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June 17, 2013

30th anniversary: Bob Welch does it all

Thirty years ago today, Bob Welch had about as good a day as a pitcher could possibly have. He damn near won a game all by himself on the mound and at the plate.

On June 17, 1983, Welch took the hill for the Dodgers in Los Angeles against the visiting Cincinnati Reds. Normally, you’d expect it to be an easy win for the Dodgers, as they clearly were the superior team. The day began with LA sporting a 41-20 record, a full 15 games better than Cincinnati. However, the Reds had a nice leveling factor. Their ace pitcher, Mario Soto, was on the mound. An All-Star the previous year—and would be again this year—Soto’s ERA was barely over 2.00. While Welch was a nice pitcher, he was no Soto.

And it looked like Soto brought his "A" game today. Through five innings, the Dodgers could manage just two scratch singles and a walk, and the walk was erased in a foiled stolen-base attempt. The home team hadn’t even come close to scoring.

However, Welch matched Soto goose egg for goose egg. Welch wasn’t as sharp as Soto, but in the early going it was all bend and no break. Cincinnati loaded the bases in the fourth but couldn’t score anyone. Through six innings, Welch had allowed nine base runners, but none had scored.

Heading into the bottom of the sixth, the game was still looking for its first run. Unfortunately for Soto, the Dodgers were about to find it. Leading off the sixth, Soto allowed a solo home run. Worse that, the home run came off the bat of none other than Welch.

In his previous 313 career plate appearances, Welch had never homered. He was a .182 hitter with a half-dozen doubles and one triple. But he sure picked a good time to smash his first longball.

Soto recovered nicely, striking out the next three batters to end the inning, but it was still 1-0 Dodgers. Well, eventually the Reds would have to get to Welch, right? He couldn’t keep pitching his way out of jams.

No, Welch couldn’t keep pitching his way out of jams. Instead, he stopped pitching his way into them. In the remaining three innings, Welch let just two Reds reach base. One was a meaningless single and the other a two-out base on balls in the ninth.

The Reds sent Johnny Bench up as a pinch-hitter after that walk in the ninth. If anyone could turn a 1-0 defeat into a 2-1 Reds edge with one swing of the bat, it was the old catcher. But this was Welch’s day, and Bench flew out to end the game.

Welch had pitched a complete-game shutout and smacked a home run in a 1-0 win. He’d done it all. Of his 211 career wins, none was better deserved than this one, which happened 30 years ago today.

Aside from that, many other baseball events today celebrate their anniversary or “day-versary” (which is something that occurred X-thousand days ago). Here they are, with the better ones in bold if you’d rather just skim.
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Posted by: Chris Jaffe

June 15, 2013

30th anniversary: Keith Hernandez for Rick Ownbey and Neil Allen

Thirty years ago today, one of the most incredible and obviously one-sided trades of the 1980s occurred. The St. Louis Cardinals sent star first baseman and NL 1979 co-MVP Keith Hernandez to the New York Mets for ….well, basically for the right to not have Keith Hernandez on their team anymore.

Okay, officially there was a return in the trade. The Mets sent Rick Ownbey and Neil Allen to St. Louis. That hardly seemed like a fair trade. Ownbey was barely anything. A marginal mid-20s pitching prospect who’d barely pitched in the majors, he would make just 21 appearances for St. Louis before fading away completely.

Neil Allen was at least a real major leaguer. A veteran reliever in New York, the Cardinals used him as a starter for most of 1983 and then shipped him back to the ‘pen before trading him in mid-1985. He ate some innings and provided a live arm on occasion, but that was it.

No, that doesn’t seem like a fair trade.

Hernandez was one of the best defensive first baseman of his day. Oh, and he could hit a little bit, too. He led the NL with 48 doubles and a .344 average in 1979. Then he led the league with a .408 on-base percentage in 1980. The next two years he hit around .300 for St. Louis and even drew 100 walks in 1982.

Okay, so he was down a little bit in early 1983 with a .284 average. And he was 29, getting near the point when a decline should be expected. Was that the logic? Trade a guy one year too early instead of one year too late. Oh, hell no. You trade a guy a year too early in order to get a prize haul in return. Who the hell considered Rick Ownbey a prize? This trade made no sense in terms of talent. None at all.

That’s because it had nothing to do with talent. St. Louis manager and GM Whitey Herzog had another thing on his mind. Drugs. He was concerned about the early-1980s climate of drugs around the game and felt Hernandez was a user and spreader of cocaine. (And in fact, in the mid-decade baseball cocaine trials in Pittsburgh, Hernandez’s former Cardinals teammate Lonnie Smith named Hernandez as someone involved in drugs.)

