September  24, 1993, Metro Edition

SECTION: Sports; Pg. 1C
LENGTH:  843  words
HEADLINE: Erickson goes for No. 20; Loss at Fenway would match record for Twins pitcher
BYLINE: Patrick Reusse; Staff Writer
DATELINE: Boston, Mass.

 BODY:
     Scott Erickson goes for a piece of history tonight against the Red Sox and isn't it appropriate that he should do so in the home of Vic Willis? It was here in 1905, while pitching for the Boston Braves, that Willis established the record for most losses in a season (29) in baseball's modern era.

Willis came from Wilmington, Del. He was almost a giant by turn-of-the-century dimensions, at 6-2 and 185 pounds. He won 20 games eight times in his 13 major league seasons and had a career record of 247-206.

    It was a different story for a 29-year-old Willis in 1905. He was 11-29 with a 3.21 ERA. He pitched 34 complete games (in 41 starts) and 342 innings. But the Braves didn't do much hitting for Vic and his pitching mates, even by dead-ball standards.

    The team batting average was .234 and the home run total was 17. Hall of Famer Jim Delahanty led the way with five home runs and 55 RBI. The Braves finished 51-103, in seventh place, 54 1/2 behind the pennant-winning New York Giants.

    Erickson has plenty of company in pitching unsuccessfully for the '93 Twins. So did Willis with the '05 Braves. There were three other 20-game losers on the staff: Irv Young (20-21), Chick Fraser (14-21) and Kaiser Wilhelm (4-23). Presumably, this was not the same Kaiser Wilhelm who gained fame in international politics a few years later.

    Erickson is 8-19 with a 5.30 ERA. He will be opposed tonight by Danny Darwin, once written off as another of the Red Sox's free-agent busts in these parts, but is now 15-11 as a revitalized starter.

    Two years ago, Erickson was 20-8 with a 3.18 ERA and finished second in the American League's Cy Young Award voting. He gave up 189 hits in 204 innings. This season, he has allowed 253 hits - and 329 base runners - in 205 innings.

    Would this be the fastest descent from 20 victories to 20 losses in recent times? No. Atlanta's Phil Niekro did that in one season in 1979, winning 21 and losing 20. In 1972, Philadelphia's Steve Carlton won 27 games and the Cy Young Award. In 1973, Lefty was 13-20.

    Erickson will start tonight and again during the final Twins homestand. If he loses either start, he would join Pedro Ramos - from the first edition of the Twins in 1961 - as the only 20-game losers in franchise history. Ramos got those 20 losses with a 3.95 ERA.

    Allan Anderson was on a collision course with 20 losses for the Twins in 1990, when manager Tom Kelly pulled him from the starting rotation after loss No. 17 on Sept. 7. This was the same guy who had elected not to start the final game of the 1988 season in order to protect his advantage for the ERA title. The Twins were not confident that such a tender competitive streak could handle 20 losses.

    After making sure Anderson could not lose 20, Kelly gave him two more starts at the end of the season and the lefthander finished 7-18. The Yankees also pulled Tim Leary from the rotation when he reached 19 losses in September 1990.

    "Twenty losses would only be important to the media," Kelly has said of Erickson's struggle.

    The Twins' protection of Anderson and the Yankees' of Leary would seem to indicate that baseball's new-age managements also have placed a growing stigma on losing 20. But there has been no attempt to protect Erickson from such a fate, last suffered by a major leaguer when Oakland's Brian Kingman went 8-20 in 1980.

   "Scott Erickson will take the baseball whenever you offer it to him," Kelly said. "He wants to pitch. He'll pitch for you on short rest. I admire him for that. It would be more of a blow to Scott Erickson if you told him he wasn't going to make a start, than if he does happen to lose 20 games.

    "A lot of his season hasn't been pretty, but Scotty has kept trying. Pitching requires adjustments. Nolan Ryan didn't have to adjust until he got to be about 42, but that is a different situation, a super human. The regular humans . . . they have to adjust."

Even Roger Clemens, the pitcher who finished ahead of Erickson in the 1991 Cy Young voting. Rocket Roger was another super human, everyone figured. Now, Clemens will take an 11-14 record and 4.46 ERA into Sunday's start against the Twins, and he will be greeted with boos in Fenway Park.

    "Scott Erickson still has the drive and the ability to be an outstanding pitcher," Kelly said. "There is no way anyone can be as unlucky as he has been two years in a row."

    Erickson can find some encouragement by looking up Willis in the baseball archives. Old Vic followed his 29 losses in Boston in 1905 with four straight 20-victory seasons in Pittsburgh.