Our favorite one-hit wonder seasons, plus a look at a NC Dinos team that will never lose again
Distract yourself from your work-from-home with Dennys Reyes and gorgeous bat flips
Happy Monday, rich people.
We’ve somehow been writing these newsletters every week for the past 16 weeks despite there being zero (0) actual Major League Baseball games played during that time period. We don’t know what that says about us but it probably means we need more hobbies (other than Jake just getting a new puppy).
Let’s get to this week’s contents.
If the random-autograph soliloquies or the 2004 Ben Sheets essay or the all-Brewers/Twins killer teams weren’t enough of a giveaway, a very integral part of this newsletter’s #brand is nostalgic looks back at baseball in the 2000s. That well apparently has not run dry yet because we’re going back for another dip this week.
We’ll each take a look at our favorite “randomly” good season by a Brewer or Twin since 2000. Now, there’s a bunch of ways that you could define what a “random” year is, but for the most part we looked at is as a notably crazy outlier season in a player’s career.
And then, if you’re into bat flip GIFs and wallowing in Jake’s KT Wiz misery, read on to dig into the NC Dinos of the KBO, who just had probably the greatest week ever by a pro baseball team.
Let’s converse.
Jake’s favorite random season
~Jake
This week of KBO action wasn’t great for the ol’ ticker. Sure, last week I said I wouldn’t take it personally if the KT Wiz didn’t win every game, but I also didn’t expect to lose three straight one-run games to Curt and his dumb Dinos. That’s the kind of thing you have no choice but to take personally.
In large part due to some woeful bullpen performances, I spent a lot of this week thinking about good bullpen seasons, dreaming of dropping those players in a black-and-red uniform in the middle of Korea. Matt Capps aside, the Minnesota Twins have a number to choose from, but even in my dreams, I wanted to be realistic. Of course I would love to see 2006 Joe Nathan (1.58 ERA, 12.51 K/9, 36 saves) sweating and hurling heaters for the KT Wiz, but that version of Joe Nathan would never be in the KBO. Same goes for 2013 Glen Perkins (2.30 ERA, 11.06 K/9, 36 saves).
There’s one man, though, who would fit right in with the KT Wiz. His role is now all but eliminated in Major League Baseball, but in Korea he would have shined. Especially if you took the 2006 version of him.
It’s Dennys Reyes.
Initially, the purpose of this exercise was to pick a random, impressive season from our lives as fans and now I can’t stop dreaming on the hefty lefty. His 2006 was always the most random and the most impressive to me, a fellow, um, sturdy southpaw.
A quick look at the numbers: Reyes sported career highs that year with a 0.89 ERA, 2.87 FIP and 8.70 K/9 in 66 games. The best part? He threw just 50-2/3 innings in 66 games. All told, he faced just 194 batters that year. For comparison’s sake, Nathan faced 282 batters in 68 games in his 2006 season, an all-time legendary Twins bullpen season. Reyes was a lefty specialist, there’s no denying it. He faced righties and lefties almost evenly that season (he faced 96 lefties and 98 righties), but was far superior against southpaws. He held left-handers to .148/.219/.205 slash line and struck out 28, compared to a .244/.200/.344 line with 21 punchouts against right-handers. In other words, he was fine against right-handers and absolutely devastated lefties. Think 2019 Josh Hader but with even less hard contact (.143/.182/.444 against lefties).
On a league-wide level, he led the league in ERA among pitchers who tossed at least 50 innings. Not too shabby for a guy who was available to every big league team after being released by the Padres in July of 2005. With the way Reyes’ career was looking at that moment, a stint in the KBO could very well have been an option.
Instead of joining the KBO--which would have been a bad idea, because the KT Wiz weren’t even around back then--Reyes carried on and posted not just a league-leading year, but one of the most impressive seasons by a Twins reliever ever.
