I’m not too upset at missing out on Kimbrel, but to keep beating a dead horse, the bullpen was the easiest thing to upgrade in the offseason and they didn’t do much despite sitting on a pile of money.
Monthly Archives: June 2019
Jerry Orbach – Be Our Guest
Wish Jerry was singing "See My Vest" instead
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Happy Birthday–June 6
Ed McKean (1864)
Fresco Thompson (1902)
Bill Dickey (1907)
Wild Bill Wright (1914)
Hector Espino (1939)
Merv Rettenmund (1943)
Bud Harrelson (1944)
Bobby Randall (1948)
Dave Bergman (1953)
Max Venable (1957)
Tony Graffanino (1972)
Brooks Kieschnick (1972)
David Lamb (1975)
Mark Ellis (1977)
Jeremy Affeldt (1979)
Matt Belisle (1980)
Wild Bill Wright was a star in the Negro Leagues in the 1930s and 1940s.
Hector Espino is considered the greatest player in the history of the Mexican League, hitting 453 home runs there.
2019 Game 60: Minnesota Twins at Cleveland Indians
Martín Pérez hopes to bounce back from his bad start against the Rays. He's lost some of his luster from the beginning of the season. Before the Rays was a workable start against the Angels and a good start against the Mariners (but, Mariners).
Carrasco is an unfortunate late scratch because of health. Cleveland has opted for a bullpen game opened by Clippard.
Insert the rest of what free wrote yesterday about beating Cleveland and driving their probability to win the division to 0%. The Twins already project to have the weakest rest of schedule with an estimated .477 win percentage. The team with the next weakest are the Astros at .481.
Minor Details: Games of June 4
Day baseball in the minors today!
2019 Recap: Game Fifty-nine
CLEVELAND 5, MINNESOTA 2 IN CLEVELAND
Date: Tuesday, June 4.
Batting stars: Marwin Gonzalez was 2-for-4 with a home run (his seventh) and a double. Eddie Rosario was 1-for-4 with a home run, his eighteenth.
Pitching star: Tyler Duffey pitched a perfect inning and struck out one.
Opposition stars: Francisco Lindor was 3-for-3 with two home runs (his ninth and tenth) and a double. Roberto Perez was 1-for-3 with a home run, his eighth. Jake Bauers was 1-for-3 with a home run, his sixth. Shane Bieber struck out seven in seven innings, giving up two runs on five hits and a walk.
The game: A walk and a single put Indians on first and second with one out in the first inning, but a popup and a line out ended the inning. The Twins got on the board in the second when Gonzalez homered with two out. They had a chance for more, putting men on second and third, but a popup ended the inning.
Cleveland got on the board in the third when Lindor homered. The took the lead in the fifth when, with two out, Leonys Martin walked and Lindor hit his second homer, giving the Indians a 3-1 lead.
The Twins cut it to 3-2 when Rosario homered in the sixth. In the seventh, however, Cleveland got back-to-back homers from Perez and Bauers to go up 5-2. The Twins did not get a man past first after that.
WP: Bieber (5-2). LP: Devin Smeltzer (0-1). S: Brad Hand (17).
Notes: Nelson Cruz was back in the lineup but was rusty, at best, going 0-for-4 with three strikeouts. Gonzalez was at first base, with C. J. Cron on the bench.
Jorge Polanco was 1-for-4 and is batting .336. Mitch Garver was 0-for-3 and is batting .314. Ryne Harper pitched two-thirds of an inning with no runs, making his ERA 1.85. Duffey has an ERA of 2.45.
Giving up five runs in 6.1 innings, you can't really say that Smeltzer pitched well. But he really didn't pitch badly, either. He gave up five hits--it's just that four of the five hits went over the fence. It happens. He walked three, which isn't as good, but it isn't terrible. Both the game log and the few innings of the radio broadcast I was able to hear indicated that he was getting squeezed. Unfortunately, there are umpires who seem to think it's part of their job to "make the rook pay his dues", which is yet another reason we need to use technology to call balls and strikes. So we'll see how Smeltzer does next time.
As we said, these games are much more important to Cleveland than they are to the Twins. If the Twins get swept, they'll still have a solid lead--they just will have missed a chance to put the Indians away. If Cleveland loses the next two, they're in deep trouble, and even if they split the final two games they'll have missed a chance to gain significant ground. You want to win every game, of course, but it's nice to have that cushion where you don't have to.
Record: The Twins are 40-19, first in the American League Central, 10.5 games ahead of Cleveland.
Projected record: We'll just have to settle for 143-19!
