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1975 baseball season

The Collapse & Disappointment Of The 1975 Milwaukee Brewers

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The 1975 Milwaukee Brewers came into the season with plenty of reasons for hope. Their young franchise, established in 1969 and then relocated to Milwaukee a year later, had been gradually improving and reached a respectable 76 wins in 1974. The Brewers were bringing home one of their city’s great legends, acquiring Henry Aaron who starred for the Braves when they played in Milwaukee. And for a good chunk of the season, the ’75 Brewers ran with the top dogs of the old AL East. Then a massive collapse ruined this season and sent the franchise into a brief multi-year tailspin.

Aaron was 41-years-old, well past his prime and his acquisition as the DH was more a sentimental draw than anything. But the price proved inconsequential—first baseman Davey May who had gone into his own career decline. And the ’75 Brewers had other bats that could produce.

Darrell Porter was a young 23-year-old catcher with a good batting eye. In the world of 1975, people may have had a hard time looking past his .232 batting average. With the lens of modern analytics, Porter’s .371 on-base percentage is what would stand out. George Scott played first base and “The Boomer” had a big year, with 36 home runs and 109 RBIs. But other parts of the lineup weren’t able to step up as hoped.

Robin Yount had a Hall of Fame career ahead of him, but the shortstop was still only 19-years-old. Don Money was one of this team’s better players during their 1970s and his numbers weren’t bad–.331 on-base percentage/.432 slugging percentage—but they weren’t quite up to snuff .Sixto Lezcano would eventually become a top rightfielder, but he went through rookie growing pains in 1975. Bobby Mitchell slugged .454, but his OBP was a more mediocre .320.

Manager Del Crandall used his bench, with names like Kurt Bevacqua and Mike Hegan getting time in the infield. Players like Charlie Moore and Gorman Thomas, who would eventually become big parts of this franchise’s best teams in the early 1980s, also got playing time. But none produced numbers of any real note in 1975.

It added up to an offense that ranked just ninth in a 12-team American League for runs scored. That was a problem. But the bigger problem was a pitching staff that ended up as a disaster.

Pete Broberg started 32 games, went 14-16 and finished with a 4.13 ERA. Not awful. But he was the staff ace. No one in the rotation finished with a winning record in an era when starters routinely went deep into games and finished them. Jim Slaton struggled to an 11-18 mark and a 4.52 ERA. Jim Colborn and Bill Travers had ERAs on the high side of 4. Tom Murphy saved 20 games out of the bullpen, but at the cost of a 4.60 ERA.

The only help Crandall got pitching-wise came from reliever Eduardo Rodriguez, who finished with a 3.49 ERA in 87 innings that were mostly relief. Bill Castro mixed in a few starts with relief work and posted a 2.52 ERA. That’s not much to go on and the Brewers finished last in the American League for staff ERA.

The problems certainly didn’t show up right away. Milwaukee bolted out of the gate fast and validated any preseason optimism the fan base might have been feeling.  

Here might be a good place to step back and remind younger readers that not only were the Brewers an American League franchise prior to 1998, the leagues used to be split into just two divisions, an East and a West, with only the first-place team making the playoffs. Milwaukee shared the AL East with current occupants, Boston, New York and Baltimore, along with Detroit and Cleveland. Toronto was still a year away from existing and baseball in Tampa Bay was a generation off.

The Orioles were clearly this division’s gold standard, having won five of the previous six division titles. The Red Sox had played winning baseball for several years running. And the Yankees, while having been quiet since the mid-1960s, were coming into 1975 with high expectations. New York visited Milwaukee’s old County Stadium for a weekend series in early May.

The Brewers spotted the Yanks a 2-0 lead in Friday night’s opener. Money started a tying rally in the bottom of the third, with one of his three hits. Scott hit an RBI double. Hegan broke the 2-2 tie in the fourth with a solo homer. Money hit a solo blast of his own an inning later. Bill Champion went the distance on the mound for the 4-2 win.

Money came right back on Saturday afternoon with two more hits. Yount got two hits and three walks in his five plate appearances. In the bottom of the eighth, with the score tied 3-3, second baseman Pedro Garcia doubled and was bunted over to third. With one out, Money’s slow roller on the infield was enough to get the run home. The 4-3 lead stood up for the win.

