10% of the season is over, and the Twins don't have a losing record. This feels like progress.
Today, Adalberto Mejia gets to try to justify his rotation spot once again. Speaking of, how is Jose Berrios doing down there in AAA?
1.42 ERA, 3 BB, 18 K in 19 innings.
Well, godspeed, Adalberto...or Kyle, really.
Tigers counter with Matt Boyd, who seems like pretty much the definition of a guy that no one remembers, and only later do they realize that he ended up starting 150 games for their team.
He's walked a lot of folks this year, and that seems to be something the Twins batters are doing pretty well with these days, so let's get hispitch count up there and get to that juicy, delicious bullpen.
Mejia showing mettle.
Diving Dozier! Let's steal some bases, boyo.
Ratch.
Already twice as many hits off Boyd as last time!
Polanco's lack of range has started to show up the last few games.
Polanco has been inches away from two batted balls. Dang.
Wooooboy that was a nasty slider
Whatever problem Sano used to have on popups seems to have gone away.
He got hit in the face on a popup in the minors last year. I think that was in his head after that. It looks like he's worked through it.
wiggle wiggle
Well, that certainly could have been a lot worse.
OMG - Tigers suck.
Hoo Hah!
Twins lead!
It sure didn't last long.
The tie game didn't last long, either.
woo woo Polanco!!
*sigh*
Solo home runs don't hurt you.
Finally got out to springify our landscaping. Rewarding myself with a bit of Tanqueray and tonic in the glass and a ballgame on the radio.
I have a crapton of outside work sitting there until allergy season ends 🙁
I can see why the Twins like Mejia (that slider is '06 Lirianoesque) but he doesn't seem to be able to get a lot of batter out efficiently.
Oh man I hope Jones is ok.
Didn't see it. The radio guys were pretty horrified, though.
FSN didnt show a replay. At least he was walking
Mejia's turn in the rotation (assuming it's not skipped because of an off day) would be Friday. Jose Berrios' next scheduled start in AAA is Monday. If they limited Berrios' pitches on Monday, he could come up and pitch the Friday game. Or, the Twins could pitch Kyle Gibson, tomorrow's scheduled starter, on Friday and have Berrios pitch on full rest on Saturday.
Or, of course, the Twins could do none of these things. Just speculating.
I'm not sure exactly what happened, because Dazzle was on play-by-play, but it doesn't sound like a good thing.
It sounds like Sano probably should have been ejected, but I'm glad to hear Boyd was ejected, too.
I turned the channel to the hockey game and a baseball fight breaks out!
Dazzle brought up a good question--do the Twins have to announce their pinch-hitter first, or do the Tigers have to announce their new pitcher first?
My guess is home team goes last.
If that was retaliation, it's nonsense. I see zero chance that Haley was throwing at Jones.
Torii basically said that on teams he's been on that if one of their guys got hit in the face, intentional or not, there would be retaliation. An example was Dennis Martinez hitting Kirby. Frankie Rodriguez hit Albert Belle in the ribs and he just went to first. He said later if anybody else had been hit, he would have responded differently.
Torii may be exactly right about what would've happened with the teams he was on. It's still nonsense.
What I don't get is that was this retaliation for a Tigers player getting hit in the face on accident? Or is Sano stirring the pot with players at first base.
We've got the upper hand if it gets to a bullpen retaliation war
Almost a Mauer HR!
He probably should have had a triple.
Tie game!
Tied game!
Sounds like a good crowd today
*looks at the game thread, grabs the AED...walks away instead*
Mejia demoted, Haley to the DL. Moves to be announced tomorrow. It won't be Berrios because Twins will be going with a 4-man rotation until May 6. Since corresponding moves not announced yet, my guess is at least one of the players will be making his MLB debut.
My thought would be Palka. He's been crushing it. Also heard that they are going to a 12-man pitching staff.
I'm not arguing with you, but keeping Berrios down to go to a four-man rotation is an excuse, not a reason. There's no real reason to go to a four-man rotation. Yes, it enables Santana to pitch more often, but it's not like we're going to be in contention for the World Series this year, 153-9 notwithstanding. For that matter, with Haley going to the DL, there's no reason Berrios couldn't pitch in long relief for a couple of weeks. If not, though, the only other Rochester pitchers on the forty-man appear to be Buddy Boshers and J. T. Chargois.
I think it's a way to test going to a 12-man pitching staff (and four-man bench) without shortening the bullpen. It may be a way to see if it will help the offense and by how much before fully committing to a shorter bullpen. I think if the bullpen hadn't been used so much today, they might have just put Mejia in the bullpen and tried to use him in low leverage situations to ease him back into the rotation.
But what I'm saying is, this isn't a case of, "Well, gee, we'd really like to bring Berrios up, but we're going to a four-man rotation so we can't." It's a case of, "We really don't want to bring Berrios up, so what are we going to do instead." The problem is that, again, this year needs to be about player development more than wins and losses, and they're not developing Berrios by holding him in AAA after he's proven that he can dominate there.
Castro practically golfed his HR, and Torii gave the "left the pitch up" line