September 22, 1974: Diego Seguí strikes out 12 Orioles in relief outing for Red Sox

In this game, 37-year-old Diego Seguí broke the Boston Red Sox franchise record for the most strikeouts in a game by a reliever, setting a mark that lasted nearly a half-century.

After 10-plus years in the big leagues, spent mostly as a swingman for the Kansas City and Oakland Athletics, Washington Senators, and Seattle Pilots, Seguí shifted exclusively to relief work with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1972. The Cuban native came to the Red Sox in a December 1973 trade that also brought Boston pitcher Reggie Cleveland and rookie third baseman Terry Hughes in exchange for three pitchers: left-hander John Curtis, rarely-used righty Mike Garman, and righty Lynn McGlothen.

The 1973 Red Sox had finished second to the Baltimore Orioles in the American League East Division, eight games behind. The 1974 Orioles were in second place on this Sunday afternoon at Fenway Park, only one game behind the New York Yankees. The Red Sox were three behind Baltimore with 11 games to play. A month earlier, on August 23, Boston had held a seven-game lead over the closest contender but lost 20 of its next 27 games. The Orioles had won 20 of their last 26 – including an AL-record-setting streak of five consecutive shutouts and 55 straight scoreless innings earlier in September – and manager Earl Weaver was feeling much better. First-year Red Sox manager Darrell Johnson said, “We’re going to have to perform a miracle now.”1

Reggie Cleveland (11-13) started for the Red Sox. He didn’t make it through the first inning. He’d brought his ERA down to 4.34 after being above 6.00 in early June. He’d lost his last start, on September 14 in Milwaukee, 3-1, working eight innings.

On this day, Cleveland faced just eight Baltimore batters.  

It started with a base on balls to right fielder Rich Coggins. Center fielder Paul Blair doubled Coggins home with a ball off the left-field wall. Blair advanced to third on Bobby Grich’s fly out and scored on first baseman Boog Powell’s two-out broken-bat single that “looped” into short right field.2

Left fielder Don Baylor walked. Third baseman Brooks Robinson singled, scoring Powell. Cleveland hit catcher Elrod Hendricks with a pitch, loading the bases. This wasn’t the start Red Sox fans would have liked; the team had dropped nine of its last 13 games at home and, as the Boston Herald noted, “[I]t didn’t take long for the patient to lapse into a coma.”3

Seguí was summoned to relieve. He struck out shortstop Mark Belanger to end the inning, keeping the deficit at 3-0.

Baltimore’s starting pitcher was left-hander Mike Cuellar, who already had 20 wins, his fourth season of 20 or more wins. He was 20-10 with a 3.19 ERA. Cuellar faced three Boston batters in the first, Tommy Harper, Juan Beníquez, and Carl Yastrzemski, and got all three out.

Seguí got two fly outs in the second and struck out Grich. Cuellar walked two but neither scored.

In the top of the third, Powell homered, his 11th of the season, into the Orioles’ bullpen in right field. It was 4-0. The other three batters made outs, Baylor striking out. The Red Sox went down in order in their half of the third.

Seguí struck out Belanger and Coggins after Hendricks singled in the fourth, then got Blair to pop to first. The Red Sox scored their first run when Dwight Evans walked with one out, went to second on a broken-bat single by DH Deron Johnson (the first Red Sox hit of the game), and scored when shortstop Rick Burleson singled off the wall in left.

The teams traded runs in the fifth. Grich led off the top of the inning with a double to left-center. He took third on a wild pitch to DH Tommy Davis, who struck out. Powell singled in Grich, for his third run batted in of the game and a 5-1 Orioles lead.

The Red Sox got the run back in the bottom of the inning on three singles, Evans driving in Harper.

Seguí continued to rack up strikeouts. He struck out Belanger and Coggins in the sixth inning and Grich and Robinson in the seventh.

Seguí struck out Belanger again – for the fourth time – in the top of the eighth. It was Seguí’s 11th strikeout, tying Dick Radatz’s nine-season-old single-game record for a Red Sox reliever. Radatz had struck out 11 Detroit Tigers while going the final 8⅔ innings of a 15-inning Boston win in June 1963.

Cuellar kept accumulating outs, while suffering no further damage. Yastrzemski had walked in the seventh. Burleson singled in the eighth.

