2011 Twins Game Logs

Game 54: Twins at Tigers

197 Comments

Didn't see one up, so have at it.

TWINS (17-36)

1. Denard Span, CF
2. Alexi Casilla, SS
3. Justin Morneau, 1B
4. Michael Cuddyer, 2B
5. Jim Thome, DH
6. Danny Valencia, 3B
7. Delmon Young, LF
8. Jason Repko, RF
9. Drew Butera, C

Starting pitcher: RH Scott Baker (2-3, 3.65 ERA)

TIGERS (28-26)

1. Don Kelly, LF
2. Ramon Santiago, 2B
3. Brennan Boesch, RF
4. Miguel Cabrera, 1B
5. Victor Martinez, DH
6. Andy Dirks, CF
7. Jhonny Peralta, SS
8. Alex Avila, C
9. Brandon Inge, 3B

Starting pitcher: RH Rick Porcello (4-2, 3.08 ERA)

197 thoughts on “Game 54: Twins at Tigers”

      1. I have a feeling wattsy's hitting the bottle hard again, and I have an even surer feeling that I'll be following suit.

        Snoqualmie IIPA tonight. It's a good time.

            1. I'm a big fan as well, in this heat I can't think of a better refreshment + buzz. To spookie's point I was just recalling the first g n t I had to dr. chop. I remember feeling like I had scrubbed the inside of my mouth with pinesol, but, as with beer, I've discovered that gin is an acquired taste.

                1. I can't stand the taste of beer (cowers under desk, waves white flag, hides women and children), but juniper berries are fine by me.

                    1. Indeed. Perhaps this could be your gateway brew?? (not my cuppa, but since you like juniper, bhiggum)

                    2. Hmm, I should take a look at that as well, as gin is something I am fond of.

                    4. I've been thinking of trying a more 'refined' beer than the ones that I tried in college, but I'm scared I won't be able to tell if it's cold or not.

        2. I have a feeling wattsy's hitting the bottle hard again
          sad thing is I dont drink

    2. Baker is the June player on my Twins calendar.

      So that has to mean something, right?

  2. I'm not ready to quit on Dick'n'Bert, but jesus h. the hating on baker is crazy.

    ps, bert just totally said that Baker is one of the staff aces.......................

    1. I decided last week to give up on them. I'll probably come back because I'll tire of the total lack of Twins knowledge (rather than the near-total lack of Twins knowledge displayed by the Twins booth) but I'm not ready yet.

      On the downside, this Tiger booth is astoundingly shitty. The PBP guy's explanation for the 2011 Twins is "Well, it's not a new building anymore so maybe they don't have the edge they did last year." The color guy, instead of punching him square in the face, said "Good point."

      1. I can't wait for science to turn the tens of thousands of hours of Vin Scully recordings into Robo-Scully, programmable for your favorite hometown team. Plugged into PitchF/X and HitF/X, Robo-Scully will soon make human announcers obsolete.

  3. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, I balls seeing Jim Thome in a Twins uni.

    2. I suppose that we could rearrange the words of your LTE for comic relief, but this is a family site.

          1. Ugh. Yeah.

            You'd think I wouldn't have to be inundated by that guy's work in the electronics business, but he has countless CD covers.

        2. Funny, stick, I just applied to a job bearing that dude's name.

          ps. the institution I just left published a piece of his and everyone involved says the same thing ---> dude is a class act.

  18. Don't look now, boys, but barring a miracle of biblical proportions, the locals will drop to 20 games under .500 by day's end. Eff me.

      1. I know they finished exactly 20 games under in 1986. The following season turned out OK.

  21. Why can every scrub/4th outfielder/utility infielder on every team hit .300+ against the Twins? I'm looking at you, Don Kelly.

    1. This is a good question this far into the season. They're only about 2 wins over their pythag, so they haven't been out-performing their run differential by much.

      On the other hand, they are 8th in the AL in hitter fWAR and 8th in the AL in pitcher fWAR. So I'd guess they've been run-lucky.

      They've been hitting

      .296/.373/.431 w/RISP
      .243/.313/.416 with none on.
      .257/.326/.404 overall

      The 2008 Twins are probably a good practical limit on how big you can expect that split to be:

      .305/.380/.446 w/RISP
      .263/.317/.379 with none on
      .279/.340/.408 overall

      So Cleveland's probably going to have to hit better to keep this up, but I'm not sure one way or another how likely that is. Often it seems that depth is what distinguishes teams in June/July, and I don't really know what Cleveland has to supplement their 25-man roster.

