REGIONAL #86:   This regional didn't seem to include any great teams but had a number of bad ones, although the 1983 Dodgers won their division, had won a "pennant" in the 1981 strike season and they would add another later in the decade.  It does feature the first season of the Brewers, a 1920 A's team that had only recently seen their dynasty rapidly disassembled, a Giants team with remnants from their great 1962 team, and two probably lackluster squads from the 1951 National League.  If the Dodgers could survive the 2000 Twins (those teams from the peak steroid years always are tough), I predicted that they'd edge past the 1999 Tigers in the finals.  The ELO rankings (shown in parentheses) gave the Dodgers a slight edge over the Giants in the lower bracket to be regional favorites, but they also rated the '51 Braves as a better team than I had guessed.

First round action

Setting the lineup for the '51 Braves, I discovered that I underestimated their competitiveness; although they only won 76 games and finished last in attendance in the NL, their Pythagorean projection was much better (83 wins) and at the top of the rotation they had 22-game winner Warren Spahn in his prime.  The 1970 Brewers had just moved to Milwaukee (as their opponents were about to do) one year after having been founded as the Seattle Pilots, and they lost 97 games although Tommy Harper had a big year and Marty Pattin was a decent option to face Spahn.  Even so, the 1,500 or so Braves fans in attendance were shocked when Spahn walked 5, allowed 2 hits, and a 2-base error by SS Kerr staked the Brewers to a 6-0 lead in the 2nd inning, and to prove it wasn't a fluke they added 3 more in the 3rd.  Harper leads off the 6th with a solo shot, and the Braves have nobody in the pen nearly as good as Spahn, so they're leaving him and his 311 innings in for the duration despite the 10-0 deficit.  In the 7th, Pattin starts to lose control, walking the bases loaded but only allowing 1 run on a Sibby Sisty fielder's choice.  However in the 8th Pattin continues to come unraveled, allowing 4 more runs including a Sid Gordon homer, but the Brewers are trying to preserve closer Ken Sanders with the big lead.  The Brewers add an insurance run in the top of the 9th, but when Sam Jethroe leads off the bottom of the 9th with a HR, Pattin is pulled in favor of Sanders, who does his job and seals the 11-6 upset for the Brewers.  Four errors for the Braves and 7 walks issued by Spahn sealed their fate and earned them a trip back to storage.

Although I may have underestimated the Braves from that year in the previous first round matchup, my assumptions about the 1951 Cubs were pretty accurate--they only won 62 games and simply weren't good.  Their opponents, the 69-win 1999 Tigers, weren't much better, with a truly dreadful starting rotation offset somewhat by a typical steroid-era lineup:  8 of their hitters had double-digit HRs, compared to 2 for the Cubs.  However, it was the Cubs who looked juiced early in the game, with solo homers by Baumholtz and Sauer in the top of the 1st and back to back doubles in the 2nd running the Cubs to a quick 4-0 lead.  The Cubs then gift the Tigers with unearned runs in the 3rd and 4th courtesy of their atrocious defense, but in the 5th Miksis has his 2nd RBI double of the game and the Cubs score 3 to chase Dave Mlicki after only 4 innings.  The Tigers hand the ball to their best reliever by far, Doug Brocail, and he shuts down the Cubs, but Chicago starter Bob Rush is similarly shackling the Tigers.  Finally, the juice kicks in for Detroit and Dean Palmer hits a solo shot to lead off the bottom of the 9th, but Rush recovers to end the threat and give the Cubs the 7-3 victory.