Reyes’ mark of 0.89 ERA ranks second all-time for Twins/Senators pitchers with more than 50 innings pitched. First, by the way, is Johnny Niggeling, who threw 51 innings in six starts for the Washington Senators in 1943 as a 39-year-old, logging a 0.88 ERA and five complete games. So, not quite the same as Reyes.
There’s plenty of bones to pick with his season--you could knock his efficacy against righties or talk junk about his 8.70 K/9. It’s important to remember how much times have changed, though. In 2006, Nathan led the league with a 12.51 K/9 (we didn’t value Joe enough) and Reyes’s mark was good enough for 36th. Not elite, but pretty darn good. In 2019, though, 8.70 K/9 would have been good for 174th.
Especially given future rule changes related to three-batter minimums, there probably wouldn’t be room for a lefty specialist anymore, especially one like Reyes who bounced around on eight teams before arriving in Minnesota for his age-29 season. It’s not all doom and gloom, though. The KT Wiz sure could use some help.
Curt’s favorite random season
~NC Dinos die-hard Curt
First, a few of the honorable mentions.
2013 Yuniesky Betancourt: “But didn’t Yuni B have an OPS below .600 that year even though he got more than 400 plate appearances?” You may be asking. You would be correct. But after a 2011 season in which I lamented having actual Yuniesky Betancourt as the starting shortstop on a 96-win team, I fully leaned into the Yuni Experience in 2013. And through May 1, he was batting .279/.297(lol)/.570 with seven dingers. Yuni B Forever.
2009 Trevor Hoffman: Hoffman is arguably the second-best closer of all-time, so his 1.83 ERA and 37 saves that season are sorta close to being in line with his career numbers. But the 226 ERA+ that year was the second-best of his career, which is pretty noteworthy for a 41-year-old.
2003 Danny Kolb: I have a Kolb autograph from this year, right after he was called up midway into the season. He took over as closer a month into his time with the Brewers and went on to pick up 21 saves and pitch to a 1.96 ERA.
2005 Derrick Turnbow: I swear, every time I think of Turnbow, I’m convinced his peak was at least 2.5 years. But, nope. It was barely more than one calendar year. That ‘05 season, though, was wild. 39 saves and a 1.74 ERA for a guy who was claimed off waivers in the offseason ain’t bad.
Half the 2018 Brewers: I hope this doesn’t come across as me calling the 2018 Brewers a fluke because they really weren’t (except for that part where a fair amount of good teams are kinda fluky), but it took a chunk of career years for them to go 96-67. Jesus Aguilar, who had 84 career hits coming in and was 28 years old, had a 135 OPS+ and led the NL in homers at the All-Star break before returning back into a pumpkin in 2019. Jhoulys Chacin pitched incredibly well as the team’s top starter and then had a 1.50 ERA over three playoff starts and Game 163. Wade Miley had a 2.57 ERA in 16 starts. Jeremy Jeffress became one of eight relievers in baseball history to throw at least 75 innings with an ERA under 1.30.
But the real winner is…
...2015 Gerardo Parra
Gerardo Parra’s campaign five summers ago is rarely talked about in the conversation of one-hit Brewers wonders and I think that’s exactly why I love it. It’s the perfect bit of obscurity in a season where Milwaukee was sort of nostalgically bad.
To reacquaint us all with Parra’s year. The left-handed corner outfielder was traded to Milwaukee at the 2014 deadline for Mitch Haniger and Alex Banda. It was a relatively uninspiring move at what was an uninspiring deadline that helped set up an uninspiring finish to the regular season. But in 2015, Parra went absolutely wild.
In 100 games and 351 plate appearances, he batted .328/.369/.517, good for a 138 wRC+ and 140 OPS+. Mind you, this is a guy with a career 88 wRC+ in 11 seasons. He had nine homers, 24 doubles, nine steals and scored 53 runs. For effectively two months, from June 2 to July 30, he had a 1.000 OPS.
