CALIFORNIA 2, MINNESOTA 0 IN CALIFORNIA
Date: Friday, April 19.
Batting stars: None. The Twins had just two hits.
Pitching star: Jack Morris pitched an eight-inning complete game, giving up two runs on seven hits and three walks and striking out six.
Opposition stars: Chuck Finley pitched a complete game shutout, giving up two hits and two walks and striking out nine. Wally Joyner was 2-for-3 with a double and a walk. Junior Felix was 2-for-3.
The game: For the first six innings only one man got as far as third base. That happened in the third, when Felix singled, was bunted to second, and advanced to third on a ground out. The game stayed scoreless, however, until the seventh. The first two Angels went out that inning, but singles by Donnie Hill, Jack Howell, and Felix made the score 1-0. California added a run in the eighth when Joyner led off with a double, went to third on a ground out, and scored on a wild pitch.
The Twins did nothing on offense the entire game. The only man to reach second base was Greg Gagne, who hit a one-out double in the sixth. He did not advance.
WP: Finley (3-0). LP: Morris (0-3). S: None.
Notes: Dan Gladden was back in the lineup in left field. Shane Mack remained in center and Kirby Puckett in right.
Puckett was 1-for-4 and was batting .359. Brian Harper was 0-for-3 and was batting .333. Gagne was 1-for-3 and was batting .304.
Gladden was 0-for-3 with a walk and was batting .037. Kent Hrbek was 0-for-3 and was batting .108. Mack was 0-for-3 and was batting .143. Scott Leius was 0-for-2 with a walk and was batting .154. I did not remember that so many regulars started off the season in batting slumps.
Morris had a fine game, but his ERA was still a very high 6.38. Also, while again it was a fine game, it was not even in his top ten for the season as judged by game scores.
Not only did each pitcher throw a complete game, but neither team substituted at all. The same ten players started and ended the game for each team. That's pretty much unheard of today, but I suspect it was rather unusual even then.
It was the sixth straight loss for the Twins, in their last five games, they had scored just eleven runs and had been shut out twice.
Record: The Twins were 2-8, in seventh (last) place in the American League West, 5.5 games behind Oakland.
Man, they're playing like the 2019 North Stars!
d@mmit, Jack is an anchor -- why'd we sign this bum?
Anchor of the rotation you mean
He's pitching to the
scorerecord.Morris is 36 and had a .451 ERA with 18 losses last year! McPhail better do something at the deadline to acquire a pitcher who can win a game in the postseason!
Morris was below average in ERA and wins for a few years. '89 he had a 4.83 ERA and went 6-14. He logged only 170 innings a decade of 195+ and seven years of at least 235.
I'm curious to know what people thought of the signing at the time. He had a great mid-'80s run from '83-'87 with 21.6 rWAR over those five years. What followed were three bad to below average years at 1.7 rWAR. His wins and ERA were also bad, and would turn 36 in May. The advanced and simple stats all suggested another average to below average season instead of the two season renaissance he experienced.
Don't remember much of the signing, but I do remember when he bailed after the season
From The New York Times, 19 Dec 1991, “BASEBALL; Blue Jays Make Morris Baseball’s Richest Pitcher”:
Per the story, Morris’ 1992 option with the Twins was for $3.62 million. His average salary over the two-year deal with Toronto was $5.425 million. Considering Morris had been burned by collusion, I can understand why he would capitalize on the market for his services after the World Series. Unmentioned in the story is whether Carl Pohlad was willing to compete with Labatt Brewing on salary, but I’m guessing he wasn’t. Who knows how much Twins of longer standing enjoyed Morris in the clubhouse. The Baseball Cube records a payroll of $22,431,000 for the ‘91 Twins, which was 16th in MLB. The ‘92 Twins’ payroll was $27,432,834, which ranked 19th. Toronto’s payrolls were $27,538,751 in 1991 (9th overall) and $43,663,666 (3rd).
To replace Morris, Andy McPhail traded Denny Neagle & Midre Cummings to Pittsburgh for impending free agent John Smiley, whose $3.4 million salary was $300,000 lower than what the Twins paid Morris in 1991. Viewed over a single season, swapping Morris for Smiley worked out pretty well: Morris’ arm was worth 2.8 rWAR in ‘92, while Smiley’s provided 5.1 rWAR. Had the Twins repeated in the West (they finished 6 games behind Oakland), the Smiley trade could have been legendary in franchise lore. Neagle was a pretty good pitcher for a number of years, but by the time he became a star in Pittsburgh with back-to-back 4.7 & 6.1 rWAR years, the Twins were headed into the depths that began with the 1995 & 1996 horrors.