October 5, 2001: Jamie Moyer’s 20th victory gives Seattle Mariners an AL-record 115 wins

When Jamie Moyer was traded by the Boston Red Sox to the Seattle Mariners during the 1996 season, the well-traveled left-hander said, “I know I’m not a number 1 starter, but I can certainly help a team win in a lot of ways.”1 Under Seattle skipper Lou Piniella, the first major-league manager he felt ever had faith in him, Moyer took his game to a new level. Encouraged to use his changeup more, and with conviction,2 Moyer began attacking; varying pitch selection, speed, and location in a way that used batters’ aggressiveness against them.

 “You watch Jamie Moyer, he’s the master of nothing,” shared San Francisco Giants manager Dusty Baker before the 2000 season. “He keeps throwing farther and farther away. Then all of a sudden, he pops one on you at 82 MPH and it looks like it’s a thousand MPH. Or he turns one over. Now that’s pitching.”3 Moyer earned an Opening Day start in 2000 but went 13-10 during the season, with a 5.49 ERA. Held out of the Mariners’ Division Series with the Chicago White Sox due to a sore shoulder, Moyer was robbed of the chance to pitch in the ALCS when his left kneecap was fractured in a simulated game.4 Denied an opportunity to make amends in the playoffs for his mediocre regular season, Moyer followed a “furious” offseason workout program that paved the way for a magical 2001.5

The Mariners’ number-four starter coming out of spring training, Moyer went 5-0 in the season’s first four weeks as the team built a nine-game lead in the American League West Division. Over the next four-plus months, he went 12-5 with a 3.23 ERA. Moyer’s team-leading (and career-best) 18th win secured the division crown for the Mariners after a week-long major-league-wide hiatus that followed the 9/11 terrorist attacks. On September 24 Moyer notched win number 19 as the Mariners tied the AL record for most road wins in a season (55), a mark they broke the next day.

Eleven days after Moyer’s record-setting win, on Friday, October 5, he hoped to reach the 20-win plateau for the first time in his career, and give Seattle 115 wins, the most in American League history. Uncertainty over the team’s health, however, cast a shadow over their attempt.

One week earlier, Mariners shortstop Carlos Guillén had been diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis, hospitalizing him for days.6 Concerned that Guillén might have transmitted the bacterial disease to his teammates, each member of the team was tested before this game.7 Any player found to have active TB bacteria would be sidelined for the start of the playoffs.

The first hint that the 2001 Mariners might top the 1998 New York Yankees’ record 114 wins sprang from an unexpected source: former Seattle shortstop Álex Rodríguez. After his boo-filled return to Safeco Field in early April, A-Rod, who’d signed a record 10-year, $252 million contract with the Texas Rangers in the offseason, told reporters that the Mariners had an opportunity to win 110 to 115 games.8

Off to an 11-3 start at that point, the Mariners were a juggernaut over the next five months.  Entering the final series of the year, the team’s record stood at 113-45 (.715), with what was ultimately the top offense in the major leagues (as measured by runs per game) and its top defense (as measured by fielding percentage). Facing A-Rod and the last-place Rangers in a season-ending home series originally scheduled for September 13-16, Seattle would have four shots at breaking the 1998 Yankees’ mark – and possibly the 116-win major-league record set by the 1906 Chicago Cubs.9

The October 4 series opener turned into a laugher for Seattle against a Texas pitching staff that had the worst ERA in the league. Up 4-0 after one inning, the Mariners led 6-0 after two, 8-1 after three and 12-1 after four. They won 16-1, on 19 hits, to earn win number 114. The stage was set for an assault on the record.  

With the playoffs looming, Piniella tabbed Moyer as his starter, giving the 15-year veteran five days of rest before facing the Cleveland Indians in Game Two of the Division Series.10 In five previous 2001 starts against Texas, a team that had released him 11 years earlier, Moyer had three wins against one loss, with a 3.94 ERA.

Texas manager Jerry Narron sent out a familiar foe opposite Moyer: veteran Rick Helling. A 20-game winner three years earlier, Helling was 12-10 with a 5.11 ERA entering the game. He’d fared poorly in two previous starts against Seattle, allowing 11 earned runs and 19 hits over 9⅓ innings, including four home runs. Moyer was the Mariners’ starter in both of those debacles. 

