2012 Twins Game Log

2012 Game 109: Twins at Indians

190 Comments

First Pitch - 6:05 pm CDT
Television - FSN
Lineups - TBD

I don't have a lot of time for today's game log since I spent most of the day yesterday walking (3.25 miles on the Coon Rapids dam trails), shopping (Trader Joe's) and eating (chicken, black bean and corn quesadillas with guacamole) instead of working on the work work I probably should have been working on. What can I say, the doctors told me I have to be a little more selfish about taking time for my health from now on.

The Twins have been playing pretty good baseball lately. They've won seven of their last ten games and sit in fourth place, 12.5 games off the division lead and 3 games behind the third-place Indians. Cleveland, on the other hand, is in total collapse mode, riding a nine-game losing streak that started with a series sweep by the Twins at the end of July. We'd all like to see the Twins continue Cleveland's losing streak by sweeping this series, too. After all, now that the Cuyahoga Rivers doesn't start on fire when you toss a cigarette butt into it, we have to give the Indians something else to cry about. Extending their losing streak to an even dozen games and moving into a tie for third place ought to do it.

The Twins made an unexpected move over the weekend, trading Danny Valencia to the Red Sox for minor league outfielder Jeremias Pineda after a waiver claim. This looks like a move that will improve the Minnesota team immediately by subtraction and could pay off several years down the road by addition or ancillary transaction. Some four-cylinder import named Nishioka has been called up from Rochester to fill Juicy's roster spot, which was temporary anyway, but I expect Nishi will take a turn at shortstop and/or second as a September audition. Or maybe he'll just ride the pine for a week. It's not like the team is concerned about getting him regular at-bats like they are with Parmelee. Jamey Carroll will likely get all the duty at the hot corner until Babe Plouffe! returns from the 15-day disabled list, possibly by Friday.

On The Hill:
Tonight the Twins send ace-apparent Diamond out to face something called a McAllister. Diamond has a record of 9 wins and 3 losses, while McAllister has notched 4 wins and 3 losses. Diamond has an equal rights amendment of 2.93 and McAllister has an equal rights amendment of 3.42. All other pitching stats are made up and/or meaningless.

Play ball!

190 thoughts on “2012 Game 109: Twins at Indians”

    4. I essentially said as much a few days ago, though I'll echo that he's just "meh" on defense, as opposed to "I'm living in constant terror that the opposing batter will hit a ball in his general direction" territory that has been filled only by Delmon and Nishioka in the past couple of years.

  22. hey guys. I like what I'm seeing so far (at Mom's actually watching the game tonight)

  24. C. Provus classic - The Indians are in familiar territory - trailing by a lot.

      1. I'll make it happen, even if it's in the middle of a one of Beau's video game posts.

  48. Good thing Nishi is up again, I'm running out of digits to keep track of the score on.

  51. So in a 10-1 rout, Nishioka has already managed to make an error that led to the only Native run, and made two outs in a single inning. Poor sap.

  53. Dustin Morse ‏@Twins_morsecode
    The last time the #MNTwins scored 10 runs in an inning was June 4, 2002 vs. Cleveland in the 7th. Twins won 23-2

    1. I remember that game.

      I was watching in a friend's dorm room and the Twins got way ahead so he left for a while. Then he came back and asked if the Twins had doubled their lead. I responded, "Maybe, what was the score when you left?"

  56. Not to twitter y'all to death, but this is hilarious:

    Tim Kurkjian ‏@Kurkjian_ESPN
    Ichiro has not struck out in his last 55 plate appearances. The only player with a longer active streak is pitcher Livan Hernandez with 57

        1. Except it ceased to be a no-hitter the next year when MLB defined a no-hitter as being at least nine innings.

  62. .
    .
    >come in from mowing the lawn to see the Twins ahead 10-1
    >figure "oh, Nishioka must be doing alright in his first game back"
    >see 0-2 (both in the same inning) and an error leading to the only opposing run

    yup.

        1. It's not like I was talking about Mauer--or I was meat and talking about Casilla.

        1. I loved watching that guy in batting practice. When he was with the Royals, he would be banging balls off the championship banners that hung on the giant wall in the upper deck of Metrodome.

  74. After seeing the Twins go down 1-2-3 that inning, I have no less confidence that they'll win this game.

  75. MLB.tv has dropped both feeds completely and I'm now getting a "This game will begin shortly" screen. Thanks, MLB.tv! I had no interest in this awesome blowout anyway.

  79. I'd hope the Twins will save some runs for the rest of the series.

  83. Hah! Michael Young the starting shortstop for the Rangers tonight. He's played mostly DH this season and last, so Washington decides he's fit for shortstop.

      1. Right. So obviously, Michael Young is the temporary shortstop. He played one game there last year, which was the first since 2008. He has played more DH than any other position the last two years.

      1. Ah, I had forgotten who was batting. Even so, Delmon jumps up against the wall, falls to the ground and lies there as Span has to run all the way into left field to pick the now stationary ball off the turf. Close call.

