The Twins take their traveling wrecking ball into Seattle for a 3 game series against the Mariners. The Twins are 17-6 on the road and Safeco is the only place where the Twins swept last year. So we got that going for us. Which is nice
Unfortunately for the Twins, the surprise pitcher of the year James Paxton and his 1.26 ERA and 4-0 record is on the mound for the Mariners. Hector Santiago pitching for the Twins.
Game at 9:10 so you have time to watch the Stanley Cup Finals, er.. the NBA finals, um enjoy the beautiful evening before the game.
This is going well.
It's not how you start, it's how you finish (hopefully).
No words.
I love those opposite-field extra-base hits by Sano. Hopefully, that keeps him from getting too pull happy so he can avoid too many of those streaks with a lot of strikeouts.
Scherzer with 11 K's for the first 11 outs.
Pissing off his defense (not)
He gave up some hits, a run, a walk, and there was an error, so I'm guessing those break up the "consecutive strikeouts" streak, but he will tie the most K's through 2nd, 3rd, and 4th inning records.
Currently at 13 with 1 out in the 6th.
Still at 13 through 6. At 92 pitches, he's not getting to 20 Ks tonight.
O (crap), Valencia!
Twins bullpen doing all it can to make Santiago look good. Why was he taken out again?
Moustakas with a walk-off homer to end the Astros' 11-game winning streak. Royals scored 4 in the eighth to tie it.
This should help our stealth run differential
Before tonight, the A's and the Royals were the only AL teams with worse run differentials than the Twins.
Indians lost tonight, so Twins will still have a 1.5 game lead.
Make that 1 game. I guess the standings I saw earlier already had the Indians' loss included.
The Twins have totally destroyed Paxton's ERA tonight
Gimenez is pitching. Escobar is catching. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I'm fine with Gimenez relieving IF THEY DIDN'T ALREADY HAVE EIGHT RELIEVERS ON THE ROSTER. Also, why not just let Escobar pitch (if you're going to use a position player) instead of inviting injury by playing him out of position? Or, surely catching one inning of Gimenez lobbing pitches, after an off day, wouldn't have killed Castro. This decision making is beyond bizarre.
At what point do teams just forfeit? When you bring in a position player to pitch, you are essentially conceding. Why go through the motions?
It's just managing expectations. Fans (aka customers) expect the game to go 9 innings. Conceding would be perceived as amateurish ("10-run rule? What is this, little league?). The older I am, the more pointless going through the motions seems to be, though.
Chris Gimenez has a lower ERA than the following pitchers who've pitched for the Twins: Rosario, Rucinski, Pressly, Wheeler, Belisle, Gibson, Tonkin. He's tied with Haley. He's within a run of the following: Hughes, Tepesch, Santiago.
Thats....not exactly encouraging.
Well, he DID manage a 1-2-3 inning. Plus, there's this:
For me, This was the highlight of the game.
this was mine.
I missed this, because it was apparent pretty early on that there were better things to do than watch this game (falling asleep on the couch, for instance).
I've long since accepted that Gimenez is Willie Eyre come back from the dead, but what exactly happened with Escobar, did Castro get hurt? Get ejected? Spontaneously burst into fire*?
*could potentially be filed under "got hurt"
Why have a super utility if he doesn't catch!?
I guess it was because Molly didn't want to overwork Castro ... or lose his true backup catcher (which makes even less sense). I saw no report of an injury.
I actually loved it. If you're down by 9 runs in the 8th, and you're conceding anyway, show me something crazy.
I agree. I guess if Escobar is truly the emergency backup catcher, a little in-game experience might be beneficial.
Maybe we're looking at this all wrong--Escobar is just Gimenez's personal catcher. You know, like Greg Maddux and Henry Blanco.
I thought this was a good take until I remembered that Castro has caught 75% of his appearances. Maybe he finally got through to Molly this time.