A sellout crowd of 45,333 filled Safeco Field for the 7:08 P.M. start, on what KIRO announcer Dave Niehaus called “a perfect night.”11 Woeful as the Rangers pitching was in 2001, their offense was potent; they finished the year tops in the majors in home runs and fourth in batting average. Moyer disarmed Texas in the opening frame, retiring its top hitter, Frank Catalanotto, on a weak grounder leading off and fanning A-Rod, the AL home-run leader, to end it.

Seattle drew “first blood” in the bottom of the first.12 Supersub Mark McLemore,13 filling in for Guillén, coaxed a one-out walk, stole second on the first pitch to Bret Boone, and two pitches later advanced to third on a wild pitch. McLemore scored when Boone grounded to second, registering his 138th RBI of the season.

The Rangers hit Moyer hard in their second turn at bat. Back-to-back one-out doubles by Rubén Sierra and Gabe Kapler tied the score. A line-drive single to left by rookie Chris Magruder gave the former Washington Husky his first major-league RBI and the Rangers the lead.

One batter into its half of the inning, Seattle tied the score. First baseman John Olerud, a Washington State University product,14 drove a 2-and-0 offering from Helling into the right-field bleachers. An inning later, Seattle went back on top. AL batting leader Ichiro Suzuki, who four days earlier had shattered Shoeless Joe Jackson’s 90-year-old record for most hits by a rookie,15 started the rally with an infield single. Ichiro’s hit, his seventh off Helling in nine at-bats and his 241st of the year, gave him more than any major leaguer had registered in a season since 1930.

The next batter, McLemore boomed a triple to deep right-center field, scoring Ichiro. Boone followed by driving Helling’s first pitch to him, a high fastball, over the center-field wall.16 It was Boone’s 36th home run of the season and the 38th that Helling had surrendered, tops in the majors. The home run extended Boone’s AL record for four-baggers by a second baseman, a distinction he’d earned weeks earlier, with the two RBIs drawing him into a tie with Juan González for the American League RBI lead.17 The Mariners were now up 5-2.

In the Rangers’ fourth, Seattle center fielder Gene Kingsale, starting in place of Mike Cameron, snared a one-out tracer from Sierra that seemed destined for extra bases. From that point on, Moyer cruised, allowing only a single baserunner over the next 3⅓ innings.18 Helling also kept traffic to a minimum. An inning-ending double play in the seventh erased a leadoff single by Seattle third baseman David Bell, back after missing 15 games with a strained rib-cage muscle.

After 93 pitches, Piniella pulled Moyer and brought in his left-handed set-up man, Arthur Rhodes, for the eighth. Having his finest season, the 11-year veteran set the Rangers down in order on 11 pitches.

The Mariners added an insurance run in the eighth on a sacrifice fly from Edgar Martínez, playing in his first game after a two-game suspension for charging the mound in Anaheim.19 Martínez’s drive to right-center field brought home McLemore, who’d laced his second triple of the game two batters earlier.20

The ninth inning belonged to rookie closer Kazuhiro Sasaki, ineligible to earn his 45th save by virtue of the score. Michael Young flied out on Sasaki’s first pitch and A-Rod did the same on his fifth. The Rangers’ last hope, slugger Rafael Palmeiro, slapped a fly ball to deep left that Stan Javier gloved for the game’s final out.

With the win, Moyer became the second Mariners pitcher to earn 20 wins in a season (after Randy Johnson) and the oldest first-time pitcher to notch his first 20-game season; breaking the mark set in 1915 by George McConnell of the Federal League Chicago Whales.21 The victory gave Seattle the AL wins record and two chances to break the Cubs’ major-league mark of 116.

Afterward, the cerebral Moyer showed his appreciation for the moment: “I was doing a lot of thinking out there, a lot more than I usually do. I just kept thinking how neat it was to be a part of something so special.”22

With tears in his eyes, Piniella acknowledged Seattle’s historic achievement. “This is a once-in a-lifetime thing, and over the next two days we’ll go out and see if we can do a bit more.”23 Indeed, all of the Mariners, save Guillén, would be able to take a run at 116, as their TB tests turned out negative.24 

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Jamie Moyer’s autobiography, written with Larry Platt, Just Tell Me I Can’t; radio station KIRO’s broadcast of the game; and the Baseball-Reference.com, Retrosheet.org, Stathead.com, and Baseball-Almanac.com websites.