    1. According to B-R, he's at 0 batting runs now with .323/.354/.383. So, adding in his base-running, I'm thinking .315 for a net-zero offensive contribution.

      1. He's at 2.4 rWAR this year, with 1.9 rWAR coming from fielding and position. FanGraphs says 2.6 fWAR and 2.0 fWAR for fielding and position.

          2. Or build up some arm strength!

            Also, this assumes defensive metrics don't undervalue that skill. I went to a presentation at SABR - though the guy didn't show us his math, and just encouraged us to buy his book, so I'm skeptical - that suggested defense was highly undervalued. Like I said, I'm skeptical. And yet, somehow, watching Ben Revere, I start being less skeptical.

            1. Michael Humphreys? I haven't read his book, but did read his excerpt in THT's Annual. I'm not sure DRS or UZR under-estimate it that much, but Total Zone absolutely did.

              1. That sounds right. I believe he did most of his comparisons to Total Zone, so that would make sense. I really wanted to see the math...

                1. He posts frequently on Tango's Book blog. I'm not sure he's gone through the math there either. I believe he does in the book though.

                  1. He claims to. "Buy the book" seemed to be the takeaway from that session. Which is part of why I didn't.

    2. speaking of Revere, even though his arm is subpar, I do like the combo of Span in Cf and Revere in Rf.

      1. Initially, I really disliked it, but I've come around to it. The way Revere covers ground, Span gets to cheat a little bit toward Left field

        1. Maybe this is why I'm less skeptical. Ben Revere has made Span's defense better, which has made Willingham's defense better... can we compare Span's pre-Revere defensive numbers with his post-Revere defensive numbers?

          1. Um... I just looked at Willingham's numbers on B-R. Why are BIS and Total Zone so different?

              1. And neither takes into account player starting position/relative ease of the play, correct?

                1. Correct. BIS used to not ignore shift plays, until their DRS system said Brett Lawrie had the best defensive season ever, halfway through this season. The BIS and STATS data has classification for how hard the ball is hit, but not for how hard the play is.

                  Edit: In fact, players moving around has traditionally caused problems. Dubbed "range bias", it had the effect of bunching balls in play closer to where fielders traditionally played, which would regress players to the mean.

                  1. I can't imagine a much better way to do defensive metrics without significant discretionary man-power... but I sure wish there were. Or that people who were into stats weren't so comfortable with using numbers to approximate actual performance, such that they would care to do the more detailed assessments.

                    1. For long-term stuff (e.g. career), a with-and-without-you comparison is considered the gold standard. It's computationally expensive (relatively speaking), but quite accurate. Unfortunately, this does not work well on the season scale. At this point, we're waiting for FieldF/X, which is quite expensive and I think still in beta-testing at AT&T Park.

                    2. I'd heard they were going to do it, but wasn't aware it was even in beta yet. So that's good.

    1. It seems like a pretty sure bet that we'll be surpassing them at some point in the near future. Cleveland is in free-fall mode.

  89. Manny Acta has that old constipated look TK used to have whenever the Twins were stinking up the joint.

  90. If Revere doesn't bat again tonight, he will be seven PAs short of qualifying for the all-important leaderboards.

  92. Cripes, Nishi. You've got the Cleveland announcers completely flummoxed with your ineptitude.

    1. I think we had forgotten Nishi.

      I don't know that I've ever seen a major league player who looked less like a major league player.

    2. Are you asking if I think Dozier has been uniformly terrible this year, and if his ineptitude has been mostly swept under a rug by a fanbase and media who didn't hesitate to correctly excoriate Nishioka's ineptitude last year? If so, my answer is yes.

      1. Dozier has been bad, but he's still an improvement on his middle infield counterparts except for Carroll. Nishi was excruciatingly bad last year and yet Casilla has had two seasons with a lower OPS+ than Nishi had last year (48) and Casilla is at 53 this year, which is 10 points worse than Dozier. At least Casilla is providing positive contributions on defense. Dozier has made about as many good plays as bad plays, so he rates out about mediocre on defense. He's going to need to provide more with the bat to provide positive contribution. His record in the minors makes me hopeful that he's better than he's shown, but I hope the Twins won't give him as many chances as Casilla.

      2. Speaking of which, from the PiPress:

        "The thing about young players is they need to be more consistent on an everyday basis," Gardenhire
        said. "The options are send (Dozier) back down, get him grounded again -- get him out of that, 'I'm in the big leagues' mentality -- and then bring him back up. Are we going to do that? I have no clue.

        "It's always talked about. We haven't been sitting here saying, 'Well, we'll send Dozier down.' 'No, let's not.' 'Well, he hit a homer (on Thursday).' No, what's talked about is what's right for him? If he continues to struggle offensively, he's not drawing walks, is it right to do? We talked about that at the all-star break, and believe me, I've wondered myself."

  94. I think Bert hates Nishioka. Like Scott Baker not keeping the ball down in the zone hate.

  97. Scott Diamond continues his march to Rookie of the Year! The Twins are averaging fourteen runs a game with Nishioka in the starting lineup! We're still on track for 101-61!

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