Koerner, Ray, and Glover – Can’t You Line `Em
Minnesota music legend Tony "Little Sun" Glover passed away last week at 79.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEswgwC0GL8
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June 5, 2019: Homer Contest
I wanted to see if people were interested in making the homer prediction contest a daily thing. After all, you guys have spookied a ton of homers this year; let's try to translate that to bragging rights.
I can keep track of stats. But I'm thinking it would go like this:
- You can make your prediction at any time prior to the homer happening. In other words, you can make your prediction before game time or during the game if you want to wait until you get that Spooky feeling. Obviously, if you make the prediction before game time, you get more plate appearances for your guess to be correct.
- You can predict more than one player will homer, but you only get points if you get all of them correct.
- Guess 1 player correct: 1 point
- Guess 2 players correct (can be same player): 5 points
- Guess 3 players correct (can be combo of same player/different players): 10 points
So far both Twayn and yours truly would have one point under this system.
Season Long Homer Contest?
- I might play, but whatever (85%, 11 Votes)
- Sure! (8%, 1 Votes)
- Only if I can pick Adrianza every game (8%, 1 Votes)
- Pass (0%, 0 Votes)
Total Voters: 13
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Happy Birthday–June 5
Jack Chesbro (1874)
Eddie Joost (1916)
Lou Brissie (1924)
Duke Sims (1941)
Bill Spiers (1966)
Ray Lankford (1967)
Mike Coolbaugh (1972)
Russ Ortiz (1974)
Dereck Rodriguez (1992)
Prior to beginning his major league career, Lou Brissie served in World War II. He suffered severe leg injuries, receiving the Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts, but overcame his injuries to spend seven years in the majors.
Mike Coolbaugh was the first base coach for the Tulsa Drillers when he was struck on the head with a line drive and killed.
Right-hander Ivan Dereck Rodriguez did not play for the Twins, but was in their minor league system from 2011-2017. The son of Hall of Famer Ivan "Pudge" Rodriguez, he was born in Arlington, Texas, went to high school in Opa-Locka Florida, and was drafted by Minnesota in the sixth round in 2011. He was an outfielder at that time but did not hit, batting just .216 in three years of rookie ball. He converted to pitching in 2014 and had an excellent year in relief at Elizabethton, posting a 1.05 ERA and a 1.05 WHIP in 25.2 innings. He became a starter in 2015, still in Elizabethton, and continued to pitch well. He struggled in Cedar Rapids in 2016, but did well for Fort Myers in 2017 and was solid for Chattanooga when he was moved up that same year. The Twins decided to let him become a free agent, however, and he signed with San Francisco. The Giants started him in AAA and brought him to the majors in late May. He had a fine 2018 season, going 6-4, 2.81, 1.13 WHIP. He is not doing that well in 2019 so far, but has still been a competent major league pitcher. He turns twenty-seven today. A year ago, we said, "there's no obvious reason that he can't have a solid major league career." We see no reason to change that assessment.
2019 Game 59: Minnesota at Cleveland
Twins start a 3-game series against Cleveland today and it's the first time these two teams have met since the opening week of the season. Even though there is a little over 100 baseball games left to play, it seems like this is a critical series for the Spiders, especially given that these two teams don’t meet for another 5 weeks -- a mere 12 days or so before the trading deadline.
To show how dire it is for Cleveland, they would have to win 64 games (62%) to finish ahead of a .500 playing Twins. Both Cleveland winning over 60 percent of their games and the Twins just winning 50 percent seems unlikely. But hey, it’s baseball. It could happen, but if you’re Cleveland, you need for it to start happening over these next three games. Twins winning two or three of these games may just in fact push the Cleveland front office into tear it down mode.
Justin Shane Bieber on the mound for Cleveland and while he hasn’t done much on the charts lately, apparently he has a decent curve. He’s a high strikeout guy with 1.25 SO/Inning and a 4-2 record. This includes, however, his last game where he was hammered for 6 runs in 5 innings but still got the win statistic because of huge run support from his teammates. Talk about pitching to the score.
Devin Smeltzer on the mound for the Twins and let’s hope he can pitch another 6 or 7 inning gem and keep this train chugging along. Oh did I mention Nelson Cruz is back?
First pitch at 6:10p. Settle in for some nice Central Division Baseball as we hit the summer months of what so far is a very fun baseball season.
Twins Lineup
RF Kelpler
SS Polanco
DH Cruz
LF Rosario
C Garver
1B Gonzalez
3B Sano
2B Schoop
CF Buxton