Even though the series went seven games, manager Sam Mele of the Minnesota Twins lost the 1965 World Series in Game 5.
Up to that point, the Series had looked pretty good for the Twins. With Game 1 falling on Yom Kippur, Dodgers ace Sandy Koufax elected not to play, and Minnesota was able to hold serve on their home field by beating up Don Drysdale. An error by Jim Lefebvre helped, but Drysdale simply didn’t have it that day, and Jim “Mudcat” Grant was solid. He scattered 10 hits and only walked one in a complete game win, 8-2.
Koufax returned for Game 2, but the Twins got to him for two runs in the sixth inning aided by another Dodger error, this time by Jim Gilliam. Their ace reliever, Ron Perranoski, gave up three more runs while Jim Kaat went the distance for Minnesota in their 5-1 victory.
Now up two games to none, and will a fully-rested pitching staff outside of Grant and Kaat, Mele had the luxury of setting up his pitching for the rest of the series, knowing that if it got to Games 6 and 7 they’d be played on the Twins’ home field. He knew that if the Series went seven games, he’d likely need two starts from someone besides Grant and Kaat, and those two games were most likely Games 3 and 6. He could start Grant on full rest in Game 4, and Kaat on full rest in Game 5, then come back with Grant on full rest again for a Game 7 if it was necessary. The trick was getting through Games 3 and 6 without using Grant or Kaat.
He had lots of options available to him.
Veteran Camilo Pascual had started the next-most games for Minnesota that season after Kaat and Grant, despite missing the month of August due to injury. In his final five starts of the year he looked good, throwing 31.1 innings with a 2.59 ERA. For the full year he was 9-3 with a 3.35 ERA, all of it on full rest, which he’d enjoy for Game 3 as well.
Jim Perry started 19 games for the Twins in 1965, and also relieved in 17. Overall he was 12-7 with a 2.63 ERA, including a 7-7 mark, 2.45 ERA, and 1.13 WHIP as a starter. He was a former All-Star and league-leader in wins, and would go on to be a two-time 20-game winner and a Cy Young recipient, so he was an excellent option for Mele. All of Perry’s starts for the year were on full rest, as a Game 3 start would have been as well.
Dave Boswell, a 20-year old rookie, had been in and out of the rotation all season. His last start had been on August 20, but in his 12 starts for the year he had been 5-3 with a 3.57 ERA. He was thoroughly rested, though, having not pitched at all in six days, and when Boswell got that much rest he was a different pitcher. In four starts with six or more days of rest he had been 3-0 with a 2.66 ERA for the year.
Another rookie, Jim Merritt, had started nine games and been very effective, posting a 4-3 record and 3.55 ERA, but he was even better in the bullpen so he was Mele’s least likely candidate.
Mele chose Pascual to start Game 3, which was the smart move. When he unfortunately surrendered three runs through five innings, he used relievers Merritt and Johnny Klippstein to close out the game, a 4-0 loss to Claude Osteen, who threw a 5-hit shutout. Things were still good with Mele’s pitching staff despite the loss. He had Grant ready to go on full rest in Game 4. If things went wrong, he could use either Perry or Boswell to relieve him and still have one of them available, along with Pascual, as options to start Game 6.
Things did go wrong in Game 4, right from the start. Grant gave up a leadoff single in the first inning to Maury Wills, another to Willie Davis, and then Ron Fairly drove in Wills to give Los Angeles a 1-0 lead after one. Second baseman Frank Quilici committed an error in the second inning, leading to another run, Grant surrendered a homer to Wes Parker in the fourth inning for another run, and then he walked Gilliam and gave up another single to Davis in the sixth inning before being pulled. Reliever Al Worthington allowed both runners to score, Drysdale held the Twins to just five hits and two runs, and the Series was tied at two games each.
Even so, Mele’s staff was still in order. Kaat was available to start the fifth game on full rest, and since he hadn’t used Perry or Boswell yet, he still had both of them plus Pascual available to cover Game 6 back in Minnesota. All he had to do was get through Game 5, preferably with a win but at least without having messed up his pitching staff for the final games in Minnesota.
And then he proceeded to mess up his pitching staff for the final games in Minnesota.
Koufax started Game 5 on full rest, and he was exactly the Koufax you would expect him to be. He was 23-8 with a 2.20 ERA and 0.86 WHIP on full rest that season, having set the all-time record for strikeouts in a season and won the pitching Triple Crown for the second time. He retired the Twins on two ground balls and a failed bunt attempt in the first inning, while Kaat struggled right away. Wills doubled to lead off the bottom of the first, Gilliam singled him home, then Davis reached on yet another error by Quillici and the Dodgers had a 2-0 lead.
