Dave Goltz

Dave Goltz was a #1 type pitcher for the Twins for several years before leaving as a free agent after the 1979 season (one of Calvin Griffith's ignominious stable of star players that he let go after the advent of free agency. Calvin made the Pohlads look like George Steinbrenner, the free spending owner of the Yankees.

Notably Goltz carried the pitching staff of the 1977 Twins, who arguably only had 2 decent starters. That seems to be one reason that a team with a poor pitching staff went 84-78, allowing Rod Carew to win the MVP award on a 4th place team in a 7 team division, the AL West. The other was the very hard hitting offense.

For the year, Goltz threw 303 innings. allowing only 284 hits, and registering a 3.36 ERA with a 20-11 record. [Baseball Reference] 1977 was the 2nd straight year that Goltz turned in a 3.36 ERA!

He broke that streak in a big way in 1978 (Carew’s last year as a Twin and the year my brother and I travelled from Toledo to the Twin Cities for a series). In 1978, Dave Goltz went 15-10 with a 2.49 ERA. That was the year when the Twins were a shell of the 1977 team as Calvin let several players walk, not the least, both Lyman Bostock and Larry Hisle. So, the Twins put out pretty much a AAAA team that year with newcomers Bombo Rivera, Hosken Powell and Willie Norwood.

With my MacBook Air calculator and Baseball Reference, I determined that Goltz had a cumulative 3.48 ERA for his Twins years. His out pitch was the knuckle-curve as Herb Carneal reminded me thousands of times! Since Goltz had an over 4 ERA in his last year with the Twins and in his seasons with the Dodgers and finishing with the Angels, obviously his stuff declined but I wonder if that knuckle curve stopped knuckling and curving as much as before.

Greg Allen

Dave Goltz finished 6th in the Cy Young award voting in 1977.