The Brewers were, well, rather treacherous that year, dropping to 24-44 by mid-June, but their bad baseball turned out to be one of the biggest blessings in disguise in franchise history. They flipped Carlos Gomez and Mike Fiers for Josh Hader, Domingo Santana, Brett Phillips and Adrian Houser. Right after that later, they parlayed Gerardo Parra’s success into Zach Davies from the Orioles and snickered the next two months as Parra hit .237/.268/.357 with a 67 wRC+ in 55 games. I can only assume Baltimore did the same four years later when they shipped Jon Schoop to Milwaukee.
Parra’s career is actually a super interesting one, as well. He came up as a defensive wizard with Arizona, winning a couple of Gold Gloves and posting a pair of 20+ FRAA seasons in the early 2010s. He’s remained a respectable, if not slightly above average, fielder since then, but his bat has always been a low-pop, low-walk, gap-to-gap slashing one. As far as corner outfielders go, Parra is not exactly an optimal offensive profile; of 75 outfielders with at least 3,000 PA since 2010, Parra is 70th in wRC+ and 65th in fWAR. My working theory is that he’s excellent at taking advantage of any way in which a team will place value on him that may not actually be there. He was able to use that elite early-career defense to get some teams to overvalue him later on (I’m looking at you, Colorado). Then, last year, we saw him turn a hot start and a walk-up song that made him a cult hero in Washington into being an oft-used piece on a World Series champion despite the fact that his OBP was still only .300.
I’m always intrigued by a guy who is able to turn out a long career despite being so incredibly replacement-level for almost all of it and Parra is one of them. He has six seasons of at least 300 PA with a bWAR no higher than 0.7 out of the 11 in his career, which is tied for the sixth-most since 1990.
Gerardo Parra rocks.
Tom’s favorite random season: 2001 Joe Mays
~ Kiwoom Heroes stan Tom
A few strong opinions that I developed as a youngster still stick with me today: Thin Mints are trash. Horses are freaking terrifying. And Joseph Emerson Mays was a very good major-league pitcher.
The first two takes are based on over two decades of research. I love chocolate and enjoy mints. But put them together and they’re as good as every couple on “90 Day Fiance.” Secondly, the thought of climbing into a saddle and handing the reins of my life to a 2,000-pound beast has dampened my hands which already suffer from severe hyperhidrosis.
Apologies to my keyboard.
The third belief was formed solely on the fact that I once owned a Joe Mays baseball card that was included in the Topps “Rising Stars” series. That meant he had to be great, right? Not exactly. Mays was a pretty, pretty good MLB hurler just long enough for those Topps cards to make it through the printers.
On Aug. 20, 1997, Minnesota sent outfielder Roberto Kelly to Seattle and received a pair of minor-league pitchers: Jeromy Palki and Mays.
While Palki never made it to the bigs, Mays made his MLB debut in 1999 and stuck with the club as a mainstay on the rotation from 1999-2005.
Mays might represent the Twins’ identity in the starting rotation during the early aughts better than anyone. Using a mix of a fastball, curveball and change-up, Mays relied on groundouts to eat up innings and preserve the bullpen. Insert the buzzword “pitch to contact.”
Ew, David.
Mays went 13-26 with a 4.94 ERA (104 ERA+) and a combined 5.4 WAR over his first two seasons with Minnesota. In summation, he was (barely) an average pitcher toeing the rubber for two forgettable Twins squads that went 63-97 in 1999 and 69-93 the following season.
But then, 2001 happened. The same year that Shaggy released the hit “It Wasn’t Me,” Mays was caught red-handed pretending to be an ace.
He started the season with a seven-inning gem against Kansas City, allowing five hits and two runs. Mays one-upped himself five days later by fending off Detroit with eight innings of one-run ball.
By the time the All-Star Game rolled around in July, Mays punched his ticket to the event at Safeco Field, logging an 11-5 record and 3.02 ERA in 18 starts. He joined teammates Christian Guzman and Eric Milton on the AL All-Star team, marking the first time the Twins had multiple All-Stars since 1994.
