May 28, 1975: Twins’ Jim Hughes caps career month with complete-game win

Big-league success didn’t last for Jim Hughes, but when he was hot, no one was hotter.

The Minnesota Twins’ rookie pitcher won the American League Player of the Month award for May 1975, posting a 6-0 record and an 0.87 ERA in six games.1 He worked seven innings of shutout relief on May 4 to win his first appearance of the month, then threw five straight complete games, including two shutouts, to win the rest. It was a remarkable showing for a pitcher who entered the month with an 0-3 lifetime record in five big-league appearances.

The 23-year-old righty from Los Angeles capped his month to remember on May 28, when the Twins played the rubber game of a three-game series in Detroit. Buoyed by Hughes’s early-season heroics, Frank Quilici’s Twins entered the day in third place in the AL West Division with a 21-18 record, 3 games behind the first-place Oakland A’s. Minnesota’s future Hall of Famer Rod Carew led AL batters with a .375 average coming into the game, while teammate Larry Hisle was among the leaders in runs batted in and slugging percentage.2

Ralph Houk’s Tigers were headed for a disastrous season. They finished 1975 in last place in the AL East Division with a 57-102 record, 37½ games back, the first Detroit team since 1952 to lose 100 games. The ground hadn’t yet caved in under them as of late May, though. The Tigers entered with an 18-20 record, in third place, three games behind the first-place Boston Red Sox.3 Future Hall of Famer Al Kaline had retired after the 1974 season. A few remaining players from the team’s late 1960s and early 1970s glory days, such as Willie Horton and Bill Freehan, were joined by relative newcomers like Ron LeFlore and Leon Roberts.4

The starting pitchers on May 28 were having dramatically different seasons. Hughes ranked second in the AL with a 1.43 ERA, while Detroit’s Joe Coleman ranked worst among qualifying hurlers at 6.45. Hughes owed his success to the combination of a live fastball and a change-of-pace palmball he’d learned in the offseason.5 Opening the season in the bullpen, he’d gotten a chance in the rotation because of injuries to teammates Vic Albury, Joe Decker, and Dave Goltz.6 Coleman, at 28, had twice won 20 games in a season for the Tigers but was suffering from arm trouble and control problems that had beset him the previous season.7 He brought a 3-6 record into the game.

The starting first basemen were notable for their novelty, if not for their on-field contributions. Minnesota gave the start to 24-year-old rookie Tom Kelly, who’d made his major-league debut on May 11. Kelly hit .181 in 49 games in his only big-league season. He earned his real place in Twins history as a manager, leading the team to World Series titles in 1987 and 1991.8 Detroit started 29-year-old Nate Colbert, acquired in an offseason trade after several seasons as the expansion San Diego Padres’ biggest power threat.9 Colbert, suffering from chronic lower back pain, hit just .147 in 45 games with the Tigers and was sold to the Montreal Expos in mid-June.10 He left the majors at the end of the 1976 season.

Only 9,675 fans turned out on a Wednesday night to see the wonder kid face off against the struggling veteran. Through the first inning, the veteran held a 1-0 lead.

The Twins worked Coleman for a single, a walk, and a hit batsman with one out, but Hisle grounded into an inning-ending double play. In the bottom half, LeFlore and Gary Sutherland led off with singles. When Twins left fielder Steve Braun misplayed Sutherland’s hit, LeFlore and Sutherland reached third and second base respectively. One out later, Hughes handed consecutive walks to Horton and Roberts, pushing across a free run for Detroit. Freehan ended the rally by grounding into an around-the-horn double play.