Herzog wanted Hernandez gone in order to try to stop Hernandez's rumored dealing, and also to send a message to his players to stay away from this stuff. After all, if Herzog would dump the charismatic MVP, do you think he’ll take any guff from anyone else?

Well, Hernandez eventually cleaned up. And his slow start to 1983 turned out to be an aberration. He remained a star player on the Mets for several years, and then age finally got the best of him in the late 1980s.

It worked out well for Herzog, too. Yes, the trade was terrible, but after 1983 there were two tightly fought pennant races between Herzog’s Cardinals and Hernandez’s Mets: 1985 and 1987. The Redbirds won them both, topping the Mets by three games each time. So this trade didn’t make the difference. The two times New York won the division, 1986 and 1988, it was by such a huge margin that no one could point to this trade or any one move as the difference.

It was a stunning day when Herzog sent Hernandez packing for little more than packing material, and that stunning day was 30 years ago today.

Aside from that, many other events celebrate their anniversary or “day-versary” (which is something that happened X-thousand days ago) today.
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Posted by: Chris Jaffe

June 14, 2013

50th anniversary: Willie Kirkland brings the clutch

50 years ago today was one of the greatest one-man shows of clutch hitting in baseball history. The athlete didn’t deliver every time he came to the plate, but when he did deliver, boy of boy was it ever important and well-timed. And it didn’t hurt that he got such a ton of opportunities.

On June 14, 1963, the Cleveland Indians hosted the Washington Senators in a doubleheader. The first game was an utterly unremarkable 5-2 win for the visiting Senators. The fun came in the nightcap.

Early on, it looked like Cleveland would even the day up by waltzing to a win game two of the day’s festivities. Against 23-year-old Washington pitcher Claude Osteen, two of the first three batters reached base. After a second out advanced the lead runner to third, veteran Indians right fielder Willie Kirkland came to the plate.

At age 29, Kirkland was having a rotten season. Major league baseball instituted a new and enlarged strike zone that season, and Kirkland was having trouble adjusting. His power numbers fell in half, from nearly 30 homers to mid-teens. Never great at hitting for average, Kirkland would bat just .230. His pedestrian 1-for-4 showing in the day’s first game was actually a good day for him. But the day would get much better the longer it went on.

Here, Kirkland got good wood on the ball, singling the runner in for a 1-0 Indians lead. Unfortunately, the rally ended there as Osteen struck out the next batter to retire the side—but Washington had not heard the last of Willie Kirkland.

Cleveland pitcher Gus Bell brought his A-game, and made the 1-0 lead hold up for quite awhile, but a solo homer in the sixth tied it, 1-1. And neither team could do much aside from that. Take Kirkland, for instance. He grounded out in the fourth and then fanned in the sixth. He had a nice chance to do some damage in the eighth, coming up with runners on first and second and two out, but grounded out to end the inning.

That’s OK. He’d more than make up for it later.

In fact, Kirkland made up for it with his next at bat, in the bottom of the 11th. By this time Cleveland’s situation was bleak. They still had just the one run Kirkland drove in back in the first, but Washington had just taken a 2-1 lead in the top of the 11th. Actually, Cleveland was lucky it was just 2-1. With two outs and runners on first and second, pinch hitter Dick Phillips unleashed a double that let the first run in—but the trailing run was thrown out at the plate to end the inning. It was damn near 3-1.

But it was still 2-1 when Kirkland came up to lead off the bottom of the inning, just minutes after the dramatic double. Though things looked bleak, Kirkland immediately picked up everyone’s spirits with a solo home run. Now it was 2-2, with Kirkland having both RBIs.

Now the game became a bullpen endurance contest. Neither team could score, and for all his heroics, Kirkland also couldn’t help Cleveland out. When they got a modest rally started in the 13th, he hit into a double play to end the inning. In the 16th he did it again—another double play ground ball. Well, he already had an extra inning homer—that’s enough heroics for one man, right?

Maybe not, because the game kept churning and in the bottom of the 19th Kirkland came up again to lead things off. Against Washington pitcher Jim Coates, Kirkland became one of the few men in baseball history to hit a second extra-inning homer in one game. This one was a walk-off shot, for a 3-2 Indians win. Sure he’d hit into two big double plays, but he’d also smacked two clutch homers and driven in all three Indians runs on the day. Despite his failings, he was the unquestioned hero on the day – and that day was 50 years ago today.