Mays cruised through the second half as well and ended the year with career bests in just about every category: 17-13 record, 3.16 ERA, 7.9 H/9 and 1.0 HR/9. He served up 20 quality starts in 34 opportunities and led the American League with a 143 ERA+, adjusted pitching runs (37), adjusted pitching wins (3.7) and base-out runs saved (41.54).
Mays was outstanding in pressure situations. With two outs and runners in scoring position, batters managed a .178 BA against the right-hander. He stranded 78.2% of runners on base, which ranked sixth in The Show.
Even better, Mays was a force against the Chicago White Sox in the early days of classic Twins-Sox bouts. From 1999 to 2001, our guy made 10 appearances (nine starts) against the South Siders and notched a 6-0 record, 2.67 ERA and 41 strikeouts. The Twins won all nine of the games he started. It reached such a ridiculous point that White Sox fans gave him the nickname “Cy.”
But at the same time, Mays whiffed a mere 4.7 batters per nine innings, his lowest total yet in the big leagues. That number baffles me. Only three other pitchers with 200 IP that season finished with a lower K/9.
His 4.27 FIP -- a measurement that takes out factors of defense, luck and sequencing -- ranked 41st in the AL.
So, was Mays actually good? Or was he simply a beneficiary of Lady Luck, an outstanding infield (Mientkiewicz, Guzman, Luis Rivas and Corey Koskie) and a 25-year-old Torii Hunter running around in center field?
Unless your name is Tom Glavine, what Mays was doing in 2001 wasn’t sustainable. But that didn’t stop the Twins from giving him a four-year deal worth $20 million after his breakthrough in 2001, hoping he’d be a fixture in the rotation for years alongside Milton and Brad Radke.
Unfortunately, Mays’ career unraveled after that. He allowed 15 runs over three starts (11 2/3 innings) to launch the 2002 season before being demoted to the minors. From 2002-05, Mays went 18-26 with a 5.81 ERA, 77 ERA+ and -- prepare yourself -- a 1.4 K/BB. He never posted a WAR above 0.1 again.
Mays bowed out of Minnesota in 2005, and then the bigs one year later.
Even though he didn’t work out long-term, Mays is revered for being the best starting pitcher on a team that saved the Twins franchise. Minnesota hadn’t constructed a winning season since the World Series Hangover in 1992. Rumors swirled around the league that the Twins would be disbanded before the 2002 campaign. But suddenly, the lowly Twinkies looked like they had a future with names like A.J. Pierzynski, Torii Hunter and Doug Mientkiewicz in the lineup and Mays on the mound.
Call him a flash in the pan. Call him a one-hit wonder. But my opinion stays the same. Joe Mays was good (even though he wasn’t).
The NC Dinos are a complete juggernaut
~Curt
What I lost in sleep I gained in happiness.
The NC Dinos, the team that has made me feel like a lifelong fan after two weeks of fandom, won six straight games last week. In the first four, they took the lead in their final turn at bat. In the fifth, they came from behind to take the lead in the top of the eighth. In those five games, their combined margin on the scoreboard after nine innings was only +2 runs and yet they won them all. In the sixth, they rained down dingers and brimfire.
The Dinos are Cinderella and it’s not because they’re the plucky underdog. Instead, they appear to have a fairy godmother who shows up at the stroke of midnight just as you-know-what is about to smack the fan.
Here’s a recap of a wild, wild string of baseball games.
Tuesday: Dinos 7, KT Wiz 6 (10 innings)
It was a disaster. An absolute disaster.
Relatively speaking, I’m pretty good when it comes to at least one thing in life: holding off on reaching The World Is Burning Phase during my favorite baseball team’s inevitable regular-season doldrums. I’m fairly certain the Brewers season ended in 2019 at least three times before the end of April, according to Twitter, but I don’t think I wrote their eulogy until August. Yes, that was a humblebrag.
