2014 Twins Game Logs, Minnesota Twins

2014 Game 21: Minnesota Twins at Tampa Bay Rays

116 Comments

I'd really like to head home with a series win here.

(MLB.TV FREE GAME ALERT)

Minnesota Twins vs. Tampa Bay Rays
(10-10)                                      (10-11)
Tropicana Field
1 Tropicana Dr
St. Petersburg, Florida 33705
12:10 PM CT

Game Previews
Baseball-Reference
MLB
Yahoo! Sports

Probable Starting Pitchers
Carlos Enrique Nolasco
1-2, 6.08
v.
Erik Joseph Bedard
0-0, 6.35

116 thoughts on “2014 Game 21: Minnesota Twins at Tampa Bay Rays”

  9. Florimon is a black hole in the batting order. Can we DH for him and let the pitcher hit.

    1. With the Twins scoring gobs of runs right now, the Twins can afford to trade offense for defense in one slot in the batting order.

  11. interesting

    LaVelle E. Neal III ‏@LaVelleNeal
    FYI, Joe Mauer holds the team record for most RBI in any month with 32. Colabello at 26 with six left to play, including today.

        1. Speaking of which, I'm apparently in a Twitter war with a guy named Maki (seriously, don't all Maki's suck or what?!) about a certain "punch and judy" hitter. I'm not sure why I bother.

    3. LaVelle needs a twitter editor

      LaVelle E. Neal III ‏@LaVelleNeal
      I have the full list. Mauer is May leader with 32. Killbrew all-time with 37 in June of 1969. July: Hrbek (31). Aug: Gaetti (30).

    1. Looking forward to it. Uggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggh.

      1. I don't have the frame of reference to say it definitively, but I've suspected for some time that the Twins favor the concept "He was good at one point, and could be again!" a lot more than other teams.

        2. Oh come on. Nolasco had 3.0 fWAR last year. 2.5 fWAR the year before. 3.1 fWAR the year before that. The worst projection on fangraphs for Nolasco was a 4.31 FIP. No one reasonable expected Nolasco would be this bad.

            1. It's also not fair to the Twins to pretend that Nolasco's some one-hit wonder that they handed a 4-year contract to because he had a good season at one point. From 2008-2013, a six-year stretch, his worst season was a 2.3 fWAR year in 2010 and he has had a 3.2 fWAR/year average over that period.

              I get that having a losing baseball team sucks, but hey, the Twins are .500! It's April! Not all is lost.

              1. I'm not as cynical as you're reading, ubes. The Twins' traditional beliefs are something I've considered when they were good, and when they're bad. You're fighting a battle when I'm not even in the arena, man.

                1. Then what were you going on about with:

                  I've suspected for some time that the Twins favor the concept "He was good at one point, and could be again!" a lot more than other teams.

                  That is totally cynical and I don't see how I could read it any other way.

  18. Hey, why not have the guy with six home runs try to bunt his way on against a pitcher who doesn't have good stuff going?

    Oh, and Mauer too!

    1. The whole "a third of your starts are going to be great, a third will be bad and...it's what you do with that other third" talking point is the absolute absence of substance.

      1. it also is not accurate. One third of Pelfrey's starts over the past year have not been good.

      2. Yeah it's an attempt to apply the axiom 'you win 54, you lose 54, it's what you do with the 54 in the middle,' to pitching. It doesn't work. Pitching is much more variable. And it also doesn't take into account that a guy like Pelfrey feeling good about his stuff is much different than a guy like Verlander feeling good about his stuff.

        1. The winning axiom isn't really true, either (as the Tigers and Mariners proved a decade or so ago, on opposite sides). It's just a time-filler that sounds good. In the last two years I've mostly listened to opposing feeds, and adages just like that are all over the place. One reason I've stuck with the Twins feed this year is because it really just doesn't get all that much better out there at this point.

          1. I like using the Twins radio feed or the Park audio overlay but MLB.tv screwed that all up and blamed the new version of flash.

            1. The Twins radio feed isn't doing all that well today, either.

              Florimon and Dozier missing outs isn't helping.

      3. To be fair, that was just Dick saying 1/3, 1/3, 1/3. Bert said that 5 starts a year he would pitch a shutout (not far off since he had 60 in his career. Later on, he undoubtedly was taken out after 7 or 8 SO innings), and 5 starts he had nothing and would get hit. It was the other 25-30 starts that made the difference in his season.

  32. Bert defending Joe Niekro's emery board. These are good points, but this defense would be more convincing if Niekro hadn't tried to hide it.

        1. "What the heck just happened? Huh, he got tossed!"

          I had a pocket radio, or I'd have had no clue. Had to hear about it on the evening news to find out what really happened."

    3. Of course, Bert defended Joe Niekro. He and Dick only break out the knives whenever steroids are involved.

  33. I can't get into the game. Flash was acting up and now that I've gotten it to work, I've logged in too many times. If it's not one thing it's another.

    1. Some cookie clearing and I'm in. I apologize if my presence causes a loss, though I was in just in time for that Florimon DP, so I have a good feeling.

  37. Dozier now has 6 HR and 6 SB. He was 18/14 last year. The Twins have had six 20/20 seasons (I don't know by whom, it's behind the paywall.) and zero 30/30. I don't think it'd be a stretch for Dozier to be #7 this year.

  38. 2004 - Torii Hunter (23/21)
    2002 - Torii Hunter (29/23)
    2001 - Corey Koskie (26/27)
    1995 - Marty Cordova (24/20)
    1977 - Larry Hisle (28/21)

      1. With Dozier at 6/6 (under) 1/6th of the way into the season, he's on pace to be the Twins first 30/30 player.

        Also, I note only five players are listed. Kirby is the other with 31 HR/20 SB in 1986.

      1. Can't believe that Gardy didn't call in Perk. He should have, even though Burton somehow got out of that without giving up the lead.

        1. It worked out, but I have no idea why Gardy had Perkins warming up in the eighth if he wasn't going to use him with the tying run on second base.

  45. I'm not saying that Nolasco = Worley and I didn't see what happened today. But through five starts, this isn't too comforting:

    Dude Season IP H K BB HR ERA OPS Against
    Vanimal 2013 24 36 16 8 1 6.38 0.827
    Nolasco 2014 29.2 43 13 9 5 6.67 .929*

    *Prior to today. That undoubtedly went up.

    Worley kept getting worse and I think that Nolasco won't, but I'm just saying that it hasn't been good.

  49. Gardy has twice used Thielber to make Zobrist hit righty, but here he won't bring in Perkins with Zobrist up and Burton struggling because the ninth is one out away. Because Saves.

  54. Would have been nice to have RH bat Colabello up instead of the LH bat Herrmann.

  56. The bottom of the 9th was almost too uneventful. Like it was from a different game.

  57. Provus: Nolasco was an above average strikeout guy and only has 13 in 5 starts. Does that concern you?

    Gladden: No. The Twins don't have strikeout guys.

    1. Gladden was really in Twins-cliche mode today- manufacturing runs with bunting, managing for the win, etc. I almost shut the radio off.

    1. Saw your comment and thought immediately of this:

      Deduno has a 1.84 ERA in 14.2 innings out of the bullpen.

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