October 18, 2009
Top 40 Minnesota Twins: #36 Dave Boswell
Boswell made the team as a long man out of spring training in 1965, and after seven shutout innings in relief of Dick Stigman on May 11 was given a chance in the rotation. He pitched well, going 5-3 with a 3.53 ERA over 12 starts, but was shifted back to the bullpen in the second half after reportedly coming down with mononucleosis. He made just one appearance in the World Series defeat to the Dodgers, throwing 2.2 innings of relief when Jim Kaat was knocked around early in Game 5. A full-fledged member of the rotation in 1966, Boswell was 12-5 with a 3.14 ERA in 169 innings and led the league with a .706 winning percentage while ranking second with 9.2 strikeouts per nine innings. At just 21 the future looked bright, and sure enough over the next three seasons Boswell was among the most durable pitchers in the league. He went 44-37 with a 3.27 ERA in 669 innings of work from 1967-1969, striking out 537 batters while allowing just 525 hits. He was at his best in 1969, teaming with Jim Perry to give the Twins two 20-game winners on the way to a division title. Boswell ranked among the league leaders in wins (20), innings (256), and strikeouts (190), but along with his overpowering stuff also had some trouble with his control. He handed out 99 walks, plunked another eight batters, and uncorked 10 wild pitches to rank among the AL's top 10 in each category. Boswell stepped up in the playoffs as the Twins faced a 109-win Baltimore team that led the AL in runs allowed and ranked second to the Twins in runs scored. He somehow managed to keep a lineup led by Frank Robinson and Boog Powell (who finished second and third to Harmon Killebrew in the MVP balloting) off the board for 10.2 innings in Game 2, all while 20-game winner Dave McNally blanked the Twins for 11 frames. Unfortunately, the tie was broken in the bottom of the 11th. With two runners on and two outs, manager Billy Martin yanked Boswell in favor of closer Ron Perranoski, who had saved an AL-high 31 games with a 2.11 ERA. O's skipper Earl Weaver responded by pinch-hitting Curt Motton for Ellrod Hendricks and Motton delivered a walk-off single to right field. Not only was Boswell's amazing game wasted, he was tagged with the loss despite recording 32 outs without actually allowing a run to score. He didn't get another chance against the Orioles, as Baltimore finished off the three-game sweep with a blowout win in Game 3 before eventually losing to the "Miracle Mets" in the World Series. And while no one knew it at the time, that extra-inning loss to the Orioles in the ALCS essentially marked the end of Boswell's days as an effective major-league pitcher despite the fact that he didn't turn 25 years old until a few months later. Boswell went 3-7 with a ghastly 6.42 ERA over 68.2 innings in 1970 and didn't make an appearance in the Twins' second straight three-game ALCS sweep at the hands of the Orioles. He was released by the Twins before throwing a single inning in 1971 and immediately signed with the Tigers, who cut him loose after three poor relief outings. Boswell then latched on with the Orioles and finished his career by going 1-2 with a 4.38 ERA in 24.2 innings as a mop-up man. And just like that, a career that began at 19 and peaked at 24 was over by 27. It's hard to pin Boswell's early decline on that 10.2-inning ALCS start alone, because pitching past the ninth inning was fairly routine in 1969. In fact, that start wasn't even Boswell's longest of the season--he lasted 12 innings in a win over the White Sox in mid-July--and across baseball there were 67 other starts of more than nine innings in 1969. However, he likely threw over 150 pitches in both the July win and ALCS loss, and that type of workload for a 24-year-old is certainly difficult to ignore given how his career fizzled. Would he have lasted past his 27th birthday had he not logged nearly a thousand innings, completed 37 games, and had several marathon starts through the age of 24? Perhaps, but while his workload would be considered obscene by today's standards it wasn't particularly out of the ordinary back then. Interestingly, the Twins fired Martin as manager after one division-winning year not because he worked Boswell so hard on the mound, but because he reportedly knocked Boswell out during a bar fight that August. While his Twins career was disappointing considering the promise that he showed at such a young age, Boswell's early numbers actually look a lot more impressive than they were. In putting up a 3.49 ERA with the Twins he was aided by one of the most pitcher-friendly eras in the sport's history. To add some context to the extreme environment that he pitched in consider that Boswell's seemingly fantastic 3.32 ERA in 1968 was actually worse than the league average of 3.10. For his entire time in Minnesota the league ERA was an incredibly low 3.48, which is why despite a much lower raw ERA he stacks up pretty equally with the two pitchers who preceded him on this list, Eric Milton (987 innings, 101 ERA+) and Scott Erickson (979 innings, 103 ERA+). Boswell threw 1,036 innings of a 101 ERA+. The fact that Milton's adjusted ERA+ is actually identical to Boswell's despite Boswell's raw ERA being nearly 30 percent lower shows just how important is it to look beyond raw numbers when comparing players across eras. Of course, while his 3.49 ERA with the Twins is hardly as impressive as it seems by today's standards, it still would have been nice to see what Boswell could do had he not flamed out in his mid-20s.
DAVID WILSON BOSWELL | SP | 1964-1970 | CAREER STATS
G GS IP W L ERA ERA+ WARP WS
187 150 1036 67 54 3.49 101 16.8 61TOP 25 ALL-TIME MINNESOTA TWINS RANKS:
Complete Games 37 7th
Strikeouts 865 9th
Innings 1036.1 10th
Wins 67 10th
Quality Starts 76 11th
Shutouts 6 12th
Starts 150 13th
ERA 3.49 17th
Once you're done here, check out my NBCSports.com blog and Twitter updates.