Koufax kept putting up 1-2-3 innings as the Twins struggled to do anything against him. Kaat gave up two more runs in the third inning, and it was pretty clear this was going to be a loss for Minnesota. The thing Mele should have done at this point, trailing 4-0 to a dominant Sandy Koufax, was ride Kaat as far as he could go in the game, finish it with some his bullpen’s lesser lights, like Dick Stigman, Mel Nelson, or Bill Pleis, and preserve his pitching options for Game 6.
But that’s not what Sam Mele decided to do.
Rather than keep Kaat in the game, Mele pulled him in the third inning and inserted Boswell. That got the Twins out of the inning, but it burned Boswell as an option to start Game 6. He threw 2.2 innings in Game 5, surrendering a run on 3 hits and 2 walks, and absolutely could have pitched more. It had been eight days since he last pitched, and he only threw 60 pitches, but Mele pulled him before the sixth inning anyway.
And he replaced him with Jim Perry.
The move made very little sense at that point. The Twins were down 5-0 to Koufax, who had faced the minimum through six innings, giving up just one hit and striking out seven. There was little hope Minnesota was going to be coming back to win the game, so burning Perry as an option for the Game 6 start made even less sense than burning Boswell had, especially since Boswell had already been used.
But that’s what Mele did anyway. The Twins lost the game, 7-0, as Koufax threw a 4-hitter, and now Mele’s options for Game 6 were down to two:
Start Pascual, who was fully rested but had been beaten in Game 3.
Start Grant, who had just been beaten in Game 4, on short rest.
Starting Grant on short rest wasn’t a bad option, really, because Mudcat thrived in that role. He’d done it three times that year and posted a 2-0 record, 1.93 ERA, and 1.03 WHIP in those games, all of which Minnesota had won. Plus, there would be no Game 7 if they didn’t win Game 6, so Mele decided to go with his ace. It was a gamble, but it worked out. Grant was excellent again, winning 5-1 as he gave up six hits, and one run in a complete game victory to force Game 7.
But all the win did was put Mele in the exact same situation he’d been in for Game 6. His mishandling of the staff in Game 5 still left him with only two options to start Game 7.
Start Pascual, who now had an extra day of rest.
Start Kaat on short rest.
This decision had some entirely different math involved than the one from Game 6. Some pitchers can be used on short rest. Grant was one of them, as he had proven all year. Koufax was another, as he was about to prove gloriously in Game 7.
Jim Kaat, for all of his many strengths, was not one of those pitchers.
In seven short-rest starts during 1965, Kaat had been 2-2 with a 4.67 ERA and 1.73 WHIP. In 1964 he had a 5.40 ERA on two days rest. In 1963 his ERA was 6.19 on two days rest. At this point in his career, Kaat simply wasn’t very effective when he didn’t have at least three days of rest. Compared to how he pitched with full rest that year, or how Pascual pitched on full rest, for that matter, this didn’t look like a very hard decision for Mele to make:
Of course, Mele would have had even more options if he’d handled Game 5 differently. Both Perry and Boswell had better records on full rest than Kaat did on short rest.
Also recall that Kaat had been beaten up pretty badly by the Dodgers three days earlier, surrendering 6 hits and 4 runs in just 2.1 innings. Pascual hadn’t looked very good either in his only start in Game 3, but he’d pitched better than Kaat had, and had full rest on his side.
We all know what happened. Defying all of the information available to him and limited by his own poor decisions in Game 5, Mele decided to start Kaat in Game 7 on short rest.
It likely wouldn’t have mattered, because Koufax proved yet again that he was one of the best postseason pitchers ever by throwing a 3-hit shutout and striking out 10 Twins, but Kaat never gave Minnesota a chance. In 3+ innings he gave up five hits, a walk, and the game’s only two runs as Los Angeles took Game 7, 2-0, and the Series, 4 games to 3.
Would a fully-rested Camilo Pascual have done better? Or Jim Perry or Dave Boswell if they had been available to start? We’ll never know.
Because Sam Mele sealed the Twins’ fate in Game 5.
But grit! And the will to win! And other such cliches.
A set of insights on the series that I never knew. Is this similar to Gene Mauch in 1964 with Bunning and Short at the end of the season?