Aside from that, many other baseball events today celebrate their anniversary or “day-versary” (which is something that happened X-thousand days ago). Here they are, with the better ones in bold if you’d rather just skim.
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Posted by: Chris Jaffe

June 13, 2013

40th anniversary: the Garvey-Lopes-Russell-Cey infield begins

Forty years ago, they first put the band together. Forty years ago today, a foursome first began working together—and they’d have quite a nice future before themselves and for all Dodger nation. At the time it didn’t look like anything big—in fact that day itself was nothing short of a disaster, but June 13, 1973 marks the first time that the longest lasting infield foursome first played together in the big leagues.

It was the first time that first baseman Steve Garvey, second baseman Davey Lopes, shortstop Bill Russell and third baseman Ron Cey ever took the field together. They would last quite some time together.

Strangely, the only reason it turned out to be a historic day for the Dodgers was because it was such a colossally bad day for them.

June 13, 1973 began like any other day for the Dodgers. They were to play that day against the Phillies with the hope that a win would catapult them ahead of the Giants for first place. It didn’t work out that way at all. The Phillies scored six times in the first, and just to prove that was no fluke, scored six more times in the second, en route to a 16-3 crunching of the Dodgers.

I suspect that manager Walter Alston and friends left the field feeling rather bleak at how badly the team played. Certainly the only thing that appeared historic about the day was the scope of the defeat. But there were undercurrents at work.

You see, the Dodgers had a bunch of young prospects looking to make their mark, and many of them played infield. The veteran of the bunch was shortstop Bill Russell, at age 24, who had gradually taken over the starting position at short over the previous years.

At second and third, the Dodgers had recently given starting jobs to two young kids. A week into the season, Alston handed the third base position to a promising slugger named Ron Cey, and he’d played nearly every day since then. Less than two weeks later, Alston handed over second base to a 28-year-old minor leaguer making perhaps his last attempt to be a major leaguer. That aging prospect was Davey Lopes, and he proved to be an all-time great late bloomer.

That just leaves first base. So far, the team’s normal first baseman was another young stud—Bill Buckner. However, today Buckner had the day off. In his place another youngster with a nice future in front of him took the field. No, not Steve Garvey. It was Tom Paciorek. There’s nothing historic about a Cey-Russell-Lopes-Paciorek infield, but that’s why it’s so important that the Phillies pummeled the Dodgers.

In the fourth inning, with the game already badly out of reach, Alston decided to give aging center fielder Willie Davis some rest. Well, someone had to play center—so how about Paciorek? That opened a hole in first, and Alston looked to his bench and saw this young kid named Garvey sitting there. Sure, let’s try the kid out. And thus infield history was born.

Immediately, the infield was called into action, as Mike Schmidt grounded to Cey, who threw to Garvey for the out. That would be the first of many putouts Garvey would record from one of his fellows’ assists.

Ten days later, Alston started the foursome together. It would be the first of 833 times Garvey, Lopes, Russell, and Cey started together. They would be teammates and starters until the end of 1981. That’s by far the most stable infield starting quartet in baseball history. From 1973-81, they combined for 21 All-Star selections, with each man receiving at least three. They never played on the All-Star team together, but in 1976 and 1980 three out of four of them did (Lopes missed the squad in 1976 and Cey in 1980). Garvey also won the 1974 NL MVP.

After nearly a decade together, the Dodgers broke up the gang, trading Lopes to Oakland. A year later, both Garvey and Cey departed, leaving just Russell.

But in their 833 starts, the Dodgers went 498-335, for a .598 winning percentage. That’s equal to a team going 97-65 over a season. On those occasions when at least one of them missed his start, the Dodgers were 306-267-1, which is a .534 clip. That works out to a team going 87-75. So having all four of them added 10 wins to the Dodgers per year. Not bad.

That really was a nice moment for the Dodgers 40 years ago today, provided you can get around what a horrible game that was for them.

Aside from that, many other baseball events today celebrate their anniversary or “day-versary” (which is something that happened X-thousand days ago). Here they are, with the better ones in bold if you’d rather just skim.
Click for more...

Posted by: Chris Jaffe

June 11, 2013

10th anniversary: Houston no-hits the Yankees

Ten years ago today, something happened to the Yankees that hadn’t happened to them in a long, long time. The opposing team no-hit them.

And that wasn’t even the capper. The Yankees were no-hit despite the fact that the opposing starting pitcher had to leave the game after one inning pitched. It was truly a team effort to keep the Yankees hitless, as six pitchers combined for the no-no.