But, you see, this was a disaster. An absolute disaster.
In the wee hours of the morning on May 10, the Dinos, off to a 4-0 start to the season, held a 6-0 lead over the LG Twins after the first inning and still led, 7-3, heading into the eighth. Then came the frame that bears no repeating.
Three different pitchers. Seven runs. One very, very bad time.
“Pain,” “Release the whole bullpen” and “I never want to see G-T Kim again” were among the many texts I sent to my pal Noah, a fellow Dinos fan, during that inning. I hadn’t 3 a.m. misery-texted like that since my freshman year of college.
It was the Guillermo Mota Game all over again and it was happening in my very first week of being a KBO fan.
It was a disaster. An absolute disaster.
So there I was Tuesday morning, right around 6 a.m. with my Dinos trailing, 6-3, to Jake’s beloved kt Wiz of all teams. We had just made a taco bet on the game and if there’s one thing you should know about me, it’s that I do not lose taco bets to Jake. Not even six games into the season, The Worry was starting to set in. Was the Dinos’ hot start just a flash in the pan?
Answer: lol, no.
Down to the final strike and facing Dae-lee Un, who I have determined is the KBO Josh Hader due to his hair and his hair alone, Dinos star outfielder Sung-bum Na put a quarter in the jukebox and it spat out a game-tying moonshot.
Na, having surpassed the stegosaurus, was already my favorite Dino but after this dinger I started to draw up the plans to get his name tattooed on my upper body.
Then, to lead off the tenth, Suk-min Park sent Swole Daddy home (and me back to bed) happy.
Wednesday: Dinos 5, Wiz 4 (10)
Tuesday’s loss had to be maddening for Jake and all the KT Wiz fans out there, but this one had to be downright soul-crushing.
So much went down in the final five innings that I’m honestly overwhelmed by it all, so I’ll just start in the bottom of the eighth.
After Suk-min Park reached with a two-out single, Kwon Hee-dong launched a, uh, dong, to take a 3-2 lead for the Dinos. Yoo Han-joon, though, tied it back up in the ninth with a homer to lead off the top of the ninth.
In the extra frame, the Dinos opted to pitch to Min-hyeok Kim with a runner at second and two away. This move agitated me, a fan whose knowledge of Kim (whose career single-season best wRC+ is just 84) consisted of a memory that he homered to give the Wiz the lead in the eighth. And, sure enough, he tripled to take a 4-3 lead and the next batter, Baek-ho Kang (who, turns out, is actually the 20-year-old baseball-obliterator for the Wiz that I now call the Baby Boomer), struck out. Hire me to manage your baseball team.
But we know things don’t end there because the Dinos never say die--or at least not in the last 65 million years, they don’t.
A sac fly for the first out in the bottom half tied the ballgame, and a grounder to short looked like it might end the inning with a double play, but it was botched for an error. Hee-dong followed with a single to center that looked like it would walk-off the Wiz, but Na was thrown out with the winning run at home. The drama was insane.
Rest easy, though, as pinch hitter Jin-sung Kang walked it off for the Dinos yet again.
Thursday: Dinos 1, Wiz 0
I had high hopes for Aaron Altherr coming into this season. Out of the three foreign players allowed on the NC roster, he was the only one I had heard of thanks to his 2017 season with the Phillies in which he deposited 19 taters. This belief was confirmed when Altherr hit a laser to the wall in right field with apparent ease in his first at-bat of the season, but then he did just about nothing for the next week-plus at the dish.
Turns out the best cure for the slumps is the Wiz bullpen. Altherr broke a scoreless tie in the eighth by singling home Min-woo Park, who had singled, swiped second and advanced to third on a wild pitch.
The Dinos hung on from there, making a winner of Chang-mo Koo (who I prefer to refer to as Chang-Moo Koo), who struck out 10 over eight scoreless innings.
