2011 Twins Game Logs

2011 Game 91: Kansas City Royals at Minnesota Twins

289 Comments

Luke Hochevar vs Nick Blackburn

This has to be a perfect way to start the second half for the Twins. First, a warm-up against the Royals. Four games, more than enough to find the mojo and remind everyone about owning the AL Central. Then, taking on the first place Indians with another four game series. After that, yet another four game series against the other first place team, the Tigers.

I had some stuff written about the four consecutive series against AL Central, breaking down some possibilities. Someone decided to steal it for the game recap though. Instead, I'll close with Win Twins!

289 thoughts on “2011 Game 91: Kansas City Royals at Minnesota Twins”

      1. Looks like recent Cheaptoy fantasy baseball pick-up Nolan Reimold staked them to a 2-1 lead.

        (Ninja Edit)

  3. JuddZulgad
    The rain delay at Target Field for Twins-Royals will be 20 minutes, with a start time of 7:30 p.m.

  4. Excellent. I am heading home, hoping to hear almost the entire game, sitting in my living room in my boxers and a teeshirt, drinking beer and yelling at talking to the radio broadcasters.

    2. I'm taking my radio out to my chicken coop, where I'm going to try to introduce whatever varmint is eating my birds to my twelve-gauge. This is considered fairly normal behavior for rural South Dakota.

      1. Confuse them with Gordo's play calling to stun them before taking them out. Good strategy.

        1. That's a good note for me to sign out on- keep it close, boys, I'll be back later.

    1. Like, say, 10-15 seconds? It looks like the fastest ITPH are around 15-16 seconds. Don't know how far they travel though. It's obviously much greater than 360 feet, but not sure how much greater.

      2. Let's assume Revere takes 15 seconds to circle the bases and this accomplished farter does a 15 second controlled burn. Repeating the math, but using 15 seconds instead of two gives 3485 Ns, for a final velocity of 34.85 m/s. Using the equation vf = vi + at, plugging in the numbers and solving for a gives an acceleration of 2.323 m/s2. We can now solve the equation x = vit + .5at2 to determine how far this farter would have to travel in order to tie Revere crossing the plate. Solving gives x = 261 feet, or much, much less than the minimum 360 feet Revere would have to run. Guessing that it's closer to a circle that Revere would run, we need a controlled burn that lasts long enough for Revere to run ~400 feet. My guess is a controlled burn of ~23 seconds.

  8. How many times to you see a third baseman make a nifty defensive play, then come up to bat sixth in the other half inning and line out to the shortstop?

  11. I can deal with the Royals hacking the second pitch of every at-bat into the ground all night.

    1. And also extrapolating out to 2.75 Pavano* of K's for the game.

      *I once named a unit of Percent Error after my college summer school physics lab partner.

    1. It was a bit high and bounced just short of Casilla, but otherwise not too bad.

  20. Speed Kills. Or, if Dazz were broadcasting, I'm sure he'd accuse Escobar of "hotdogging" or some such.

  28. NB Mothership Wit and sourdough toast with cheese and pepperoni. I'm thinking about making a bean-n-cheese burrito too. Then I might fire off a couple of Torpedos.

    1. I had a eggplant and mushroom pizza with goat cheese (and yes, made the dough meself). Washed it down with Grain Belt Premium earlier and am nightcapping it with some Death's Door white whisky I found at the Pig on the reduced price shelf.

    3. Alaskan Summer (Meh.) and an invite to watch Crocodile Dundeee with the wife and SiL rather than talk to folks on the computer and listen to the radio.

      1. The Milkmaid loves Alaskan Summer. I like it for the style (of which I'm not a big fan) but it's not equal with Alaskan's other offerings.

              1. in his one start in 1979, he faced 8 batters. What the hell was that?

                August 18 vs. the Yankmees: the winning pitcher was He Who Must Not Be Named. Goltz entered in the third and went the rest of the way.

      2. He started one game that year. However, the year before he did have 99 innings with 0 games started.

        1. I stopped at the liquor store tonight and looked at the "make a 6er" options. Saw Shock-top and thought about getting one ironically. Decided against it and just grabbed Alaskan Summer.

  35. I told Butch we would kick ass tonight. Still waiting for the ass-kicking that I'm sure is coming.

  36. Robby cut off an old lady singing Take me Out to the Ballgame....not cool man!

          1. Heh, I was referring more to the terrifying possibility that Dazzle reads the WGOM.

  52. Just looked at the Royals' probables for the Next few:
    We see Francis and Paulino.
    The the ChiSox see Kyle Davies. Not fair! Any team facing the Royals for four straight games should be allowed to face Davies.

  55. 98 pitches? Blackburn may go eight.
    (I like it that Gardy's been letting the more veteran pitchers go longer. Other than Liriano's no-hitter, I've never felt that any of them were really that abusive.)

  60. OK, I'm back. The critter was a skunk. Big one, too. I now smell slightly of skunk juice.

      1. Same to you, David Carson! ( The well done part, I've never gotten the trivia question right, much less e-mailed it in on time.)

