2014 Twins Game Logs

Game 19: Ace Matchup

68 Comments

Gibson (3-0, 0.93) vs. Price (2-1, 4.39)

I think its safe to call Gibson the ace of this "staff" at the 11% point of the season after three good outings, with that last one being pretty stupendous. It may have been somewhat smoke and mirrors, since he's not striking out a whole lot of guys at 4.7/9, so hopefully we aren't looking at a Blackburn type of situation. I don't think that is the case, but I'm not the most optimistic of sports fans. I mentioned it last night in the CoC, but if Gibson can keep this going the starters for next year might be halfway competent, which would be nice.

His poor opponent is David Price, who recently got knocked around by the punchless Yankees, who are just 22nd in runs scored, but, like, top 5 in dollars per run scored (possibly as high as #2 behind the Dodgers). He's striking a bunch of guys out, though, and has had a couple good outings with a couple bad outings. Hopefully today is one of the bad outings.

On an unrelated topic, I used a new hoppinh technique on Saturday that was kind of fun called first wort hopping. Making an IPA, I took the hops I was going to use near the end of the boil (where flavor/aroma hops are added) and put them in the kettle during the sparge before the boil. This is said to increase the utilization of the flavor/aroma acids in the hops. It simplified things, for sure, and I'm excited to see how it turns out.

68 thoughts on “Game 19: Ace Matchup”

  1. The pic accompanying this post must be wrong. its shows a mostly full Trop during a baseball game.

    1. From his game logs, his starts have gone good-bad-good-bad, so I blame patterns. Also, Twins hitters.

        1. Yes and they used the option because they have room on the 40-man roster and the Twins didn't.

            1. That's the most succinct (and depressing) summary of the situation that I've seen. Well parsed, boss.

    1. why do I feel like the Rays do a better job scouting their opponents?

      I ask myself this a lot.

    1. IIRC, he would carry the team until Independence Day, and then turn into Pedro Florimon.

    1. Yeesh. I mean, it's probably as likely to be successful as anything else Hicks is going to do, but still.

    1. Heh, just as Gameday updates to show Yunel drawing a walk, he's actually striking out.

  24. Not that a tough lefty is the best time to say it, but I have a feeling our brief honeymoon with Kubel is ending.

  25. I am not in full blown "worried about Joe Mauer" mode, but the needle is moving.

      1. It's really just the strikeouts. BB% of 14.0% is higher than his career average of 12.2%. And his ISO is about half is career average, which is also no bueno, though ISO can turn around pretty quick in a SSS.

        1. Last year in April:
          18k, 10BB, OBP of .356

          This year through yesterday:
          22k, 12BB, OBP of .360

          In May of last year he struck out 31 times in 105 AB.

          I'm not worried.

    2. It hasn't been an awesome start coming off of a serious head injury. At least the walks are there. If this keeps up, I suspect pitchers will challenge him more in the strike zone--that could help get him headed back in the right direction.

        1. It's April, but it's been interesting to see Mauer's strikeouts pile up. I actually got to chat with him some last night. He said he's been falling behind in the count a lot and has had to expand his strike zone. He thinks it's just a phase he'll hit his way out of.
          -LENIII

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