with a double.  Damon Berryhill was 2-for-4 with a double.  John Valentin was 2-for-5 with a triple and a double.

The game:  Boston scored first, and they did it in the first inning.  Valentin hit a one-out triple and scored on a single by Mo Vaughn.  The Twins tied it in the third.  With one out, singles by Matt Walbeck, Reboulet, and Knoblauch made it 1-1.

Boston missed a chance to get the lead back in the bottom of the third.  Otis Nixon singled, Valentin doubled, and Vaughn was hit by a pitch, loading the bases, but Andre Dawson hit into a double play.  The Red Sox took the lead in the fourth, although they missed a chance for more.  Lee Tinsley walked and scored on Chamberlain’s double.  Berryhill followed with a double, but Chamberlain could only advance to third.  They still had men on second and third with none out, but DeShaies came back to strikeout the next three batters–Scott Cooper, Greg Litton, and Nixon–to end the inning.

The Twins went ahead to stay in the fifth.  Reboulet walked and Nixon doubled, putting men on second and third, and RBI ground outs by Alex Cole and Kirby Puckett made it 3-2 Minnesota.  They got an insurance run in the sixth when Mack and Hale hit one-out singles and Reboulet delivered a two-out double.  They got one more in the eighth.  Hale singled and was forced at second.  Reboulet doubled, putting men on second and third, and Knoblauch’s run-scoring ground out made it 5-2.

Boston missed more chances to score.  In the fifth Rodriguez reached on an error and was balked to second with one out, but there he remained.  Rodriguez again reached second in the seventh, getting there with a two-out double, but again was stranded there.  In the eighth Chamberlain reached on an error and went to second on a Berryhill single with one out.  A ground out put men on second and third with two down, but another ground out ended the inning.  The Red Sox did not get the tying run up to bat again, and it ended 5-2.

WP:  DeShaies (3-6).

LP:  Roger Clemens (6-3).

S:  Aguilera (13).

Notes:  Reboulet was at shortstop in place of Pat Meares.  Hale was at third base in place of Scott Leius.  

Cole was batting .330.  He would finish at .296.  Puckett was batting .328.  He would finish at .317.  Knoblauch was batting .325.  He would finish at .312.  Reboulet was batting .309.  He would finish at .259.  Mack was batting .308.  He would finish at .333.

In addition to the “pitching stars”, the Twins used three pitchers for two-thirds of an inning each:  Larry Casian, Carl Willis, and Mark Guthrie.  

Neither team did much with men in scoring position:  The Twins were 2-for-12 and Boston was 2-for-13.  Each team stranded eleven men.

DeShaies was in his last year as a rotation starter, and it did not go well.  He ended up 6-12, 7.39, 1.72 WHIP.  Despite that, he made twenty-five starts, leading the league, and pitched 130.1 innings.  He also led the league in earned runs allowed and home runs allowed.  He would make two starts for Philadelphia in 1995, then his major league career would come to an end.

Wes Chamberlain had a six-year major league career, mostly with Philadelphia.  He was a decent part-time outfielder.  He finished fifth in Rookie of the Year voting in 1991.  His best year was 1993, when he batted .282 with an OPS of .813 in 284 at-bats.  1994 was his next-to-last year– he would bat just .119 in 42 at-bats in 1995, and then his major league career was over.

Otis Nixon, of course, would go on to play for the Twins in 1998.  He went 1-for-5 in this game.

We’ve already had three games from 1994.  That’s just how randomness works sometimes.

Record:  Boston was 32-28, in third place in the AL East, 4 games behind the Yankees.  They would finish 54-61, in fourth place, 17 games behind the Yankees.

Minnesota was 34-27, in third place, 1 games behind Cleveland and the White Sox.  They would finish 53-60, in fourth place, 14 games behind the White Sox.  After this game, the Twins would go 19-33, the worst record in baseball over that span.  That’s one of the things that happens when you give 25 starts to a guy with an ERA over seven.

Random Record:  The Random Twins have a six-game winning streak, and are 7-3 (.700).

MINNESOTA TWINS 2, SEATTLE MARINERS 1 IN MINNESOTA

Date:  Wednesday, June 1, 1994.

Batting stars:  Alex Cole was 3-for-4 with a double.  Pat Meares was 2-for-3.  Chuck Knoblauch was 2-for-4 with two doubles and two RBIs.

Pitching stars:  Kevin Tapani pitched eight innings, giving up one run on seven hits and a walk and striking out six.  Rick Aguilera pitched a scoreless inning, giving up one hit and striking out one.

Opposition stars:  Felix Fermin was 3-for-3 with a double.  Chris Bosio pitched a complete game, giving up two runs on nine hits and a walk and striking out one.

The game:  Cole hit a one-out double in the first but remained at second.  Seattle got on the board in the third, as Fermin hit a one-out double and scored on Torey Lovullo’s two-out double.  The Twins got the run back in the third when Meares laid down a bunt single and scored on a Knoblauch double.  

Each team missed chances to take the lead.  Fermin and Dan Wilson hit one-out singles in the top of the fifth, but a strikeout and a fly out ended the inning.  In the bottom half, Meares singled with one out and advanced to third with two out on a stolen base-plus-error, but a ground out ended that threat.  In the top of the sixth, Tino Martinez hit a two-run single and went all the way from first to third on a passed ball, but was stranded there.

The Twins finally broke through in the seventh.  Matt Walbeck singled with one out.  He went to second on a ground out and Knoblauch delivered an RBI double to put the Twins ahead.  Cole followed with a single put men on first and third, but the Twins could do no more.  

Still, they led, 2-1, and it was enough.  The Mariners got a two-out single in each of the last two innings, but did not move the man past first.

WP:  Tapani (6-2)..

LP:  Bosio (2-7).

S:  Aguilera (11).

Notes:  Chip Hale was at first base, with Kent Hrbek moving to DH.  Dave Winfield was the regular DH that season.  David McCarty came in for defense at first in the ninth.

Kirby Puckett was batting .335.  He would finish at .317.  Knoblauch was batting .328.  He would finish at .312.  Shane Mack was batting .315.  He would finish at .333.  Cole was batting .306.  He would finish at .296.

Tapani was really up and down in 1994, mixing some fine games like this with some bad ones.  He would finish 11-7, but with an ERA of 4.62.  That ERA was actually the best among Twins starters, with Pat Mahomes as the only other starter posting an ERA under five.  Despite that, the Twins made no changes to their rotation, with only six starts made outside of their regular five starters.  The starting five was Tapani, Mahomes (4.73), Scott Erickson (5.44), Carlos Pulido (5.98), and Jim DeShaies (7.39).

This was Fermin’s last season as a regular.  He would be a part-time player for the Mariners in 1995 and make eleven appearances for the Cubs in 1996 before ending his major league career.

Record:  Seattle was 21-30, in third place in the AL West, just 2.5 games behind Texas.  They would finish 49-63, just two games behind Texas.  Texas won the division with a record of 52-62, but there were no playoffs that season.

The Twins were 26-24, in third place in the AL Central, 4.5 games behind the White Sox.  They would finish 53-60, in fourth place, fourteen games behind the White Sox.

Random Record:  The Random Twins have a five-game winning streak and are 6-3 (.667).