2011 Twins Game Logs

2011 Game Logs Game 71: Minnesota @ San Francisco Baseball Giants

325 Comments

Carl Pavano

@

Madison Bumgarner

Are we having fun yet?

No matter what arbitrary end points you chose the Minnesota Twins have been playing pretty good baseball as of late. They have won 6 in a row-- 9 of 10--  14 of 16-- well, if you go back much further than June 1st it doesn't look too good but you get my point. The Minnesota Twins are starting to do what many predicted them to do at the start of the season, be a winning team with aspirations of a division title.  This isn't new information to anyone here, of course.

If the Twins do the unexpected and climb back from from 16 or so games back from the division lead to claim the AL Central title there is going to be a ton of revisionist history claiming this team got hot once star players like Joe Mauer, Jason Kubel, Jim Thome, Tsuyoshi Nishioka,  Glen Perkins (heh), Justin Morneau, Denard Span, Kevin Slowey, and Joe Nathan all returned to the line up from injury. Only then did this team start to live up to its expectations.  I am just here to remind everyone the following players are the ones who trimmed the division lead down to 7.5:

Ben Revere, Rene Tosoni, Brian Dinkelman, Matt Tolbert, Rene Rivera, Drew Butera, Luke Hughes, Jason Repko, Trevor Plouffe!, Anthony Sleestak, Phil Dumatrait, Chuck James, Eric Hacker, and well, not so much Jim Hoey.

Just remember Brian Dinkelman when Reusse complains on the radio in September saying this team had no chance until their players got healthy. Remember Rene Tosoni when Souhan says the Twins would have won the division by 15 games if Joe Mauer wasn't such a wuss. Remember Chuck James when the Twins prepare to face the Yankees in the first round of the playoffs, again.

Summer starts today and the Twins are looking good.

I don't know about you but this is starting to get fun.

325 thoughts on “2011 Game Logs Game 71: Minnesota @ San Francisco Baseball Giants”

  1. Tonight's game should be on mlb network for out of towners.

  2. While I don't dispute your point, I think the lion's share of credit for the winning streak goes to Baker, Blackie, Frankie, Pavanostache, and the Dunce. The five starting pitchers have saved the bullpen and kept the scores close enough for Drew Butera walk-off hits. Other than a few games (which, to your point, were capably pitched by Anthony S.), the plan has worked. No need for Slowey or Gibson to fill someone's spot in the rotation, in contrast to the hitters and bullpen.

    1. You are right, the pitching as been huge, no doubt about it. Then again, arbitrary end points and all, but the Twins have been averaging 4.4 runs per game since June 1st. That would put them 9th in the league (extended over a full season), hardly anything to sneeze at.

      1. I think Gleeman addressed this point recently. Ginormous improvement by the pitching, good improvement by the offense. When you are allowing only 2.5 runs per game, you are gonna win a lot of games.

  3. Not the free game of the day. Boo. The local broadcast affiliate only does the rare game, so I may not get to see any of these. Boo.

  5. Just got back from a great run in time to shower up and watch the game with you all. I've taken about 5 minutes off of my 5 mile time in the past month!

  6. Crap, I am getting Dodgers on mlb network. I thought Bud Selig contracted them or something.

    1. You must have scouting duty tonight. Don't we play the Dodgers after this series?

      1. That would make sense, considering how close they are, but nope. Not until after the Milwaukee series (in Milwaukee) do the Twins play the Dodgers at home.

        1. Well, that would be after this series, though I am loth to invoke technicalities.

  7. Nice preview, First. But didn't those guys help dig the hole, too? But you are spot on that it sure is fun to watch Twins baseball again.

    1. Chuck James had nothing to do with any hole-digging!
      (And I don't think Revere had much to do with it either.)

    1. There was no World Series last year. The playoffs ended immediately after the Twins were eliminated.

  11. My mlb.tv is really lagging tonight. This is making me really P.O.'ed. I get maybe two good weeks of internet per week. It might be time to switch providers.

      1. Hey, it is a late start and the boy has been asleep for 2.5 hours. Dad got thirsty.

  33. Ah, so this is why they make pitchers bat in the National League. So you can only bat around three times in an inning.

  42. I bet Giants fans are calling Madison by the name of BUMMMMMMMMgarner tonight.

  45. If this happened in MLB The Show and I was the Giants, I would have hit reset by now.

  53. Okay, this is going to be nit picking, but Casilla sure looked safe getting back to the bag. And the ump was nary too fast with the call. You could almost see the wheels turning in his head, a dinner reservation he doesn't want to miss...

  55. Near as I can tell, this is the first time in Plax Index history that any pitcher managed to give up 5 doubles while recording at most one out.

