MINNESOTA 3, BOSTON 1 IN MINNESOTA
Date: Saturday, July 13.
Batting stars: Shane Mack was 3-for-3 with a triple, a stolen base, and a walk. Al Newman was 3-for-4. Kirby Puckett was 2-for-4.
Pitching star: Jack Morris pitched 8.1 innings, giving up one run on five hits and no walks and striking out two.
Opposition star: Dennis Lamp pitched 2.1 scoreless innings, giving up one hit.
The game: One-out singles by Newman and Puckett put men on first and third and Chili Davis followed with a sacrifice fly, giving the Twins a 1-0 lead. Junior Ortiz led off the second with a single and two-out singles by Newman and Puckett made the score 2-0 Twins. Mack hit a one-out triple in the fifth and scored on a sacrifice fly to increase the lead to 3-0.
The Red Sox didn't do much on offense for the first five innings, only once getting a man as far as second base. They got on the board on the sixth, though, as Luis Rivera tripled and scored on a sacrifice fly. They did not get a man to second base after that, and so the Twins took the 3-1 victory.
WP: Morris (12-6). LP: Kevin Morton (1-1). S: Rick Aguilera (24).
Notes: Newman was in left field in place of Dan Gladden in this game. Mack was in right. Ortiz was once again behind the plate in place of Brian Harper. Chuck Knoblauch moved up to the leadoff spot, with Newman batting second. Jarvis Brown pinch-ran for Newman in the sixth and stayed in the game in right field, with Mack moving to left.
Puckett raised his average to .319. Morris lowered his ERA to 3.50. Aguilera came in to get the last two outs and had an ERA of 2.63.
This was the only game Newman played in left field in 1991 and the last game he started there in his career. For his career he played eleven games there, six starts. He seems like an odd choice to play left and to bat second, but given that he got three hits one has to say that it worked.
Given how he'd been used all season, it was surprising to see Morris come out of the game in the ninth. He'd seemed to be in control, giving up just five hits. One of those hits came with one out in the ninth, and resulted in his leaving the game. He had thrown just ninety-two pitches. I'm not arguing that it was the wrong move, and it certainly worked. It's just that, given how long Morris had remained in games for the first part of the season, I'd have expected him to be given more of a chance to finish the game.
This was Kevin Morton's second career start. He was just twenty-two years old. He had made a tremendous debut, giving up just one run in a complete game victory over Detroit. He didn't pitch badly here, either, going 5.2 innings and giving up three runs on nine hits and three walks and striking out two. He was in the Boston rotation the rest of the season and was kind of up and down, as one would expect from a twenty-two year old rookie. For the season, he was 6-5, 4.59, nothing to shout about but not bad given his age. It would be his only season in the major leagues. He was awful in Pawtucket in 1992 and pitched poorly in AA for Kansas City in 1993. He did better, though not great, in AAA for the Mets in 1994, but did not pitch well in AAA for the Cubs in 1995 and then was done. I wonder if he got hurt--he looked like a reasonably promising young pitcher in 1991, and then never really did anything after that. I couldn't find anything out about that, but it does look like he's an instructor for IST Sports, which provides baseball instruction in Norwalk, Connecticut.
Texas lost to Toronto 3-2, so the Twins gained another game in the standings.
Record: The Twins were 50-36, in first place in the American League West, three games ahead of Texas.