Shoulda stayed with the Celtics

The 1983 Dodgers won 91 games and the NL West behind strong pitching (including an excellent bullpen) and some pop in the lineup, led by a big year from Pedro Guerrero, but with an Achilles heel of porous defense.  They faced a 2000 Twins that lost 93 games via a bad rotation and a lineup with remarkably little power for guys in the peak of the steroid era--even 24 year old DH David Ortiz only hit 10 homers, perhaps leading the Twins to unwisely release him 2 years later.   The Twins took advantage of LA fielding in the 3rd, when SS-4 Bill Russell followed an error with another ball that he played into a single, and the Twins led 2-0.  In the 6th, RBI singles from Hunter and Lawton chased Bob Welch in favor of Snortin' Steve Howe and his 1.44 ERA, but the Twins responded with two more hits off Howe's imposing card and now led 6-0.  The Dodgers finally get on the board against Eric Milton when DH Rick Monday lofted a 3-run homer in the top of the 7th, although an RBI single from Ron Coomer extends the Minnesota lead to 7-3 in the bottom of the inning.  And that's how it ends: a 7-3 upset win for the Twins with Milton only allowing 5 hits in the complete game.

The 1968 Giants, by winning 88 games, finished 2nd in the final year of the no-division NL, and tapped 26-game winner Juan Marichal to start their round 1 game, although card-wise he may not have been their best starter.  However, he faced the 48-win 1920 A's, last place in AL, although I mercifully didn't start 23-loss Rollie Naylor, instead opting for 22-year old Eddie Rommel who would help lead the A's to glory by the end of the decade.  Although the matchup looked very one-sided, the A's were unafraid given that every other first round game in this regional had been won by the underdog, and sure enough in the 2nd a Tilly Walker triple and a Whitey Witt single, both off Marichal's card, gave the A's a 1-0 lead.  That lead lasted until the next inning, when Mays doubled in Hunt and was then singled in by McCovey, and the Giants led 2-1 after three.  Dick Dietz then leads off the 4th with a HR off Rommels HR 1-4/flyB split, and RBI singles from Alou and Hunt make it 5-1 Giants, but the A's strike back with a 3-run HR by Lena Styles, off Marichal's card, in the 5th and a 2-run double by Griffin, also off Marichal's card, in the 6th, and the Giants have seen enough of Marichal as he hands the ball to Joe Gibbon, behind 6-5.  However, in the bottom of the 6th Alou hits a shot to tie the game, again off Rommel's HR 1-4 split, and they move ahead in the 7th when a Mays single is followed by a McCovey triple.  The Giants then summon Frank Linzy from the pen to try to keep the pesky A's at bay, and he does the job to earn the save for the 7-6 come-from-behind (twice) victory--the first for a favorite in this regional.

The survivors

With two bad teams in the first semifinal between the 1970 Brewers and the 1951 Cubs, it didn't take long for both teams' weaknesses to be exposed.  In the top of the first, the Brewers score on Cubs SS-4 Roy Smalley's first of two two-base errors, but in the bottom of the inning Brewers starter Al Downing walked four batters to even the score at 1-1.  In the 2nd, the Brewers raked Cubs starter Paul Minner for 4 hits, Smalley added another error, and Milwaukee led 5-1, although a Hermanski RBI single in the bottom of the inning made it 5-2.  A Phil Roof double in the 3rd pushed the lead to 6-2, but the Cubs continued to maul Downing, scoring 4 in the bottom of the inning on RBI doubles from Miksis and Burgess.  In the top of the 4th, after allowing 2 more hits Minner was mercifully injured (he may have been faking), and Cubs ace reliever Dutch Leonard came in and ended the threat.  Smalley and Miksis singles scored two more and chased Downing in the 6th, but Ken Sanders was unable to stop Cubs supersub Bill Serena from driving in another.  Meanwhile, things weren't breaking well for the Brewers, who had two runners (1-17 and 1-19) cut down at the plate.  By the 9th inning the Cubs had a 10-6 lead but were on their 5th pitcher, being forced to put in an erratic Turk Lown to try to finish things.  The Brewers did manage a run, but that was not enough as the Cubs move to the finals with a 10-7 win and a seriously depleted bullpen.