    1. I bet Jayson Stark is going to have like four paragraphs dedicated to this game inning in his next column.

      1. For that matter, Play Index can't find any pitchers who have given up 9 hits while recording fewer than two outs.

        The Twins just had some historic ownage there.

  57. Ok... I was logged on at the beginning of the game for the first time all year. Then, I totally forgot I was at my laptop and just stared in awe at the carnage on the TV screen. What a start!

  59. Poll: Which number will be greater?

    Number of strikeouts by Pavano.
    Number of strikeouts of Pavano.

  63. Yickit is the proud owner of Mr. Bumgarner in the half-bakef crap fantasy league.

    1. I hope he smartly benched him tonight, know he was going against an offensive powerhouse.

  64. evening, all. i turned on mlb.tv in the middle of the first, saw the score, and thought: yeah, i'm gonna have to go back and watch this.

    also, great write-up, hitman.

  66. they're eyeing random chicks on the giants feed. i think they're bored with the game.

    2. I would like to think that the WGOM has a much higher frequency of Kids in the Hall references than most. At least for baseball sites.

  75. Dazz: "as well, on a clear day you can see Oakland."

    me: You say that like it's a good thing.

  76. Giants feed trivia: Who holds the record for homers given up in a single season?

    It's pretty hilarious how often this comes up on opposing feeds.

    2. I think it was the first question in this year's BBTN trivia calendar. It might have asked the year instead though.

  77. From my June 7th gamelog:

    Assuming the Twins continue winning games at the rate they have in their past 5 games for the next 12 games , they will bring their winning streak to 17 consecutive games. Minnesota then, coupled with every other team losing each of its games other than when they play each other (Detroit wins two of three at home against Cleveland next week), will be playing for sole possession of first place on Tuesday, June 21st, the first day of summer, against the San Francisco Giants. It will be a fitting passing of the guard when the Twins then sweep the defending World Champion Giants, extending their winning streak to 20 games.

    What a great first day of summer it will be.

    I was a lot closer than most people expected, I bet.

      1. Hit Man was just riding my coattails. From June 6:

        The Arizona Diamondbacks are 13-4 since May 20, when they began a three-game sweep of our boys (and 18-5 back to May 14. I just wanted to point that out, because through April, the Snakes were 28th in MLB in FIP (just ahead of the Twins) and 26th in pitching WAR (the Twins were dead last). Now Arizona is in the hunt in the NL West, a half-game back of SF, thanks to much improved pitching (they were middle-of-the-pack in FIP, xFIP and pitching WAR in May).

        The Twins ride into Cleveland on the wings of a four-game sweep of the Landed Gentlemen. Not exactly the 1927 Yankees there, but a feel-good weekend nonetheless. But if the Twins are going to make a move, now is the time to get it started, with a series win against the surprise division leaders.

  78. Bill Hall was a sweet pickup for the Giants when Freddy Sanchez went down with the shoulder injury.

    1. I've worked for companies in both Oakland and San Francisco. The time spent in Oakland never comes up in any stories.

        1. My buddy has a wildly entertaining story about getting mugged in Oakland!

          1. I will say there is good beer to be had in Oakland. Pacific Coast Brewing and Linden Street, for two.

            1. Actually, I did drink way too much with my Dad (who also happened to be travelling to Oakland) at PCB once. There, a memorable, awesome Oakland memory!

  83. bS, you weren't kidding about this Giants feed. They've gotten everything right that they've said about the Twins, and they aren't even an AL announce team. In fact, it sounds like they understand the Twins as well as than the Twins announcers do.

      1. I've enjoyed both the Giants radio and TV feeds whenever I've tuned in while travelling.

        1. Kuiper is mostly radio, I think. Miller and Krukow is the main TV team. Kuiper is pretty good, too.

        2. It's been mentioned around here before, but Kuiper and Krukow's work in the MVP series is probably the only time I've ever enjoyed announcers in video games.

          1. Dude, play The Show.

            Wasn't Harold freaking Reynolds in the MVP series? Or was that a few years ago in The Show? Either way, it was a bummer, and it was before the games had sliders to silence an announcer.

            1. This might be because I don't listen to British people all the time and therefore get suckered by the accents, but I also love Martin Tyler and Andy Gray in the FIFA games.

              1. Yes! Agreed with all of that. I also don't know the ins and outs of soccer (or anything, screenwriting and acting excepted) as well as I know baseball, so it's hard for me to criticize anything.

  84. C'mon Twins, we need some insurance runs. I don't trust this bullpen with an 8 run lead.

      1. I'll start trusting them when Burnett stops pitching in high leverage situations.

    2. Do we even have a bullpen anymore? I thought all of our starters threw CG's.

  86. How many times do you see your second baseman make an outstanding play and then the opposing team's shortstop show him up?

  87. Dazzle: Tejada still playing even though they are down 8-0.
    Hitman: Do they usually take him out of games when getting crushed?

