Tag Archives: Freddy Garcia

Keeping Track

2003 Rewind: Game Ninety-nine

SEATTLE 10, MINNESOTA 8 IN MINNESOTA

Date:  Tuesday, July 22.

Batting stars:  Shannon Stewart was 3-for-5 with a home run, his eighth.  Luis Rivas was 2-for-4.

Pitching star:  James Baldwin pitched 3.1 scoreless innings, giving up no hits and three walks and striking out two.

Opposition stars:  Randy Winn was 3-for-5 with a two-run homer (his fourth) and two runs.  Dan Wilson was 2-for-4 with a double, a walk, and two RBIs.  Mark McLemore was 2-for-5 with a double, a walk, and two runs.  John Olerud was 2-for-5 with two runs and two RBIs.  Julio Mateo pitched 4.1 innings of relief, giving up one run on three hits and no walks and striking out three.

The game:  The Mariners loaded the bases with none out in the second.  They scored one on a ground out and Wilson then delivered a two-run double, giving Seattle a 3-0 lead.  The Twins came right back with two in the bottom of the second.  A. J. Pierzynski doubled and scored on a Jacque Jones single.  Chris Gomez singled to put runners on the corners and a ground out cut the margin to 3-2.

The Twins appeared to take control of the game in the third.  A single, a walk, and an infield single tied the score.  A hit batsman loaded the bases, Justin Morneau walked to force in a run, another scored on a wild pitch, one more scored on a sacrifice fly, and Cristian Guzman hit an RBI single to give the Twins a seemingly comfortable 7-3 lead.

The Marines did not agree, however.  Bret Boone hit a two-run homer in the fifth to make it 7-5.  In the sixth, a walk and two singles loaded the bases.  Olerud had a single-plus-error to bring home three runs and Winn followed with a two-run homer, putting Seattle up 10-7.

The Twins got one back in the bottom of the sixth when Stewart homered, but that was as good as it got.  The Twins got only one more hit after that, Stewart's leadoff single in the ninth.  A double play erased him and a ground out ended the game.

WP:  Mateo (2-0).  LP:  Joe Mays (8-7).  S:  Shigetoshi Hasegawa (7).

Notes:  Gomez remained at third in place of Corey Koskie.  Stewart was in right field.  Morneau was the DH.

Todd Sears, who was back up for a couple of weeks, pinch-hit for Rivas in the ninth.

Jones was 1-for-3 and was batting .307.  Stewart went up to .306.

Rick Reed started and pitched five innings, allowing five runs on seven hits and two walks.  He struck out five.  His ERA was 5.06.  Mays allowed five runs in two-thirds of an inning, raising his ERA to 6.77.  Baldwin lowered his ERA to 2.57.

Freddy Garcia started for the Mariners but lasted just 2.2 innings, allowing seven runs on seven hits and two walks.  He struck out two.  His ERA jumped to 5.05.  By game scores this was only his third-worst game of the season.  His ERA would reach a high of 5.57 on August 1.  He would then turn things around, and gave up just two earned runs in his last four starts of the season (27 innings) to end with an ERA of 4.51.

I can't think of Shigetoshi Hasegawa without remembering how Bert Blyleven struggled to pronounce his name.

The loss snapped the Twins' five-game winning streak and dropped them back below .500.  It also dropped them back into third place.

Record:  The Twins were 49-50, in third place in the American League Central, 5.5 games behind Kansas City.  They were a half game behind second-place Chicago.

Keeping Track

2003 Rewind: Game Fifty-five

SEATTLE 9, MINNESOTA 5 IN MINNESOTA

Date:  Sunday, June 1.

Batting stars:  Corey Koskie was 2-for-3 with a walk.  A. J. Pierzynski was 2-for-4 with a two-run homer (his sixth) and a double.  Jacque Jones was 1-for-5 with a home run, his sixth.  Lew Ford was 1-for-1 with a home run.

Pitching stars:  Tony Fiore pitched five innings of relief, giving up two runs on three hits and no walks and striking out three.  J. C. Romero pitched a perfect inning and struck out one.  Eddie Guardado struck out two in a scoreless inning, giving up one hit.

Opposition stars:  Edgar Martinez was 4-for-5 with a home run (his fourteenth), a double, three runs, and two RBIs.  Greg Colbrunn was 2-for-3 with a triple and two RBIs.  Bret Boone was 2-for-5 with a home run (his fifteenth), two runs, and two RBIs.  Mike Cameron was 2-for-5.

The game:  The Mariners scored six runs in the first inning before anyone was out.  Oddly enough, Brad Radke was not the Twins' starting pitcher.  They started the game with five singles:  Randy Winn, Carlos Guillen, Boone, Martinez, and Cameron all singled.  Colbrunn then hit a two-run triple and Jeff Cirillo singled, bringing the score to 6-0.  Jones led off the bottom of the first with a home run, but Boone led off the second with a home run, making the score 7-1.

