MINNESOTA 7, DETROIT 3 IN DETROIT (GAME 2 OF DOUBLEHEADER)

Date:  Friday, July 28.

Batting stars:  Johnny Moses was 3-for-5 with two doubles, a stolen base (his ninth), and two runs.  Kent Hrbek was 2-for-3 with a home run (his fourteenth), two walks, two runs, and three RBIs.  Kirby Puckett was 2-for-4 with a walk.  Vic Rodriguez was 2-for-4 with a double.

Pitching stars:  Mike Dyer pitched six innings, giving up two runs on six hits and five walks and striking out two.  Jeff Reardon pitched a scoreless inning, giving up a hit and striking out one.

Opposition stars:  Edwin Nunez struck out three in 2.2 scoreless innings, giving up one hit and two walks.  Dave Bergman was 2-for-3 with a walk.  Chet Lemon was 2-for-4 with a double.  Lou Whitaker was 1-for-2 with a home run (his twenty-first), two walks, and two runs.

The game:  With one out in the first, Bergman singled followed by three consecutive walks, giving the Tigers a 1-0 lead.   Lemon's RBI single made it 2-0 after one.  Detroit got a pair of two-out walks in the second, but could not add to their lead.

Hrbek got the Twins on the board in the fourth with a home run.  In the fifth, Brian Harper reached on an error to start the inning and went to third on a one-out single by Rodriguez.  Al Newman's sacrifice fly tied the score.  Moses doubled and Puckett had an RBI single.  A wild pitch plated another run and the Twins had a 4-2 lead.

The Twins put men on second and third in the fifth but did not score.  They scored in the sixth, though.  Moses led off with a double and Puckett walked.  Hrbek hit a two-run double to make it 6-2.  Carmelo Castillo  was hit by a pitch.  A productive out put men on second and third, Harper was intentionally walked, and another wild pitch gave the Twins a 7-2 lead.

Lou Whitaker homered leading off the seventh to make it 7-3.  The Tigers had only one hit after that, however, and the game went to the Twins.

WP:  Dyer (1-2).  LP:  Jeff Robinson (1-2).  S:  None.

Notes:  Newman was at second base in place of Wally Backman, who was out with an injury.  Moses was in left field in place of Dan Gladden, who was out with an injury.  It looks like Castillo and Randy Bush platooned in right field, but both played in this game, with Castillo in right field and Bush at DH.  The main DHs that year were Jim Dwyer and Gene Larkin.  Rodriguez was at third base in place of Gary Gaetti, who was given the second game of the doubleheader off.

Puckett was the leading Twins batter at .345.  He would finish leading the league in batting at .339.  Harper was batting .310 in his first season as a regular (at age twenty-nine).  He would finish at .325.  Doug Baker, who came in to play second base in place of Newman in the eighth, had only thirty-three at-bats, but was batting .333.  He would finish at .295 in seventy-eight at-bats.  It was the only decent batting season he had, and nothing in his record suggests he could have sustained it had he been given more of an opportunity.

Dyer was twenty-two years old at this time, and while he got by in this game he was clearly not ready for the majors, going 4-7, 4.82, 1.56 WHIP.  Unfortunately for him, he never would be.  He was able to get two full seasons in the majors as a reliever, 1995 with Pittsburgh and 1996 with Montreal.  In those years, he went 9-10, 4.37, 1.49 WHIP.

He's on the birthday list and I've done his bio, but it still came as a surprise to me that the Twins once had a player named Vic Rodriguez.

Record:  The Twins were 50-52, in fifth place in the American League West, 12.5 games behind California.  They would finish 80-82, in fifth place, nineteen games behind Oakland.

The Tigers were 35-66, in seventh (last) place in the American League East, 19.5 games behind Baltimore.  They would finish 59-103, in seventh place, thirty games behind Baltimore.