  89. There's footage of the Carl Pavano homer against Jason Schmidt back in 2004. Immediately after hitting it, he pointed out at it. Wow, what a butthead move.

  91. What's the point of the guy relentlessly heckling Pavano when he's at bat? YOU SUCK, CARL! YOU SUCK! Um, yeah, dude, I know. I'm a pitcher.

    1. i was wondering that too. in fact, i wonder that about most idiots that yell at the players at ballgames.

    2. Did you forget what it was like to be drunk and at a ballpark with your friends as a teenager?

      2. we just smoked weed in the seats during the game.

        of course, that was during the late 90s when we had a good 10 sections to ourselves in the upper deck.

        1. I was at a Bisons game, maybe six or seven years ago, with an old lady friend and we heard this awful heckling behind us maybe 10-15 rows behind. Just raunchy stuff. After that I smelled the unmistakable scent of pot I finally turned around deciding to at least scope out the idiots responsible for this. Sure enough, it was my brother.

      3. Absolutely not, but I was creative. I was the guy who did homework on the real life of the opposing left fielder and ragged on that, and they'd usually laugh.

    3. There is a dude down here who is a merciless heckler. The truly sad part is that this is independent league baseball where most of these dudes have day jobs, are college students, or just can't let go of the dream. The heckler is pretty pathetic, but he takes his role seriously.

  94. Only four more innings for the rest of the bullpen to soak up. Don't have to deal with Lincecum until Thursday either.

    1. Lincecum has been on a rough stretch of late. His last five starts, slash line of 300/374/464, 26:12 K:BB and 22 runs allowed in 28 1/3.

  97. We just survived a massive thunderstorm, the remnants are still thundering their way out of town as I write this. We got a fair bit of rain, some small hail, and a hell of a light show. I'm happy that it rained, but bummed out that the exposed wood on the exterior of my house is now soaked.

    1. Did you see Rick Prescott's breakdown of the Bay Area ballparks? It seems the parks in Minneapolis and San Francisco are more similar in some respects than one might initially suspect.

  99. Man, this Coors Light poem on TRN is even worse than you would imagine it would be.

    2. She comes off as stupid, but she seemed to be giving the usual line on Killebrew (other than saying it was a "long" battle with throat cancer). Did I miss something?

      1. It might have been the voice, or it might have been the fact that she obviously was reading from a script and had no idea who Killebrew was. Then again, I also wonder if she knows who, say, McCovey Cove is named for.

        1. She was very stilted and rehearsed, yes. I thought she was ineffective, but less for stupidity and more because she was attempting to come off as knowledgeable while using a bland script she obviously hadn't prepared herself.

          1. I guess that's what I mean by stupid. Five minutes on baseball-reference and with Bill James' Abstract would have made her sound a hell of a lot smarter. But hey, maybe all they do in journalism school these days is practice reading prepared scripts and rewriting press releases.

      2. by the way, ladies and gentlemen, here's your wgom.org 20,000th post:

        um... what?

        3. We need to restart the WGOM LTE HOF just for that...and then a bunch of other stuff.

  116. The Milkmaid just got home, and her friend Heather just came in to look at the futon. Guess who watches night games on the futon in his boxer briefs? You're welcome, Heather!

  117. I've got the Dodgers and Tigers up on Gameday so I can listen to Scully on the video highlights.

  127. to be honest, i wish the goofy-ass facial hair theme was more prevalent on the twins.

        1. Yeah, you math freaks were kuh-ray-zee!

          Seriously, though, photos? I love awesome facial hair. I'm also quite jealous of it, as I can't grow it myself.

  128. Am I the only one who saw that the back of Butters' jersey said "Butera" and thought, "That's not his name."

      1. Once they popped into the frame and it became obvious what was happening, they switched cameras. I'm not sure the guys in the booth even noticed - it was a wide enough shot, and they were on the edge of the screen.

  138. Honest to God, I want them to interview Luke Hughes after every game, even if he doesn't play.

  139. Trevor Plouffe!

    Ummm ... no. His last game was June 1. The Twins are 15-2 since Plouffe's last game. I don't think he's going to get much credit for the comeback. The starting pitchers are most responsible for this turnaround, but the hitters that have helped the most are Casilla, Cuddyer, Valencia and Young. Hughes had one hot week but that's been about it. Revere has been fun to watch and his defense has been terrific, but his OPS is worse than Delmon's on the season. It's unbelievable this team is doing this with Span, Kubel, Morneau and Thome out of the lineup. Plus, Joe Nathan should be coming back soon and hopefully this time they'll trust him because even with his diminished stuff, he was still the bullpen's best right-handed reliever.

  140. I woke up around 4AM unable to get back to sleep; I was unsure why, but my best guess is that I had to find out if the bullpen had held the 8-0 lead.

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