2016 Game 43: Blue Jays at Twins

First Pitch 1:10 p.m.

Phil Hughes (1-6, 5.70 ERA, 1.29 WHIP, 27 K)
Marcus Stroman (4-1, 4.23 ERA, 1.23 WHIP, 43 K)

Phil Hughes was far from bad the last time he pitched, giving up just one earned run, but he went only 6.1 innings on 75 pitches. It was later revealed that he's been throwing with shoulder fatigue, so we can probably include the Twins training staff in the whole total system failure thing. Today he squares off against Marcus Stroman, who is coming off his worst start ever after giving up 7 runs on 13 hits to the Rays. Momentum, thy name is today's starting pitchers.

Meanwhile, in Bizarro World, the Atosennim Sniwt have won 31 of their games so far this season while losing just 11 for a .738 winning percentage. They lead the league in Slugging and OPS, ERA, Saves, and WHIP. The Sniwt maintain a sizable lead on their division, and are favored by many to win the Bizarro World Series.

Play ball.

51 thoughts on “2016 Game 43: Blue Jays at Twins”

  1. I think Phil Hughes either needs to go on the disabled list or go back to Rochester for more seasoning.

  2. I didn't believe it when Bert said it so I looked it up, its crazy that that was Arcia's first double of the season.

  3. Paraphrased from Dick-n-Bert -

    You can say that the offense hasn't been good, and the defense has had some bad games, but the pitching really needs to get better.

    Other than that, though...

    1. I think if they did more bunting, the rest of the problems would take care of themselves.

  4. Provus mentioned that Adam Brett Walker II was the first Rochester player to hit three homers since Leo Gomez in 1990. Now there's someone I haven't thought of in quite a while.

  5. Bert's advice to Glen Perkins (didnt catch the entire rant but here is most of it) "When he gets it through his mind to pitch through the soreness, fight through it, he can pitch. The MRI shows a little fraying but if you pitch long enough there is going to be fraying. Its going to be sore. You gotta pitch through the soreness"

    1. I suspect that it's hard for a pitcher who was as durable as Bert was to understand that it doesn't work that way for everyone, and that there are some injuries you can't work through just by being tough.

      1. I think back to a couple years ago where Perkins tried pitching through some soreness and it turned out to be an injury that knocked him out for a lot of the season.

  6. Wow, Phil Hughes intentionally throwing at Josh Donaldson.
    Dont see that too often by Twins pitchers.

  7. Hughes can't even peg a guy when he wants to. The Blue Jays announcers are kind of freaking out but they are right. Hughes should be tossed.

  8. I'm surprised the benches were not warned. But I suppose if you actually never hit a guy....

    I really hate intentional bean balls.

  9. Hughes is pretty clearly not right. I wouldn't be entirely surprised if he was trying to "send a message" and get tossed. Easier to explain later than what happened his last start, right?

      1. Gets harder to stay on the "right" side if you're not retaliating for anything? I dunno. Almost certainly not, but he is "not sharp" in a way that, combined with the recent injury discussion, is concerning.

          1. While allowing hard contact everywhere. I'd rather be lucky than good sometimes, but with this lineup, I'm surprised this game isn't going a lot differently.

    1. I thought it was a hit for sure at first, then I started tracking the CF and thought "aw shit, that's Pillar, isn't it?"

  10. Blue Jays are showing the importance of defense today. Donaldson has taken away two hits and Pillar takes away an RBI double at least.

  11. Twin with 1 hit through 7 innings for the second straight day. Hard to imagine the Twins winning 2 straight games like that. However, when you've won as few games as the Twins have, I guess you'll follow any formula that's worked once before.

  12. Taylor Rogers strikes out consecutive RH batters (one switch batting RH) and gets pulled. "That's not the way we do things around here, Rook," growled Molitor after pulling him.

  13. Dick n Bert really going after Brian Dozier this series. Earlier this week, I thought it was an odd statement when Bert was criticizing Dozier for pulling the ball all the time, but its now every at bat they are bringing up his pull tendencies.

    1. Must be the new directive from the Ministry of Truth. We've always been at war with Eastasia.

  14. The winning streak ends at one. I guess we'll just have to settle for 130-32!

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