CLEVELAND INDIANS 4, MINNESOTA TWINS 3 IN MINNESOTA
Date: Saturday, July 9, 1994.
Batting stars: Chip Hale was 2-for-4 with a double. Kent Hrbek was 2-for-4. Chuck Knoblauch was 2-for-5 with a triple, a double, and two runs.
Pitching stars: Dave Stevens pitched 2.2 scoreless innings, giving up two hits and a walk. Mark Guthrie pitchd 1.1 scoreless innings, giving up one hit.
Opposition stars: Alvaro Espinoza was 2-for-4. Omar Vizquel was 2-for-5. Eddie Murray hit a home run, his thirteenth.
The game: Each team scored once in the first. For Cleveland, Kenny Lofton singled, stole second and third, and scored on a squeeze bunt by Albert Belle, which must have caught everyone by surprise. For the Twins, Chuck Knoblauch led off with a triple and scored on a ground out. The Indians took the lead 2-1 in the second when Candy Maldonado doubled and scored on a Vizquel single.
The Twins tied it in the fourth. Kirby Puckett was hit by a pitch to lead off the inning. Hrbek followed with a single, then came walks to Shane Mack and Scott Leius to force in a run. The bases were still loaded with none out, but the Twins could do more, and the score was tied 2-2. The tie did not last long. In the fifth Carlos Baerga singled with one out and Murray hit a two-out two-run single, making it 4-2 Cleveland.
The Twins got one back in the bottom of the fifth on doubles by Knoblauch and Puckett, but that was as close as they would come. They got a man to second in the sixth, when Hale hit a one-out double, and in the eighth, when Hrbek singled and went to second on Hale’s two-out single, but they could not score again. Their last four men went out and the victory went to Cleveland.
WP: Dennis Martinez (8-4).
LP: Jim Deshaies (4-9).
S: Jeff Russell (13).
Notes: Jeff Reboulet was at shortstop in place of Pat Meares. Rich Becker was in center in place of Alex Cole. Hale was at DH in place of Dave Winfield.
Kirby Puckett was batting .321. He would finish at .317. Chuck Knoblauch was batting .320. He would finish at .312. Shane Mack was batting .314. He would finish at .333.
Alvaro Espinoza played for the Twins from 1984-1986. Paul Sorrento pinch-hit and was 0-for-1. He played for the Twins from 1989-1991.
The Twins pitching was, to put it bluntly, awful in 1994. They scored 5.26 runs per game, but allowed 6.09. Granted it was 1994, and scoring was up, but the average was 4.92. We went through this once before, but the rotation was Kevin Tapani (4.62 ERA), Scott Erickson (5.44), Jim Deshaies (7.39), Pat Mahomes (4.73), and Carlos Pulido (5.98). I didn’t check the AAA roster, but the Twins must have thought they didn’t have any better options, because those five pitchers made all but six of the team’s starts. The primary relief pitchers did not provide much relief: Rick Aguilera (3.63), Carl Willis (5.92), Mark Guthrie (6.14), Mike Trombley (6.33), Larry Casian (7.08), and Dave Stevens (6.80). Other than Aguilera, Tom Kelly could just as well have pulled names out of a hat when he went to the bullpen.
Albert Belle had four sacrifice bunts in his career. This was the last one.
I think of Eddie Murray as a Baltimore Oriole, and of course that is where he had his best years. But he played for nine years after leaving the Orioles: three with the Dodgers, two with the Mets, two and a half with Cleveland, a half season back with Baltimore, and a final season split between Anaheim and the Dodgers.
The 1994 season would come to a premature end about a month later due to a labor-related work stoppage.
Record: Cleveland was 50-33, in first place by percentage points over Chicago. They would finish 66-47, in second place, one game behind Chicago.
The Twins were 42-43, in fourth place, nine games behind Cleveland. They would finish 53-60., in fourth place, fourteen games behind Chicago.
Random Record: The Random Twins are 22-17 (.564).