The Orioles added a couple of insurance runs in the top of the ninth. Blair bunted for a single. Seguí recorded his 12th strikeout, setting Grich down for the third time, but Blair stole second. Davis singled to center, scoring Blair. Davis took second on a wild pitch. After an intentional walk to Powell, Baylor singled to left, driving in Davis.

Seguí had pitched 7⅔ innings in what turned out to be the longest relief outing of his career. He’d faced 34 batters and given up four runs on nine hits. He’d walked three and thrown three wild pitches while striking out 12. With two runs already across in the ninth and runners on first and second with just one out, manager Johnson sent Dick Pole in to relieve Seguí. Pole faced just one batter – Robinson, who grounded into an inning-ending 4-6-3 double play.

Cuellar finished what he had started. He pitched around Hughes’s and Beníquez’s ninth-inning singles to close out the game. Evans grounded to Belanger for the final out.

The final score was 7-2, Baltimore, the loss going to Cleveland (11-14), who had been tagged for three runs in the first inning.

With the complete-game win, Cuellar’s record improved to 21-10. He’d given up eight hits and walked four, while striking out two, but had kept the Red Sox to two runs. The Red Sox left 11 on base, the Orioles nine. For Cuellar, it was his eighth complete game in his last 10 starts.4 Two had been shutouts. The Orioles stayed just one game behind the Yankees, who had beaten the Cleveland Indians, 2-1.  

“We sure do need a miracle to win it now,” said Darrell Johnson. “It’s going to be tough.” The Boston Herald writer added, “Deep down he knew it was all over.”5

Seguí finished 1974 with a record of 6-8 and an earned-run average of exactly 4.00. His 58 appearances, 46 games finished, and 10 saves led Boston’s staff.

Over the course of his career, which spanned 1962 through 1977, Seguí struck out 1,298 batters in 639 games. He struck out 12 batters on one other occasion, an eight-inning start against the Yankees on September 6, 1964, when he was with the Kansas City Athletics.

It was not until July 17, 2023, when Nick Pivetta pitched six innings of relief and struck out 13 Oakland A’s, that a Red Sox reliever surpassed Seguí’s mark. (Through the 2023 season, the record for strikeouts in a game by an American or National League relief pitcher is 16, by Hall of Famer Randy Johnson for the Arizona Diamondbacks against the San Diego Padres on July 18, 2001.)

With his three RBIs in this game, Boog Powell was “now back in Weaver’s good graces” after spending much of the season “either making a comeback or being counted out,” according to the Baltimore Sun.6 Powell’s home run against Seguí was his 302nd in 14 seasons with the Orioles. He hit one more, and then spent the final three seasons of his career with the Indians and Los Angeles Dodgers.

The Orioles’ win helped them to keep pace with the Yankees. It was the first of nine consecutive Baltimore wins to finish the 1974 season. The Orioles needed almost every one of those wins; they finished the season just two games ahead of New York, though they lost to the eventual World Series champion A’s in the American League Championship Series.

The miracle Darrell Johnson had been hoping for in 1974 did not come to pass, as Boston finished third, seven games back. The Red Sox, however, won the AL pennant the following year.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Stew Thornley and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org. Thanks to Mal Allen for access to the Baltimore Sun.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS197409220.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1974/B09220BOS1974.htm

Photo credit: Diego Seguí, Trading Card Database.

Notes

1 Dave O’Hara (Associated Press), “Powell Sparks Triumph,” Hagerstown (Maryland) Daily Mail, September 23, 1974: 20.

2 Joe Giuliotti, “Orioles Drown Gasping Red Sox, 7-2,” Boston Herald, September 23, 1974: 17.

3 Giuliotti.

4 That said, manager Weaver noted, “Mike really didn’t have good stuff. When I went out to talk to him in the ninth and asked him how he felt, he said, “I feel lousy.’ Usually he says he’s OK. Then when he went to a 3-0 count on Yaz, I thought he had had it.” Ken Nigro, “Powell’s R.B.I.’S Power Orioles Past Bosox,” Baltimore Sun, September 23, 1974: C3.

5 Joe Giuliotti, “Darrell Johnson Concedes Sox Need Miracle to Win,” Boston Herald, September 23, 1974: 18.

6 Nigro.