The series--the magnificent, stupid, beautiful series--led Jake to send a text that morning that read: “Did my beloved KT Wiz seriously lose three one-run ball games to Curt’s stupid team.”
Yes. That is exactly what happened.
Friday: Dinos 6, SK Wyverns 2 (10)
There’s a theory I developed this past MLB season, and it’s this: there’s a precise point in every season for good teams when you realize that they have The Look.
For the 2019 Brewers, for example, it was, ironically enough, the game in Miami in early September in which they lost Christian Yelich but won their fifth straight thanks to a go-ahead sac fly by Tyler Austin in the ninth and a nervy save from Drew Pomeranz.
Friday was when I realized the Dinos had The Look. They had no business escaping the bottom of the ninth tied after Chang-min Im walked four batters. But Hyun-seok Lee’s screamer was hit right at the NC third baseman rather than going literally anywhere else and ending the game, and that’s the kind of thing that happens to teams who have The Look.
In the top of the tenth, even after Jyin-huk No struck out with the bases loaded and one out, Eu-ji Yang smacked a go-ahead, seeing-eye single.
Then Tae-goon Kim followed with a double to the wall in left. Then Min-woo Park drove in another run on an infield hit that probably could have been an error.
It led to this heartwarming content in the Dinos dugout. Imagine a baseball team being more wholesome than this.
Oh wait, you can’t.
Saturday: Dinos 2, Wyverns 1
A slight tangent as we reach the fifth and final game of the Greatest Week in Baseball History. (If you’ve made it this far, consider me impressed. You can stick it out through another tangent).
This graphic popped up in the early innings of Saturday’s game against the Wyverns. In and of itself it isn’t anything all that special. Pretty much every baseball broadcast has a “keys to the game” graphic shown near the beginning and it usually says things like “score more runs.”
What it is, though, is indicative of a trend in televised Korean baseball that I’ve caught onto. You see, most Dinos games aren’t broadcast by ESPN, so I’m left watching the Korean announcers on some Twitch channel. 99 percent of the time, I have no idea what they’re saying. But that one percent, that sweet, sweet small fraction of the time, is a beautiful glimmer of light that makes me feel like I’m on the same page as my fellow baseball fans on the other side of the world.
The inclusions of English into the broadcasts almost certainly have some rhyme or reason behind them, but to me, they seem like darts of English peppered in randomly. Why is “keys to the game” in English, but everything else on the screen Korean? When a new pitcher comes and they show his stats, the names of the categories are written in Korean, save for WHIP, which for some reason is written as, well, ‘WHIP’. I love this.
Anyway, Saturday’s game.
The Dinos, in a shocking turn of events, didn’t win the game in their final at-bat, but in their second-to-last turn at the dish.
Tae-goon Kim doubled to tie the game with nobody out, which prompted this beautiful television.
The guy dancing at the end of that video is Min-woo Park, who was called on to pinch hit literally seconds later. As Dinos are prone to do, he singled the go-ahead run in.
Sunday: Dinos 11, Wyverns 5
I’m gonna be frank with you here. I had every intention of leaving Sunday’s game off in the event that the Dinos lost, cutting off their perfect “week” on Saturday even though they really went 5-1.
I have since realized what an idiot I am to even ponder the possibility that the Dinos would lose to Wyverns.
Starter Drew Rucinski gave up a couple of runs in the second on bloop hits to put NC in a 2-1 hole in the second. Anyone who’s watched the Dinos this year, however, knows that facing a deficit is necessary for a Dino outbreak. In the top of the third, Jin-sun Kang turned on a pitch and sent it over the left-field fence for a three-run bomb to take a 4-2 lead. The bat flip was art.
And another angle.
NC added seven more unanswered runs--for 10 total--over the next three innings, including back-to-back 홈런 by Altherr and Na. I was able to go to bed after five innings.
Dinos forever.