After two tense games, the home fans got to watch a rout on Sunday. Lezcano ripped four hits, while Scott added three more, leading the way to an 11-4 win. The sweep of New York was the highlight of a 19-11 start that had the Brewers four games up in the AL East.

Six losses in seven games going into Memorial Day gave away the lead and Boston moved into first place. But Milwaukee was still just a half-game out as we moved into the early part of summer.

The Brewers stabilized in June. They won three of five games from the Oakland A’s, the three-time defending World Series champion who were heading back to the playoffs in 1975. By June 29, Milwaukee’s record was 39-34. They were in third place, chasing Boston and New York. But the deficit was only 2 ½ games and both rivals were coming to town.

The Yankees came in first for a two-game set on Monday and Tuesday. The Brewers let a 3-2 lead get away in the top of the ninth and fell behind 4-3. Disappointment was looming when Lezcano singled in the bottom of the ninth. Then backup outfielder Bobby Darwin hit a walkoff two-run shot and Milwaukee won 5-4. The following night, Money had two hits, Scott had three, while Hegan added two hits of his own and drove in two runs. The Brewers won 6-3.

The Red Sox rolled in for a twilight doubleheader on Wednesday. An old-school concept, this was where the first game started at 5:30 or 6 PM and there was just a twenty-minute break between games. Castro pitched the early game and struggled, losing 6-3. The Brewers trailed the nightcap 3-1 going into the bottom of the fifth. Garcia tied it with a two-run homer. Three consecutive singles in the sixth inning gave Milwaukee the lead. Broberg closed out the 4-3 win.

One more thriller went down in Thursday’s finale. Trailing 2-1 in the ninth, Thomas tied the game with an RBI double. In the bottom of the 10th, Yount worked a walk. Bevacqua singled. When Boston centerfielder Fred Lynn made an error, Yount kept running and scored the winning run.

In jam-packed run of five games in four days against the division’s best, the Brewers had gone 4-1 and pulled into a tie for first. Even though they slumped going into the All-Star break, losing seven of ten and settling back into third place, there was still reason for hope. Milwaukee was 46-42, 4 ½ games out and the promise of pennant race excitement was alive.

That excitement collapsed with extraordinary speed. Most of the Brewer struggles in the first half had been against the AL West and that continued in late July, when they lost of six of nine. Baltimore was also starting to get themselves going and would make a run at another division title before falling short of Boston. The Orioles beat the Brewers four times in a five-game series.

Milwaukee was suddenly in an 11-game hole. Boston was pulling away. The Brewers then lost 23 of 30 games in August. September wasn’t any better. By season’s end, they had actually regressed, finishing a woeful 68-94.

Crandall was replaced with Alex Grammas, but the second half collapse of 1975 wasn’t just a one-off thing. The Brewers stayed in the low 60s for wins in both 1976 and 1977 under Grammas. Not until 1978, with an infusion of more talent from the farm system and free agency, and a new manager in George Bamberger, did Milwaukee give its great fan base a winning team.

1975 MLB Season: One Dynasty Ends & Another Begins

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The 1975 MLB season was a year where mostly traditional teams won division titles and advanced to postseason play. But it was also a transitional year, in which October saw one dynasty end and a new one begin.

The Cincinnati Reds won their fourth NL West title and third National League pennant since 1970, but the previous years had seen the players who comprised the famed “Big Red Machine” come up short in their pursuit of a World Series title. This year’s Cincinnati team was the best yet, with MVP second baseman Joe Morgan leading the way to a 108-win campaign.

Meanwhile, the Oakland A’s took home their fifth straight AL West title, and they had no such hangups over their October legacy. The A’s won the World Series each of the previous three seasons and with 98 wins and the top record in the AL.

Pittsburgh was home to another steady power in the major league baseball world of the early 1970s. The Pirates won the World Series in 1971, and had reached the League Championship Series in 1970, 1972 and 1974. Pittsburgh went back to postseason play, winning the NL East with 92 wins.

If you wanted a postseason with all four powers of the early 1970s—teams that had multiple division titles since the MLB expansion of 1969 and subsequent split of league into two divisions—the Baltimore Orioles would have rounded out the quartet. They produced the Cy Young Award winner in Jim Palmer and another good team in 1975. But the Orioles came up just short in the AL East.