  63. How did I forget Capps was going to be getting the call here? Against three of the best hitters, no less.

      1. Say what? I must have been having a flashback to something that existed in the past. Sorry about that.

      1. Unless Butler attempted that bunt on his own, I can't see it as very bright to ask your best hitter to bunt in the 9th inning of a game you're losing.

  70. walking Cabrera is stupid. Puts a runner on base but still breaks Melky's hitting streak.

    1. If he's allowed anywhere near the 8th or 9th inning, I will question Gardy's sanity.

    2. When he came in a real small part of me wanted him to blow another one and lose this job. Well, that small part of me is satisfied, I guess.

  87. Total dump from Crapps.

    Tell us all after the game how he's still the closer, Gardy.

    1. Soria has been slightly hittable this year, but that's still asking a lot of the Twins.

  92. At least a Twin is leading the league in something. Whats the team record for BS's.

          1. That was number 7 for Capps. If he remains the closer, he has a shot at besting worsting it.

              1. Seven blown saves? That's so bad, it matches the number F-Rod had in the year he was given Cy Young MVP consideration!

                1. Ugh, it did go that far, didn't it?

                  Meanwhile, 4ltr runs a poll proving that idiot fans were more impressed by that than Lidge's blown-saveless season.

    2. Can't get a BOSO if you've already got the Loss. (I guess it is possible you could get it with a BS if the first two runners allowed to score are inherited.)

    1. I saw Capps talking to Mauer in the dugout just there. I imagine Mauer was saying, "I told you to throw it inside you fucking idiot, not over the middle of the friggin plate!"

  96. Dick, I don't think there's anything "oddly enough" about Capps sucking it up. Its pretty much been the way things are for the past two months.

  108. why was Tolbert so far away from first base on that? Dick said he rounded second and had to retouch. If he was closer to first he could of tagged to second

    1. Because he thought that he had to touch home before the ball went over the fence for it to count?

  112. Tolbot! good boy going to third.

    But the Aussie PHing for Replicant? Is that really an improvement?

    1. Now that I think on it, I'm getting more and more pissed at Gardy. Hosmer is a lefty, fuck the save and bring in Perkins to face him.

      1. Arrrgh, and one who's splits show him to be miserable against lefties so far this year.

      2. Yeah, it seemed like Gardy was pretty willing to do that before the All-Star break. Did Gardy forget all the steaming dumps Capps took on the mound a week or so ago that Perkins had to go out and clean up?

        1. By that logic, I assume the last .5 mil is a BOSO that is coming up because he's being removed from the closer role.

  129. So, if Tolbert hadn't Gordo'd Danny's flyout, he could've scored on Delmon's hit, right?

        1. I especially liked this part:

          He is also known to give up numerous 9th inning leads and is extremely unpopular[8] after giving up a 2 run homer at Target Field on July 15, 2011. He is giving this generation of Twins fans a feeling of what Ron Davis was like in the 80's and is well on his way to be traded to the Cubs for a case of beer and a bucket of used baseballs.

    1. so, if we send him down to the minors, then dump him on Washington, in another two years....

  134. See, if you don't have a closer, you can move guys around when they suck and it's not a big deal. But, no we have to have a closer and ours is Matt Capps. That's our story and we're sticking to it.

    1. Exactly. If Capps wasn't the closer, he doesn't face Hosmer, Perkins does. Before tonight, lefties have a .763 OPS vs. Capps and righties have a .622 OPS. Capps would probably be just fine as a RH setup man. And he has a perfectly good reason to switch. He has a proven closer in the bullpen pitching much better than Capps. Why is he so adamant about not switching? Stat of the night: Of the last 46 batters Capps has face, he has struck out two of them. He has four of his six walks allowed this season in the same stretch. Of his last 18 save opportunities, he's blown 6 and been pulled from two of them.

  135. Gardy: Capper made a bad pitch....guy crushed it.

    Me: You only saw one bad pitch? How about the first 4 of the inning?
    Isn't this the guy who seemingly calls out Juicy on a bi-weekly basis?

      1. Not sure what's going on. Gardy went after someone for questioning Capps' status. "Don't even go there" he barked. "That's a good pitcher and our closer." Then he cuts Sid off mid-query about Twitchy and barely cracked a smile when Robby Incemeimadick asked about the Revere summersault.

  136. well, that sucked. grandpa's in town to hang out with Famished Pete, and we got to watch a game together for the first time in forever. first of all, pops brought down two 4ers of the furious (bless you, sir), so that part was good at least. in the beginning of the 9th though, he remarked, "i wonder how many pitches it's going to take until crapps blows this..."

    turns out it was 12.

  137. Heh:

    The Twins will focus on finding setup men, and one thing they've discussed, at least internally, is bringing back Blue Jays reliever Jon Rauch. The tattooed giant can be surly at times and wasn't well-liked in the clubhouse, which is a big reason they let him leave as a free agent.

  138. I'm disappointed (but not surprised) at Gardy's response here. He basically put it on the rest of the team not coming through with hits when they needed to. I'm pretty sure Capps is getting paid good money to do only one thing.
    On the other hand, Capps faced the music postgame and said all the right things except "I'm battling my tail off..."

    1. So...what Gardy is saying if the offense just did they job and scored 20 runs every game, he wouldn't have to worry about making smart pitching decisions.

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