Braun helped to even matters with a one-out single in the third inning. Carew followed with a double to center field, driving in Braun and bringing the score to 1-1. Both teams moved runners to third base in the fourth inning – the Twins on a double and an error, the Tigers on a one-out triple by Freehan. But Coleman and Hughes stranded the runners by inducing groundballs and popups. The Tigers did it again in the fifth on a one-out triple by LeFlore. Hughes got Sutherland to pop foul to Kelly at first, then induced Dan Meyer to ground to shortstop. “He’s got the guts of a bandit,” Carew said after the game. “Nothing seems to shake him.”11

The Tigers committed four errors, giving them 53 for the season, and one of those fluffs helped swing the game in the Twins’ favor in the seventh.12 Braun walked with one out. Carew hit a fly ball to center field that LeFlore overran for a two-base error, putting Carew on second and Braun on third.13 An intentional walk to Bobby Darwin loaded the bases for Tony Oliva, who had barked at Coleman after being hit by a pitch in the first inning.14 The future Hall of Famer, hobbled by knee injuries but still potent at the plate, avenged himself by grounding a two-run single to right field, making the score 3-1.

Righty Tom Walker, in his first season with Detroit after three with Montreal, relieved Coleman. He retired Hisle and Eric Soderholm to keep the game within reach. Tigers shortstop Tom Veryzer whacked the first of his five 1975 home runs in the bottom half to bring the Tigers within a run, 3-2.

But in the eighth, Detroit’s sloppy fielding again came back to bite the Tigers. Walker got two outs before Glenn Borgmann reached on a bobble by third baseman Aurelio Rodríguez. The next batter, Braun, hit his third homer of the season to build Minnesota’s lead to 5-2.

Hughes faced a few moments of drama in the bottom of the ninth. A walk to Roberts and a single to left field by Freehan put runners on first and second with nobody out. A trio of veteran hitters stood between Hughes and his sixth win of the month: Colbert, Rodríguez, and Gates Brown, hitting for Veryzer. Hughes got Colbert on a popup, Rodríguez on a line drive to third, and Brown on another popup to wrap up the 5-2 win in 2 hours and 31 minutes.

Quilici praised his young ace for overcoming a shaky start: “He started a little wildly tonight, but settled down and when he got the lead he wasn’t about to give it up.”15 Tigers skipper Houk sounded a similar note, saying: “You have to give the kid credit. He pitched out of a lot of jams. His palmball is a good one.”16 Hughes scattered seven hits and three walks while striking out seven.

The AL recognized Hughes’s remarkable month on June 3 by naming him the Player of the Month, beating out Rich Gossage of the Chicago White Sox.17 By happenstance, the Boston Red Sox had broken Hughes’s winning streak two days before, collecting seven hits and seven earned runs off him in just 1⅔ innings.

Hughes cooled off after May, finishing his rookie season with a 16-14 record and 3.82 ERA in 37 games, including 34 starts. Control emerged as a challenge: He issued 127 walks, third-most in the AL, and hit 13 batters with pitches, second-most in the league. With the AL champion Red Sox’ “Gold Dust Twins” of Fred Lynn and Jim Rice towering over their Rookie of the Year competitors, Hughes received no votes.18 As of the 2023 season, Hughes’s 127 walks remained the most ever in a season by a Twins pitcher, while his 16 wins remained the most in a season by a Twins rookie.19

The following season, Hughes was hit on the foot by a line drive in spring training and never found his form, finishing 9-14 with a 4.98 ERA. In 1977 he showed up to spring training in poor condition and made a bad impression.20 After two relief appearances in April, he was farmed out for the rest of the season, then released in October. He pitched in the minors and the Mexican League through 1980 but never returned to the majors. The six games he won in May 1975 represented almost one-quarter of his career total of 25.

Acknowledgments

This story was fact-checked by Andrew Harner and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources and photo credit

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference and Retrosheet for general background information on players, teams, games, and seasons.

www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/DET/DET197505280.shtml

www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1975/B05280DET1975.htm

Image of 1976 O-Pee-Chee card #11 downloaded from the Trading Card Database.