      I guess I'm still pretty skeptical overall, given their WAR totals. Being 13 games over .500 is a nice spot to start from. In my sense of what it means to be "on pace" a win total, I'd say it puts them on pace for 87-88 wins.

      On the flip side, the Twins are on pace for a 71-91 season by that figuring, with plenty of downside potential, apparently.

      1. So, they're not this good, but there's a real chance they've been so good that it won't matter.

        Since the Twins are terrible, I'm reduced to hoping that the White Sox and Cabrera don't make the playoffs. So far, so good.

        1. Right. Having wins in the bank is a beautiful thing. Having losses in the bank on the other hand...

        2. The best analogy might be with all those low-seeded NCAA teams that manage to get a big lead at halftime, but you know they aren't really that much better than the other team, so it inevitably winds up being a close game at the end. Detroit's only 5 games back and with the mind-numbingly boring division schedule, that's not as hard to make up as it used to be.

          1. The booth mentioned that the Tigers and Indians have "a lot" of games left to play, so maybe Cabrera will go to the playoffs yet. Sigh.

            I've never been a college sports guy, but I watch the tournament for the whole sudden-death aspect of it, and I never tire of watching bad teams come out to huge leads, knowing that most of the time it'll dissipate and become a game of survival.

            1. Huh, I've actually gotten kind of bored with how that dynamic works in the NCAA tournament. I can only tolerate hearing Cinderella so often.

              1. Probably doesn't help that this past year's was possibly the worst tourney ever. (In my opinion, anyway.)

                1. I didn't even watch it, so it didn't have an effect on me. Doing brackets actually kind of ruined it for me. On a personal level, I like the underdog stories, but I'm also very competitive, so if I do brackets, I want to win, which means mostly hoping that the underdogs don't win. At which point, my whole rooting interest in the tournament seems like a big hedge, which isn't very exciting.

                  Having ditched brackets a couple years back, I'm still pretty disillusioned. I am interested when the Gophers are in it, but that's about it. I think I have enough teams that I actively root for that it's tough for me to set aside time for contests where I don't have a natural rooting interest.

                  1. I also did not watch most of it, and I'm not sure if I'll even continue doing brackets. This year's tournament really displayed just how dumb, basketball IQ-wise, today's NCAA players are.

              2. I'm less interested these days, now that a smaller percentage of great players even bother with college. Once upon a time, though, this was why I watched the tournament.

                I still play the brackets, but I take a cursory glance at the scores most of the time unless my three teams - all perennial disappointments - are playing.

                1. I think I understand why the NBA doesn't embrace it, but if they wanted too, it would be so, so easy for them to make the D-League so, so much better than NCAA ball. Start with 30 teams. Hold about 5 spots on each team for top prospects, pay them about $250K/year (which the NCAA can't come close to matching within their rules.) The other 7 or so spots go to those second-round draft picks that can't really stick on an NBA roster (Euros and decent but not spectacular college guys.) Maybe pay them an average of $75K/year. That's $53M total in salary, which you could get for about what, 1/30th of the league's total current payroll? And they could probably pay less than that and still get most of the top talent out of college.

                  In a narrow sense, it would be a money loser. It's unlikely that you'd cover salaries and operating expenses on ticket sales and TV deals. But in a global sense, it just seems to make so much sense to me. The talent you could get on any given team would be a lot better than any given college team right now, yet the teams wouldn't be as good as NBA teams. It seems like it'd be the perfect place to develop draft picks before putting them in front of your paying customers.

                  1. It would probably be a money pit, but you're also paying the players very, very well. Halve it and it still beats what baseball pays.

  25. The Tigers booth is arguing the question of bunts, with the color guy (definitely a former player, but they refuse to ever say their damned names) strongly in favor of every type of sacrifice. Because the Tigers won an 8-7 game last night with a sacrifice to go ahead, that one game in history is proof that the sacrifice is always the right play.

      2. Twitter doesn't seem to know, so it's probably still a mystery. Hopefully it's more precautionary than anything. His career home run total might be about the only positive story the Twins can generate for a while.

            1. I would enjoy watching Gardy break the single season record, but of course a high total would immediately arouse suspicion of PEDs. Pugnaciousness enhancing drugs.

  27. My internet connection is a lil' slow tonight which leaves me with the radio feed on my cell phone. Man, I would totally take Dick n' Bert over any Dazzle booth.

