Oof. Another frustrating loss and now they are starting to pile up and the SSS factor is slipping away. The Twins have been wielding the assiest of ass bats lately with no one without the name Cruz or Buxton on the back of their jerseys having any success at the plate whatsoever. Combine that with a bullpen that coughs up leads faster than my dog coughs up dead squirrel and you've got a team with twice as many loses as wins.
Kenta Maeda on the mound for the Twins and lets' hope a nice recovery from last weeks lousy outing. Civale for Cleveland and he's had a decent year, not a big strike out guy so hopefully the Twins can put some balls in play today. 5:10p start time
Twins Line Up
2B - Arraez
3B - Donaldson
CF - Buxton
DH - Cruz
LF - Kirillof
1B - Astudillo
RF - Cave
C - Garver
SS - Simmons
Hey Simmons back in the lineup!
Lol Nelson Cruz triple
YDNROER.
I was just going to write that the Twins had their two runs, so it was up to Maeda and the bullpen to hold the Indians. The game was tied before I could finish the sentence.
The Twins scored three last night. They're going to have to do it again.
And now they'll have to score four.
Kiriwoof
Bad baseball...
Cory taking over for Dazzle in criticizing the official scorer.
Bremer on tv was miffed that that wasn't an error
Maybe Cruz can hit for the cycle tonight!
A-Stud!
Cruz flying round the bases like he is Byron Buxton
Thank god you weren't saying Myron Mixon.
Civale went to school at Loomis Chafee, a prep school in Windsor, CT on my long-distance biking route.
And the contact play works about as well as it usually does.
I would rather see a bunt attempt than the contact play
I have never seen it work.
We really need Maeda to put up a zero here. That's not a good start.
But that's much better!
I have little confidence that the Twins can score five.
And six is right out.
This team is not very good at baseball. Imagine thinking a few months ago that there was depth.
Yeah, not sure why I turned this on.
I predicted a down year, but the Twins can't possibly be as bad as they've been playing lately. Maybe I'm projecting my own feelings onto them, but it just feels like they have a total lack of confidence right now. It feels like their batters don't expect to get key hits, their pitchers don't expect to put up a zero when one's needed, their fielders don't expect to make big plays. It feels like they think they're beaten before they start.
And when they get down, it feels like they don't expect to come back.
Two words: snake bit
Or is that one word?
Depends. If you are riding a snake, you might use a snake bit.
Or reading the vignette about the adder.
Buxton Bomba!
We can still root for Buxton, at least. It's kind of like the mid-70s Twins, when no matter how the team played, we could still root for Rod Carew.
Like.
I thot they were being too clever keeping Civale in there so long. Buxton Rules!
Well, Colome can't do much worse against Reyes than Maeda did, I guess.
I think this is a test whether he really wants to remain a pitcher or not
Well, how about that? He doesn't
Haven't checked with the court astronomers, but are we due for a Colomoscopy?
Usually you need to plan your Prep, tweak the Diet, perform the Fast, and then the Purge.
I think we should move past the fast and get to the purge.
Why are we doing this every time? Loading the bases and then the inevitable Crain-Wreck.
Crain available?
.190 batter ... we know what's next, right?
Rocco has to be the only person in baseball who thought it was a good idea to leave Colome in the game with the bases loaded.
Colomé giving up one run in that situation has to be the best possible outcome I would think. Wow.
Well, there's that.
It's going to turn out Colome has been pitching injured because that seems like the most logical conclusion to his pitching this year.
The lineup has been playing injured, Rocco has been managing injured, ...
Or maybe he cant throw the new deadened baseball 🤷♂️
This team is rattled. Can't they call a time out?
They can but I think the umpire wont grant them the timeout
I just keep coming back to one recurring question, “How does a team that knocked out a 101 win season 18 months ago become this!?!”
I'm getting 2011 vibes.
Thought the exact same thing tonight. 😬
Good call - that drop off in production by Pavanostache from 2010 to 2011 and injuries to key players look a lot like Kenta (so far) from 2020 to ‘21 and missed games by players we expected to see everyday.
I had a long drive listening to the Twins tonight, and the thing that really struck me is that at no point in the game did it feel like the team had any chemistry. I know intangibles are so irritating to credit sometimes, but I think there is something to them. There's clearly a ton of talent on this team, but they don't seem to be having any fun. I don't know if that can get turned around or not.
They certainly aren’t very locked in. Tough to enjoy yourself when every day a different one of your teammates does something to hurt your chances to win a game - errors, bad pitching, poor (or at least suspect) managerial decisions ... inconsistent to low-quality at-bats.
And a helping of COVID sprinkled into the mix, too