With every other surviving team in the regional being bad squads who pulled off upsets, the 1968 Giants saw a smooth road ahead given their strong rotation and weapons like Mays, McCovey, and Bonds.  They faced the 2000 Twins, who knocked out the regional favorites but were now going deeper into a dreadful collection of starting pitching, and their #2 starter Brad Radke had an ERA nearly double that of the Giants' Gaylord Perry.  However, this tournament shows time and again that prematurely counting your chickens is not a worthwhile effort, and Radke is in fine form, going 7 innings and only allowing one run on a McCovey solo blast.  However, in those 7 innings Perry also limits the Twins to a single run on a Jacgue Jones sac fly, but the Twins add another in the 8th when Jones hits a solo HR, and the Twins turn it over to closer Latroy Hawkins to try to preserve the save.  In the 9th, Perry disintegrates with 2 outs, allowing four runs (3 on a Matt Lawton HR) and Hawkins now has a five-run pad entering the bottom of the 9th.  However, Koskie's 2nd error of the game followed by McCovey's 2nd HR of the game narrows the gap, and then the Giants put two men on with two out, and the tying run at the plate in the form of SS Hal Lanier and his .206 average.  The Giants turn to the bench for a pinch hitter, and I discover that there is not a single hitter there with a HR chance of any type on his card.  I go with .264 hitting Dave Marshall, Hawkins strikes him out, and the Twins win 6-3 and move on to an improbable regional final matching two 60-win teams.

Twins pen pal

I certainly did not expect the 2000 Twins and the 1951 Cubs to be the finalists in this regional, although a bad Senators team winning the previous bracket served as a reminder that anything was possible.  Going to the #3 starters on two 60-win teams was frightening, and the scares began in the 2nd inning when Twins starter Mark Redman welcomed Smokey Burgess to the steroid era with the former's solid 6-9 HR result, putting the Cubs up 2-0.  To return the favor, Cubs starter Cal McLish loaded the bases in the 4th with one out, but Torii Hunter missed a SI 1-18 to frustrate the fans in the Metrodome.  However, the next batter, Ron Coomer, took advantage of McLish's 5-9 HR 1-16 reading for a grand slam, and the Twins were up 4-2, and both teams were wishing their bullpens were at full strength.  With the lead, the Twins were trying to make it to the 8th inning as reliever Hawkins had 2 innings of eligibility left, but with 2 out in the 7th Frankie Baumholtz found Redman's 6-9 again for a solo HR, and the Twins put in Travis Miller as the only other reliever without a card littered with HR bombs.  After a Cavaretta single, Miller managed to get cleanup hitter Hank Sauer to ground out, and the Twins led 4-3.  In the 8th, the Twins summoned Hawkins, and he pitched two perfect innings to seal the win and the regional title for the Twins, who managed only 6 hits in the win.  Regional MVP goes to Hawkins, who earned two saves in relief of the Twins' HR-riddled starting rotation; as a team with steroid-era pitching but 1950's-style offense, the Twins 4th regional win (joining 1973, 1977, and 2019) was an unlikely one.

Interesting card of Regional #86:  If you follow this feature, you'll know that I'm a sucker for these low-use wundercards, and this one made some contribution in propelling the bad 1951 Cubs to the regional final.  Under tournament rules, Serena could not make an appearance before the 6th inning, so he would come in for the 6th replacing Randy Jackson at 3rd, who got so sick of the practice that he retired to become an American Idol judge.  Besides his admirable .333 average, Serena obviously knew how to draw a walk and also kept away from the double play ball--this is just the kind of hitter I like batting second in the lineup.  Of course, the whole 6th inning replacement strategy could blow up with that 2-7 result; apparently Serena broke his wrist sliding into second in early May of 1951 and was out for the remainder of the season.  He had been a full-time player as a rookie in 1951, finishing 5th in the Rookie of the Year voting, but he was out of the majors by 1954--making me wonder if he had lingering effects from that injury that shortened his career.