To the Twins' credit, they battled to try to make a game of it.  In the second Doug Mientkiewicz doubled and Pierzynski hit a two-run homer, making it 7-3.  In the third, singles by Cristian Guzman and Koskie and a walk to Torii Hunter brought the tying run to the plate with one out.  All the Twins could manage was a sacrifice fly, though, and it was 7-4.

That was as good as it got for the Twins.  Martinez homered it the fourth to make it 8-4.  In the eighth Martinez doubled, went to third on a fly ball, and scored on a sacrifice fly to make it 9-4.

The Twins got one more in the ninth.  With two out Ford pinch-hit for Luis Rivas and hit a home run, his first major league homer.  That brought the score to 9-5, and that's where it stayed.

WP:  Freddy Garcia (5-6).  LP:  Kenny Rogers (4-2).  S:  None.

Notes:  With the home run, Ford was batting .500.  Jones dropped his average to .327.  Dustan Mohr was 0-for-3 and was batting .315.

Ford was the only lineup substitute.

Rogers lasted just 1.1 innings, allowing seven runs on ten hits and no walks.  He struck out one.  He had a game score of seven, which was by far his worst game of the season.

Garcia pitched seven innings for the Mariners, giving up four runs on seven hits and three walks and striking out seven.  I remember him as being better than he was.  Not that he was bad or anything, but he was average to slightly above average for most of his career.  He started out really well, though, which may have skewed my memory.  He finished second to Carlos Beltran in Rookie of the Year voting in 1999, going 17-8, 4.07, although with a 1.47 WHIP.  He made the all-star team in 2001 and again in 2002.  2001 was his best year:  he was 18-6, 3.05, 1.12 WHIP.  He led the league in ERA, innings, and home runs per nine innings, the only times he ever led the league in anything except for 2005, when he led the league in wild pitches.  He finished third in Cy Young voting that year to Roger Clemens and Mark Mulder, and while I can't say that the voters were wrong it looks like his season was every bit as good as theirs.  For his career he was 156-108, 4.15, 1.30 WHIP and had a lifetime ERA+ of 107.  He appeared in 376 games, 357 of them starts, and pitched 2264 innings.  He was durable, pitching over 200 innings seven times.  Not a Hall of Famer or anything, but certainly a respectable career.

As mentioned above this was Lewwwwww's first home run.  He would hit 35 in his career, with a career high of 15 in 2004.

Ex-Twin Greg Colbrunn's triple was the last of his major league career.  He hit 12 of them, with a career high of three in 1999.

After playing so well for almost the entire month of May, the Twins had now lost four in a row.  They were swept at home, the first time that had happened since the Yankees series in April.  Luckily, second-place Kansas City was struggling, too, and had slipped to an even .500.

Record:  The Twins were 31-24, in first place in the American League Central, 3.5 games ahead of Kansas City.

2012 Twins Game Log

2012 Game 10: Twins at Yankees

340 Comments

First Pitch - 6:05 p.m. CDT
Television - FSN, ESPN
Game Notes
Lineups
Scorecard

Oy. Considering the season start we're having, heading to New York City for a four-game series against the Evil Empire just seems sadistic. What, the brain trust that is MLB scheduling couldn't wait a few weeks to add insult to injury? They couldn't wait until May or June to have the Twins demonstrate their futility in the Bronx?

ON THE HILL
Few things tickle me as much as the fact that the Yankees paid Carl Pavano 40 million dollars for less than 150 innings of work over 4 years, and the Twins have wrung 220+ innings out of the guy each of the past two seasons. So at least in the coveted IPP metric (Innings Pitched per Pavano), the Twins continue to outperform the Yankees. While Pavano has been adequate as expected in his first two starts, he's giving up more hits and more runs that any of us would like and would do well to pitch a bit less to contact and a bit more to the catcher's glove.

On the other side of the street, the Yankees send longtime lefty Twins nemesis Freddy Garcia to the mound. The last time I saw Garcia pitch, Jim Lehland was trotting him out against Ozzie Guillens' White Sox in a rainout makeup game that would send the Sox to a game 163 versus the Twins. The last actual time Garcia pitched, just last week, he threw five wild pitches, the first MLB pitcher to pull that off since 1989.

In a universe where karma moves faster than a rebate check from Menards, the Twins would win this game by ten or twelve runs and Pavano would throw a 130-pitch complete game shutout (come on, you just know that a-hole A-Rod would break up the no-hitter with a two-out Texas league dink in the 9th inning). But I'm going on the record as predicting that won't happen today, or any other day for that matter. All I'm asking for out of this series is a split and I'd settle for just one measly win. With Sabathia pitching tomorrow and former Dodger Kuroda on the hill Wednesday, today may be as good a chance as we get this series.

Play ball!