The odd sock in the playoffs was the Boston Red Sox, who got an MVP year from rookie centerfielder Fred Lynn, and they held off the Orioles down the stretch to win the AL East.

Boston, after first preventing an all-1970s power showdown in the postseason, then prevented an Oakland-Cincinnati World Series battle. The A’s dynasty was not taken down by the Big Red Machine, but the Red Sox of Lynn and Luis Tiant, as the Red Sox swept the ALCS in three straight.

Cincinnati met Pittsburgh for the third time in NLCS play, and for the third time the Reds won, also bringing it home in three straight (the LCS did not become best-of-seven until 1985).

The Red Sox might have been spoiling all these showdowns of powerhouses, but they made sure to combine with the Reds to give baseball one of its all-time great World Series. It went the full seven games, five of which were complete nail-biters. Cincinnati finally got off the monkey off their back in the ninth of Game 7 and claimed their first World Series title in 35 years.

The complete stories of the 1975 MLB season’s five most significant teams and game-by-game narratives of both League Championship Series matchups and the classic World Series battle are all compiled together and available for download at Amazon. 

 

1975 Cincinnati Reds: The Year The Big Red Machine Broke Through

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The great baseball town of Cincinnati had seen their team knock on the door repeatedly in the first part of the 1970s. The Big Red Machine came together and won division titles in 1970, 1972 and 1973. They won pennants in the first two of those years. But a particularly aggravating loss in the ’73 NLCS, followed by finishing second to the Los Angeles Dodgers in the old NL West, had given Cincinnati the “can’t win the big one” tag. The city’s first World Series title since 1940 was still missing. The 1975 Cincinnati Reds rectified the omission with an extraordinary regular season and then winning one of the greatest Fall Classics ever played.

Future Hall of Famers dotted the Cincinnati lineup—Joe Morgan at second base, Tony Perez at first base and Johnny Bench at catcher. And third baseman Pete Rose did, of course, have a Hall of Fame career as baseball’s all-time career hits leader, but is barred from Cooperstown for gambling on baseball.

Morgan had an MVP year in 1975, posting a stat line of .466 on-base percentage/.508 slugging percentage and stealing 67 bases. Bench hit 28 home runs and had 110 RBIs, while Perez had 20/109. Rose’s OBP was .406.

Nor was the Cincinnati lineup top-heavy. Ken Griffey played rightfield and had a .391 OBP and great speed on the basepaths. George Foster, who would eventually win consecutive NL MVP awards in 1977-78 was coming into his own and hit 23 home runs in 1975. Cesar Geronimo in centerfield and Dave Concepion at shortstop weren’t big offensive threats, but each could run and each was a superior defender at a position where that was the most important quality.

The Big Red Machine wasn’t known for its pitching, and lacked a clear ace, but they had good staff balance. Gary Nolan won 15 games with 3.16 ERA. Jack Billingham won 15 more at 4.11. Don Gullett, the 24-year-old who was seen to have a bright future and he went 15-4 with a 2.42 ERA.

It was depth though, that ultimately characterized the Cincy pitching staff in 1975. In an era when starting pitchers routinely piled up season-long workloads of 250-plus innings, the Reds’ numbers look more like our age today, with Nolan topping the staff at 210 and Billingham being the only other arm to clear 200.

The bullpen made up for it. Pedro Borbon took on a big workload, threw 125 innings and posted a 2.95 ERA. Clay Carroll and Will McEnaney were similarly effective and Rawly Eastwick saved 22 games, a fairly high total in an era when the complete game was still expected from starters.

Cincinnati’s pitchers collectively finished third in the National League in ERA. That was more than enough for an offense that dominated the league. The Reds not only led the NL in runs scored, but the margin between them and #2 was greater than the margin of the offenses ranking 2 thru 9.

 The Dodgers came to Riverfront Stadium to start the season. The fans at Monday afternoon’s opener got their money’s worth–14 innings of baseball. Gullett pitched into the 10th. The Reds bullpen matched up with L.A. reliever Mike Marshall, who had won the Cy Young Award and kept it a 1-1 game for five innings while Marshall pitched. He was out by the 14th when Cincinnati started a soft rally. 