    1. And just as Dazzle was about to comment on Billy Beane for telling Kurt Suzuki to not block the plate we come up on a third out. I was really eager to hear what he had to say.

      1. If he does still comment, do let us know. I'm just not angry enough tonight.

    2. Man, I wouldn't.

      My Twins booth rankings:
      1. Dazzle with any non-Gordo PBP guy (Attebury, Robinson, Kurtz)
      2. Dazzle with Gordo
      3. Dickenbert
      4. Dazzle with Morris and any PBP guy
      5. Dazzle with Morris

          1. Actually I'd be very interested to hear a combination of, say, Attebury and Robinson, if whomever decides these things can get over the supposed need to have one or more ex-players in there.

            1. My experience with Robinson is certainly an SSS, but man, he grates on me. But, yes, I'd like to see what he does alongside a non-former player. He seems like such a follower, afraid to refute anything said by his boothmate.

                2. Is there any way to say "fisted" without saying it too often?

                  I realize sports commentators don't have their ears to the ground, but man, their producers need to get in their ears every now and then...

            2. I was thinking that too, but I'm not sure how they'd work together. But it has to be better than Dazz + 1.

              I think I've seen comments from a lot of people who dislike Attebury. I don't know why? He's great. Apparently they don't want to know what happens in the game?

              1. If you've seen comments like that, it hasn't been here. I wish his voice was a little more radio-ish, but he's our best man in the booth. I too am not sold on Robinson.

                And guys, it's AtteBERRY.

            3. Attebury and Robinson get my vote, as long as the latter tones down his descriptive terminology.

        2. I have to agree, while adding that nothing there deserves to be called "number one."

          but a LOT of Number 2....

  32. Someone needs to quickly explain how "In Play, Run(s)" can be displayed with Butera up and a guy not on third base.

      1. Does that automatically make Porcello the worst pitcher ever, or is it the guy that gave up the HR to Tyner?

  36. So this surprises me somewhat:

    .257/.310/.356 -- 2010 AL SS
    .255/.318/.336 -- Alexi Casilla's rest-of-season ZiPS projection
    .247/.304/.326 -- Casilla, career

    Shortstops are pretty terrible at hitting these days. Although a second look suggests that perhaps 2010 was an aberration.

    .266/.325/.387 -- 2011 AL SS
    .257/.310/.356 -- 2010 AL SS
    .272/.326/.388 -- 2009 AL SS
    .274/.332/.410 -- 2005 AL SS
    .277/.343/.424 -- 2000 AL SS

      1. Of course you can blame Jeter. If it weren't for him, A-Rod would still be a SS.

  39. I am pretty sure Al should be using the Weird Al Yankovic song "Albuquerque" as his entrance music.

    2. You get the best player in the deal-- well at least according to 2011 yahoo rankings.

    1. Shoot, as a reliever who can actually get someone out, he can have mine too.

      1. They don't hit it as far either...but not by much. Those few mph made all the difference!

  48. Chuck James doesn't have a reflection. There is only one Chuck James.

    There used to be a street named after Chuck James, but it was changed because nobody crosses Chuck James and lives.

        1. I noticed that he asked for a new ball after going 2-0. Yeah, that must be the problem--the ball.

    1. He is a switch hitter, but yeah, that strikes me as a particularly useless pinch hitting assignment.

    3. We seriously have to question anyone pinch hitting for Butera? Anyone is better, plus Tolbert has better speed, so is a decent leadoff option and no one would have to pinch run for him once on base even though he isn't even the tying run.

    1. I imagine if Valencia made that bunt, Gardenhire would remove him from the 40 man roster on the spot. Curious how he'll handle this one in the media.

      1. I'm sure it was a "good idea that just didn't work out" or some such nonsense.

      3. I doubt much of anything will come of it considering how often Carlos Gomez did it.

        1. I think Casilla should have run down the first base line and slid head first into first after the ball went foul.

  56. Dazz: "Alexi Casilla is one of the better hitters on the Twins right now."

    Me: Just shoot me.

    1. I'm thinking maybe he's biased because of Casilla's steroid-infused performance from the other night.

      1. This was a talking point prior to that. They were saying he had gone "on a streak" and was now "hitting over .200." You'd think Casilla was Jose Bautista or something.

  60. I don't know what Cuddy thought he was gonna get there, but he didn't get it.

Comments are closed.