Notes

1 MLB.com, “Player of the Month,” accessed June 8, 2023, https://www.mlb.com/awards/player-of-the-month.The National League began separately recognizing Pitchers of the Month in 1975; the AL followed suit in 1979. MLB.com, “Pitcher of the Month,” accessed November 12, 2023,  https://www.mlb.com/awards/pitcher-of-the-month.

2 Carew won the AL batting title in 1975 for the fourth straight season and fifth overall, posting a .359 average. Hisle had surgery for a bone spur and played only 80 games; his 51 RBIs did not rank among league leaders.  Oakland won the AL West with a 98-64 record while Minnesota finished fourth at 76-83, 20½ games back.

3 Detroit posted a disastrous 8-24 record in June. After rallying for a 19-14 record in July, the Tigers collapsed again in August (6-22) and September (5-21).

4 LeFlore and Roberts had both broken in with the Tigers in less than a full season’s action in 1974.

5 Joe Soucheray, “Hughes Blanks Brewers 6-0,” Minneapolis Tribune, May 19, 1975: 1C; Larry Batson, untitled column, May 18, 1975: 1C.

6 Bill Madden (United Press International), “Hughes Notches 6th,” St. Cloud (Minnesota) Times, May 29, 1975: 29.

7 Gregory H. Wolf, “Joe Coleman the Younger,” SABR Biography Project, accessed June 8, 2023, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/joe-coleman-the-younger/. Coleman remained in the majors through 1979 as a reliever, earning a World Series ring with the 1979 Pittsburgh Pirates.

8 At the time this story was written in June 2023, Kelly ranked as the winningest manager in Twins history with 1,140 victories across 16 seasons. In the combined history of the Washington Senators and Minnesota Twins franchise, only Bucky Harris – who managed the team only in Washington – had more wins, with 1,340. Harris and Kelly also rank one-two in franchise history for managerial losses, with 1,416 and 1,244 respectively.

9 Full terms of the trade, which was announced November 18, 1974: Colbert to Detroit; Ed Brinkman, Bob Strampe, and Dick Sharon to San Diego.

10 Gregory H. Wolf, “Nate Colbert,” SABR Biography Project, accessed June 8, 2023, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/Nate-Colbert/.

11 Chan Keith, “Whew! Hughes! 6-1, 1.53 ERA,” Minneapolis Star, May 29, 1975: 1D.

12 Tom Briere, “Hughes, Twins Roll Over Tigers 5-2,” Minneapolis Tribune, May 29, 1975: 1D. Detroit finished the season fourth in the AL with 173 errors; the league average was 154. The Texas Rangers led the league with 191 errors.

13 Briere, “Hughes, Twins Roll Over Tigers 5-2.”

14 Jim Hawkins, “Rookie Whiz Stymies Tigers, 5-2,” Detroit Free Press, May 29, 1975: 1D.

15 Briere, “Hughes, Twins Roll Over Tigers 5-2.”

16 Keith, “Whew! Hughes! 6-1, 1.53 ERA.”

17 United Press International, “Twins’ Hughes Named AL Player of Month,” Orlando (Florida) Sentinel Star, June 4, 1975: 4C. Gossage made 10 appearances in May 1975 without yielding an earned run. Gossage subsequently won the AL Pitcher of the Month Award in September 1979 while pitching for the New York Yankees.

18 Lynn and Rice were the only vote-getters for the 1975 AL Rookie of the Year award. Lynn won with 98 percent of the votes. He also won the AL Most Valuable Player Award, which Rice won in 1978.

19 Minnesota Twins 2023 media guide: 277, 280. Accessed June 8, 2023, via Twinstrivia.com, https://twinstrivia.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/2023-Minnesota-Twins-Media-GuideV2.pdf.

20 Gary Libman, “Twins Send Hughes, 11 Others to Farm Club,” Minneapolis Tribune, April 1, 1977: 1C; Chan Keith, “Hughes Pitches Better, But …,” Minneapolis Star, April 20, 1977: 1E.