Photo credit: Jamie Moyer, courtesy of the Seattle Mariners

Notes

1 “Mariners Deal Bragg for Hurler Moyer,” Kitsap (Washington) Sun, July 31, 1996: C1.

2 Jamie Moyer and Larry Platt, Just Tell Me I Can’t (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2013), 126.

3 Rob Gloster, “Mind over Muscle,” Everett (Washington) Herald, February 26, 2000: 4D.

4 Kirby Arnold, “Moyer Wishing for W-I-N,” Everett Herald, October 15, 2000: 5C.

5 Just Tell Me I Can’t, 140.

6 Associated Press, “Guillen Turns 26 in Hospital,” Spokane Spokesman-Review, October 1, 2001: 23.

7 Don Ruiz, “M’s-Indians to Play Series under the Sun,” Tri-City Herald (Pasco, Washington), October 5, 2001: C2.

8 Larry Henry, “A Sellout: Fans Give ‘A-Wad’ the Riot Act,” Tacoma Herald, April 17, 2001: C1. Local sportswriter Larry Henry was floored, writing, “You knew the M’s were good, but you didn’t know they were this good, did you?” adding, “You win 115 games, you’re not good, you’re great.”

9 The Cubs’ record was set over the course of 155 games (116-36-3), unlike the 162-game schedule in 2001.

10 In choosing to give Moyer five days of rest before his ALDS start, Piniella was taking advantage of the soft-tossing southpaw being one of the major leagues’ top starters with five days of rest. In the seven such starts he made in 2001, Moyer was 5-0, with a 2.38 ERA, and had major-league lows in WHIP (0.816) and BAbip (.206) among starters of five games or more on five days of rest.

11 Dave Niehaus, KIRO radio broadcast of October 5, 2001, game between Seattle and Texas, 17:19 timestamp, https://www.retroseasons.com/teams/seattle-mariners/2001/videos/431540/. The game-time temperature had dipped just below 60 degrees, with little to no wind.

12 Rick Rizzs, KIRO radio broadcast, 15:22 timestamp.

13 McLemore played every position other than catcher, pitcher, and first base for Seattle during the 2001 season.

14 Shortly after the 2001 season, Olerud was selected for induction into the Washington State University Athletic Hall of Fame. Craig Hill, “Cougars add to Hall of Fame,” Tacoma News Tribune, November 4, 2001: C2.

15 Associated Press, “Ichiro Replaces Shoeless Joe in Record Book,” Bellingham (Washington) Herald, October 1, 1002: 15.

16 Bob Finnigan, “Mariners in a League of Their Own,” Seattle Times, October 6, 2001: D1.

17 On September 4 Boone launched his 33rd home run of the season off Tampa Bay’s Victor Zambrano to surpass the record held by Joe Gordon of the 1948 Cleveland Indians..

18 Seconds before Magruder grounded out leading off for the Rangers fifth inning, Barry Bonds hit his 71st home run of the year at Pacific Bell Park in San Francisco, setting a new record for the most home runs in a season. KIRO’s Dave Niehaus interrupted his play-by-play calling of the Mariners game to do an impromptu call of Bonds’ historic blast, in real time. Dave Niehaus, KIRO radio broadcast, 1:09:10 timestamp.

19 Bob Finnigan, “Charge Up – Martinez, Mariners Show Some Fight in Rout,” Seattle Times, October 3, 2001: C1. Martinez had taken offense at Angels reliever Lou Pote throwing a pitch that hit him in both forearms before ricocheting off his face.

20 Kirby Arnold, “AL’s Best Ever,” Everett Herald, October 6, 2001: C1. This proved to be the only game in McLemore’s major-league career in which he hit two triples.

21 McConnell was 18 days shy of his 38th birthday when he reached 20.

22 “Mariners in a League of Their Own.”

23 Bob Sherwin, “Simply the Best: Mariners Win 115,” Seattle Times website, October 6, 2001, https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=20011006&slug=mari06.

24 Team doctors never released the results, but remarks made the next day indicated that Guillen’s condition had not spread to his teammates. Bob Sherwin, “Four Share Club’s Honors – Notebook,” Seattle Times, October 7, 2001: C10.