Phil Garner does come up early, although not in the way we wanted as we lose Dale Berra for a couple weeks to an intercostal strain. Craig Reynolds is also struggling healthwise and needs a week on ice to shake it off. When Dale comes back, we keep Scrap up and send Dick Davis to Lincoln.
We start the year pretty much as we envisage it will go in its entirety, namely with good and bad performance intermingled. We go 11-9 for April and Wally Backman’s hot start is rewarded with that month’s batting award.
Craig Reynolds back flares up a second time and he’ll miss 4 weeks and Jim Morrison takes some time off from the Doors to make his Pittsburgh debut.
As we trundle along I decide it’s now or never to clean house with a couple of the walk guys. There’s only one position player we really want at the moment but his current employers are playing hardball. Eventually, we get it done as follows:
I hate trading for single players but,with still two transaction tickets up our sleeve, I relent in this case because it frees up a bunch of cash for us to apply toward the future and gets us a good young infielder. We’ll switch him across to SS as we feel Dale Berra is much better used in a roving IF commission.
Kison was the hard one to give up. We saw him as a cheap insurance policy if we have some pitching injuries. Now that final ticket will need to be kept safe for that eventuation should it happen.
We bring Kent Tekulve up from AAA and he’ll go to a MR role with a Closer-by-committee employed for now. It’s a risk as Gossage was a lock so far this year and Tekulve has proven anything but in past seasons. Even at this early stage it is clear that how well our pitching holds up will be a decisive factor in how far we diverge from 500 this year and on which side of it we finish. This move puts even more pressure on the staff, for sure.
And boy do we take a whack at the turnstiles.
We finish this opening section at 25-22 and just a couple off the pace.
We sign extensions with John Tudor (1/900), Larry McWilliams (2+1/4200) and Gene Garber (2+1/1380).
The Tigers and Reds looking strong but what is going on in the Bay Area?
Monthly Award Winners
April
American League
Batter – Doug DeCinces (White Sox): 351 / 7 HR / 18 RBI
Pitcher – La Marr Hoyt (White Sox): 4-1 / 2.03 / 24 K / 44.1 IP
Rookie – Frank Viola (Twins): 3-1 / 2.13 / 24 K / 38 IP
National League
Batter – Wally Backman (Pirates): 463 / 1 HR / 11 RBI
Pitcher – Steve Carlton (Cubs): 5-0 / 1.54 / 36 K / 46.2 IP
Rookie – Tom Henke (Reds): 3-0 / 1.46 / 4 SV / 6 K / 12.1 IP
May
American League
Batter – Dwight Evans (Red Sox): 386 / 8 HR / 22 RBI
Pitcher – Frank Tanana (Tigers): 5-0 / 2.77 / 21 K / 39 IP
Rookie – Frank Viola (Twins): 5-1 / 4.75 / 31 K / 41.2 IP
National League
Batter – Howard Johnson (Cubs): 340 / 8 HR / 20 RBI
Pitcher – Jim Clancy (Braves): 5-0 / 1.80 / 28 K / 45 IP
Rookie – Tom Henke (Reds): 4-0 / 1.23 / 5 SV / 15 K / 22 IP
News and Leaders
Milestones and Observations of Note
200 Wins: Bert Blyleven
2000 Hits: Cesar Cedeno
The Mets lose pitcher Atlee Hammaker for the season to an RC tear.
Another rough start for the Astros sees them at an ugly 5-20 early on. The Tribe, meanwhile, look good early and a 10-game win streak takes them to the top of the AL East in mid-May before just cooling off a tad.
The Dodgers extend local fave Steve Garvey with a 2/1200 deal.