The Twins bad luck in games where they score zero runs continues.
1-0 games are a lot more fun when you're on the winning side. We were worried at the start of the season whether the Twins would be able to score runs. For a while, it looked like they were going to fool us, and maybe they still will. Over the last week, however, they've been hitting more like the way we expected them to hit. They've scored twelve runs in their last six games, which my South Dakota math tells me averages out to two runs a game.
Their run-scoring at the start of the season, of course, happened because they were getting offense from unexpected places. Chris Colabello had a monster April. Jason Kubel hit well for the first couple of weeks. Kurt Suzuki got a bunch of key hits. While our emotions told us that this was wonderful, our logic told us that it would not be sustainable, and it wasn't. Colabello is back in the minors. Kubel's numbers are in free-fall. Suzuki hasn't collapsed yet, but his numbers are slowly but surely trending downward.
Will the offense improve? It's hard to say. Obviously they won't average two runs a game the rest of the season. I fully expect Joe Mauer to get things going and have Mauerish numbers by the end of the season. If the Twins stick with Arcia, he should do better. On the other hand, nobody really thinks Escobar or Santana will be .300 hitters, and as mentioned above, Suzuki is steadily coming back down to earth. On the other hand, there's still hope that Willingham will get things going, and Pinto might do better.
There were some good things that happened last night. Kyle Gibson pitched six shutout innings. The bullpen pitched well. Yes, Burton gave up the winning run. Sardinas' hit, though, came on a pitch that was down and on the inner part of the plate. He didn't hit it that hard, and while Willingham did the best he could, a better outfielder would've caught it. Willingham had a good game otherwise, going 1-for-2 with a pair of walks and hitting a ball 410 feet for his out.
So, the Twins play this afternoon and try to even the series. Samuel Deduno will try to get his magical zoomball past the Rangers batters. Texas counters with young Nick Martinez, who coming into this season had made only six starts above Class A but who seems to be holding his own in the big leagues so far this year. Today starts our one hundred twelve-game winning streak! We'll just have to settle for 136-26!
If he actually plays. His last start was the 24th. His penultimate start was the 17th. Add in three pinch-hitting appearances and that's five games, 10 PAs, since May 17.
To be fair, some of those games were played without the DH. I'd like to see Pinto as the regular catcher, simply because the only way he's going to get better at catching is to catch. But I can't argue that he's a better defensive catcher than Suzuki right now.
You forgot the Magical Zoomball tag.
I don't know why, but the picture delights me.
Despite my better judgment, I visited the Strib comments section of today's fish wrap recap. More than 100 comments, the vast majority of them hating on Joe for that strike-out in the 7th. Nothing really new here, except for the ever-increasing ineptitude of their attempts to rationalize their hatred of arguably the best Twins player any of them have ever seen. This one is so flawed I couldn't resist bringing it over here so we could all point and laugh:
My only real complaint is that I can no longer 'dislike' a comment. 'Like' or 'Reply' are the only options available, neither of which are things I'm inclined to do.