MINNEAPOLIS -- Twins pitcher Phil Hughes could have achieved two big milestones in Wednesday's start against Arizona. Hughes was poised to set the single-season mark for the best strikeout-to-walk ratio in baseball history. He was also destined to make a cool $500,000 if he went 8 1/3 innings to achieve a bonus in his contract of 210 innings for the season.
Thanks to the rain, Hughes had to settle for just one of the two -- and it wasn't the one that filled his wallet.
After Hughes finished a scoreless eighth inning, the game between the Twins and Diamondbacks was delayed for more than an hour. Hughes needed to record just one more out to trigger the bonus in his contract. But he didn't come back after the delay to finish out Minnesota's 2-1 victory, and now he'll miss out on half a million dollars.
Sure, Hughes is making $8 million this year as part of a three-year, $24 million deal he signed with the Twins before this season, but $500,000 is still a good chunk of change. After Wednesday's win, though, Hughes said all the right things about coming so close to the bonus.
"I was very aware of it, but some things just aren't meant to be," Hughes said. "That's the case this time. I'm very proud of my season regardless of that."
Hughes needed 96 pitches to get through eight innings as he struck out five and scattered five hits. If not for the lengthy rain delay, manager Ron Gardenhire said he would have put Hughes back out for the ninth.
But once Hughes and the Twins sat on the bench for an hour, there was no chance he was going back out, even with a half a million dollars on the line.
"He was going back out, but Mother Nature said no," Gardenhire said.
Regardless of his contract bonus, Hughes did set the best strikeout-to-walk ratio in a single season in baseball history. In his 209 2/3 innings, Hughes struck out 186 batters and walked just 16 for a K/BB ratio of 11.63. That tops the previous record of 11.0 set by Bret Saberhagen in 1994.
Hughes knew he stood in relation to that mark, nothing that it was brought to his attention about four or five starts ago. His five strikeouts and zero walks Wednesday solidified his place at the top of that impressive list.
"It was certainly something I thought about," Hughes said. "I've always taken a lot of pride in throwing a lot of strikes and not walking guys. Finishing that out today is a pretty cool way to do it. It's something I'm very proud of and you look back at those names and it's a pretty elite group."
According to Baseball-Reference.com, Hughes is the only major-league player in the modern era (since 1901) to throw 200 or more innings and walk 16 or fewer batters. In fact, the last big-league pitcher to do it was Denny Driscoll way back in 1882.
For all the attention that was given to Hughes' contract bonus, the strikeout-to-walk ratio he ended his season with deserved plenty of talk, too.
"Incredible. A lot of things are amazing in what he's done, and that's probably the most unique. That's unbelievable. You just don't see things like that," Gardenhire said. "Sixteen walks in 200-plus innings or whatever it is, that's incredible. And going again today and just pounding the strike zone, he's done it against all the teams in baseball that we faced."
Gardenhire made it clear after the game that Hughes' season was done; he won't use Hughes out of the bullpen in Detroit this weekend, even to get that one final out he needs.
Twins general manager Terry Ryan was asked earlier this week if he'd ever had a scenario in which a player came very close to reaching a contract bonus but fell short, yet the team still gave it to him anyway.
His answer was simple.
"No," Ryan said. "If a person earns them, he gets it."
Hughes didn't seem terribly concerned with it after the game, knowing full well what his contract stated. Despite the impressive season he's had -- he won 16 games and posted a 3.52 ERA in 32 starts -- he didn't reach the 210 innings needed for the bonus.
"It wasn't 209 2/3. It was 210," Hughes said. "That's the way it goes sometimes. I have a lot of other things to hang my hat on this season, and that's not one of them."
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