2019 Twins Game Logs

2019 Game 138 Twins at Red Sox

37 Comments

The day after Memorial Day I wrote this about the Twins being 1/3 of the way through their season:

...day after Memorial Day means the Spring portion of the season is over too. By this time we should be able to get a sense of who the real teams are and who the pretenders are. Obviously all is good in Twins land. Best record in baseball, on pace to smash the Home Run record, 10 game lead on Cleveland -- who doesn’t really look like a team able to play at a .600 pace the rest of the season, Oddo, Perez, Berrios looking great, even bad Gibby has been stuffed in a closet somewhere. Nelson Cruz should be back in the line-up any day, Mitch Garver on track to recover from his injury, Buxton doing (good) Buxton things, the list is endless. So settle in folks, we should have a fun summer of Baseball, and on the Tuesday after Labor Day, hopefully I’ll be writing up a post about Fall baseball coming up and how the Twins need to set up their line-up for the playoffs

Now that it's the day after Labor Day, kind of fun to look back. It has been a fun summer of baseball, the home run record was smashed, bad Gibby did find his way out of that closet, and Perez and Berrios not looking great as of late. That 10 game lead over the Clevanders was eliminated but is now back up to 5.5 games because guess what, apparently the Spiders were able to play at a .600 clip and better for much of June and July, also Twins have 4th best record in baseball now. So playoff line ups aren't being set yet but with the magic number at 20, we can see the end. Just for some context, if the Twins go 10-15 over these last 25 games Cleveland will have to play .625 ball just to force a game 163. If the Twins go 15-10, then Cleveland has to win 7 of every 8 games it plays to force a tie. Now the Twins and Cleveland do still have 6 games with each other, so lots of fun fall baseball ahead.

Speaking of fun baseball, Twins do embark on a pesky 12-game stretch against decent teams. Red Sox, Cleveland, Washington, and Cleveland again. Six to eight wins in this stretch and we can start investing in playoff tickets, especially since the last 13 games of the season are against the White Sox, Tigers, and Royals.

Tonight is the start of the Randy Dubnak era as he gets his first MLB start. Rick Porcello on the mound for the Red Sox and he's been ok but not great this year, which basically describes the Red Sox as whole in 2019. First Pitch at 6:10p

37 thoughts on “2019 Game 138 Twins at Red Sox”

  15. This false distinction Kaat’s making between “strategic knowledge” & “applied knowledge” is a scuttlebutt full of hogwash.

    “If the analytics department is telling he to throw more high fastballs, but I know my sinking fastball is better, I should have the confidence to throw my sinking fastball.”

    The analytics department is literally telling you the high fastball is harder to hit, as measured by lasers, high-speed video cameras, & computers generations more advanced than what NASA used to send dudes to the Moon. But hey, if the pointy-headed nerds could throw a 12-6 yakker, maybe they wouldn’t have slide-rule calluses.

    1. I am reminded of something MGL repeatedly said: you don't throw your best pitch 100% of the time (Rivera excepted). The sinker could be his best pitch and also be a good idea to mix it up better and not start off the game with all fastballs.

      1. True — there’s tactical value in mixing it up, but that was not Kaat’s argument, at least as I heard it. He was basically saying, “You know your pitches better than anyone else. Throw what you feel is your best stuff.”

  23. Just think, in a month we’re going to have game after game of down to the last out baseball. Buckle up is right.

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