It was June 11, 2003 when the Yankees hosted the visiting Houston Astros for an interleague series. It promised to be a great game. Both teams entered the day in first place in their respective divisions, with Houston tied with the Cubs in the NL Central and the Yankees a half-game ahead of their archrival – the Red Sox.

Houston had one big advantage, though. The Astros had star pitcher Roy Oswalt going for them on the mound. As a rookie in 2001, he led the NL in winning percentage: .824 (14-3). Not bad for a 23-year-old. In his first full season he went 19-9 with a 3.01 ERA. Heading into today, Oswalt was only 4-4 on the season, but with a solid 3.10 ERA.

The Yankees had to counter with the frustrating Jeff Weaver on the mound. New York did, however, have a terrific batting order on its side, including stars Alfonso Soriano, Derek Jeter, Jeremy Giambi Jorge Posada, and Robin Ventura.

Today Oswalt retired the side in order in the first inning, fanning All-Stars Jeter and Giambi, along the way. But as nice as that start was, there would be no more from Oswalt. He pulled his groin and couldn’t go back out.

So the bullpen took over. And boy, did Houston’s bullpen truly take over. The Astros did have a great bullpen. (In fact, manager Jimy Williams always had great bullpens wherever he worked in his dugout days). Houston’s team-wide bullpen ERA would be 3.24, the second best in the 2003 NL. As an added bonus, it was a very well rested bullpen. On June 9, the day before, the team needed just one inning from the bullpen, and two relievers combined for that. June 8 had been a day off. So essentially everyone was available. Upshot: Houston was exceptionally well suited to survive the loss of its ace after one inning, it was them.

First out of the bullpen was Pete Munro. He actually wasn’t a very good reliever. But there’s no sense wasting one of your relief aces with this much game left to go. In 2.2 innings, he walked three batters and hit a fourth. But when the Yankees hit the ball, it went right at Houston fielders.

After Munro threw 57 pitches, Williams put in Kirk Saarloos. Like Munro, Saarloos was also a second-tier pitcher in the bullpen. He had an ERA of 4.93 on the season, but he had to face only four batters in this game, and he retired all them all.

That was five innings down, and the Yankees still needed to get their first hit. And Houston still had its best relievers to go. You had to think that maybe—just maybe—it could happen.

Well, maybe not. After all, this was a great lineup. And the Yankees hadn’t been no-hit since Sept. 20, 1958 when Hoyt Wilhelm did it. That’s the longest stretch a team had gone without being no-hit in baseball history. So the smart money would still be on the Yankees getting a no-hitter at some point.

In the sixth inning, Houston began bringing out the big guns. Brad Lidge, then a middle reliever, came out to face the heart of the Yankees order—Giambi, Posada and Ventura. He retired them in order. And then he put down the bottom of the order 1-2-3 in the seventh, fanning the last two.

Now you had to start wondering. Houston still had some great arms ready to go and New York had only two more innings to get a hit. Yeah, you should expect them to get at least one hit, but Houston kept getting closer.

Octavio Dotel came on to pitch in the eighth and did he ever bring his A-game. First up, Juan Rivera. Gone—struck him out on three pitches. Next up, Alfonso Soriano. Boom—four pitches and he struck out Soriano. But—well, there was a but. That third pitch was a swinging strike three in the dirt, and Soriano galloped to first. So though there were two strikeouts in the inning, there was only one out. Turns out all that did was help Dotel make history. He fanned Jeter and then Giambi for a record-tying four Ks in one inning. Not bad, Mr. Dotel.

Now it all came down to one inning. And Houston brought out the best pitcher from a fantastic bullpen: Billy Wagner. The southpaw posted a 1.78 ERA with 105 Ks in 86 innings in 2003. This is the man you want on the mound to preserve a no-hitter.

Posada led off the inning, and battled Wagner something fierce. He fouled off four pitches, but missed on Wagner’s eighth pitch of the at-bat for the K. That brought up New York pinch hitter Bubba Trammell. Wagner took just five pitches to whiff him. For those keeping track, not only were the Yankees being no-hit, but that was eight straight strikeouts from three different Astros relievers.

So I guess it was a moral victory that Hideki Matsui made contact in the last at-bat. But it was just a weak grounder to the first baseman to end the game. Houston had done it, six pitchers had combined to no-hit the mighty New York Yankees. Houston won, 8-0. And it happened 10 years ago today.
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Posted by: Chris Jaffe


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