Concepion beat out an infield hit, then took second on a passed ball. After a walk to Geronimo, a sacrifice bunt set up the Reds with runners on second and third and one out. An infield ground ball resulted in Concepcion being cut down at the plate. With two outs, another infield hit, this one from Foster, brought in Geronimo with the winning run. 

After a day off, more walkoff drama awaited on Wednesday. Cincinnati trailed 3-0 after five, but Carroll and Borbon held the line out of the bullpen. It was 3-2 by the bottom of the ninth. That’s when Griffey led off with a triple, Darrell Chaney tied with a base hit, and after a sac bunt, Concepion won it with an RBI single. 

Had enough excitement? Not so fast. The Reds dug themselves an early 5-0 hole on Thursday night. In the bottom of the fourth, Foster led off with a home run. That triggered a five-run rally to tie it. At 6-6 in the bottom of the eighth, two hit batsman set up Perez for a two-out RBI double and a 7-6 win. 

As dramatic and satisfying as it was to sweep your nemesis to start the season, it still didn’t take long for Cincinnati to give it back. They went west and lost six of seven–that includes dropping four straight to the Dodgers, two of them in walkoff fashion. A 4-6 trip to the East Coast in early May had the Reds 5 ½ back. They didn’t get over .500 for good until May 21. On Memorial Day, Cincinnati was 24-20, and 3 ½ games behind Los Angeles. 

It bears reminding younger readers that prior to 1994, there were no wild-card berths in baseball. You had to win your division to reach the postseason. In this era prior to the creation of the NL Central, there was only an East and West in each league–winning the division meant a ticket straight into the League Championship Series. 

The early part of summer was when this edition of the Big Red Machine became what they are remembered for. They swept Montreal out of the holiday weekend, and swept Chicago in the early part of June, to nudge into first place. After dropping a couple games at home to Pittsburgh, the Reds held a narrow half-game lead on June 11. 

They did not lose a series between then and the All-Star break. Over that stretch, Cincinnati went a torrid 27-5. While L.A. did not play particularly well, the Dodgers still had to feel like someone had clocked them with a haymaker. The Reds’ record at the break was a stunning 61-29 and their NL West lead was a massive 12 ½ games.

The margin was still 12 ½ on July 25. The Reds and Dodgers had 11 head-to-head games remaining and seven of them would take place over these next two weekends. Cincinnati simply needed to hold serve to effectively put this race to bed. 

A Friday doubleheader at Riverfront started the sequence. Los Angeles took the opener 4-3 and had Cincy in a 3-1 hole in the seventh inning of the nightcap. In the bottom of that inning, Marv Rettenmund singled. Bill Plummer walked. Griffey’s base hit cut the lead to 3-2. Then Rose showed some rare power–a three-run blast to right. Cincinnati won 6-3. 

Rose kept rolling on Saturday afternoon with a four-hit day to key a 5-3 win behind Billingham. The Reds lost the Sunday finale in another 5-3 decision, but splitting this four-game set was more than enough. 

The following weekend in Los Angeles, the Cincy bullpen coughed up a 3-0 lead on Friday night and Borbon ultimately lost in extra innings, 5-3. But on Saturday night, the Carrolls (second-year starter Tom, along with Clay–no relation) took over. They combined on a shutout. Foster’s solo blast was the only run in a 1-0 win. On Sunday, it was Pat Darcy and Eastwick combining on a gem while Concepcion homered. The final was 3-1. 

It was early August, and the race was all but over. By Labor Day, Cincinnati was 90-45, and the lead had ballooned to 18 ½ games. They finished the year 108-54. It was enough to clear the field in the NL West by twenty games, and it was ten games better than anyone else in baseball.

October glory was finally ahead for Cincinnati. They continued their dominance of the National League with a three-game sweep of the Pittsburgh Pirates in the NLCS (League Championship Series play was best-of-five from 1969-84).

Then the World Series against the Boston Red Sox would be one of the most memorable ever played. It went the full seven games, five of which were nail-biters. That includes an epic Game 6 in which the Reds got close enough to taste the title before it was temporarily denied them. And it includes Cincinnati ultimately winning the Series in the ninth inning of the decisive game.