2014 Twins Game Logs

2014 Game 48: Rangers at Twins

87 Comments

When I was growing up, Memorial Day had nothing to do with mattress sales and used car blowouts. My brothers and I would get up in the morning, put on our uniforms and pedal our bikes to Memorial Park, where a 100-foot tall limestone obelisk marks the reburial spot of some 1200 pioneers and soldiers who died defending the village and fort from attack during the American Indian Wars in the 1790s. My older brothers would meet up with their Boy Scout troop and I would go with my Cub Scout pack and we would march in the parade. The women lining the street wore knee-length summer dresses and stylish little hats, and many of the men in shirtsleeves wore neckties. When the parade ended at the Wabash River bridge downtown, the mayor would make a short speech and the honor guard from the American Legion post would lay a memorial wreath in the river and fire a salute with white rifles to those who had sacrificed their lives in duty to country. After the parade it was off to the town park for the Jaycees' barbecue chicken dinner and an afternoon of Legion baseball games. I don't know if it gets any more American than that.

The Twins kick off summer today by opening a four-game series with the Texas Rangers at Target Field (I'll be at game 4 on Thursday celebrating Elder Daughter's 21st birthday). The Twins send Kevin Correia (2-5, 6.52 ERA) to the mound, while Texas counters with sophomore Nick Tepesch (1-0, 3.09 ERA) in just his third start of the season. In a couple of key roster moves, the Twins added Josh Willingham and Oswaldo Arcia back to the active roster and optioned Chris Colabello and Chris Hermmann to AAA Rochester. So we should have seen about all of the infielder-playing-outfield shenanigans we need to see this year. Play ball!

87 thoughts on “2014 Game 48: Rangers at Twins”

  1. quiet around here. I'm trying to work up the courage/energy to go out and trim the bushes and mow the lawn. Not feeling it. Maybe I should hire it out?

    1. That's what my parents did. Hired out to the first-born. I got paid with room and board.

      1. I can't afford to fly the first born back out for weekly lawn mowing. 2nd born, I can't afford (emotionally) the warfare.

    2. I hire out mowing the lawn. I could do it, and have in the past, but I feel I have better things to do with my time.

    1. Yup, that's his name. I believe it's the name of his younger brother, too.

      Edit: Found it! The elder brother is Rougned Roberto, the younger is Rougned Jose.

    1. Getting hit by pitches is obviously a "skill"- I wonder if Hammer could teach it to the younger fellows?

  27. just finished a Bundaberg. A nice, brewed root beer. It's so hard to find root beers and ginger beers that are actually brewed, as opposed to being made with syrup and carbonated water.

    1. I've run across any number of negative reviews, which confuse me. No, this is not "gourmet" root beer, but it's a tasty product. I also enjoy their ginger beer, although it's not nearly sharp enough for my tastes.

    2. Brewed root beer is the best root beer. I need to make some again because it was fantastic. I did the syrup and club soda method for carbonation so I didn't have to drink it all right away.

      1. Ooh, no, that's probably too advanced. He should stick with a tambourine, or maybe a cowbell.

  30. I'm thinking none of Santana, Escobar, Nunez, or Bartlett would've caught that.

  31. Well, that frickin swing set its standing. It isn't perfectly straight or pretty, but it's sturdy. Now just need to get a slide for it.

    1. If the Twins had designed and constructed your swing set, it would have four slides, and at least one of them would be attached to the swing chains.

  33. As a right-handed batter, Hicks is hitting .500 against right-handed pitching! I declare the experiment a success!

  44. Granted it wasn't awful, but I don't know that four runs on seven hits in seven innings qualifies as "pitching well".

  47. What happened? I left the room for two minutes and all of a sudden it's 7-2.

  49. The Twins would be doing a lot better if they'd change the rules so you only had to get two outs in an inning.

  52. Forget the runs scored and Correia should be the one leaving the game with the lead. 7 IP, 7 hits, 0 walks, 5 Ks, 0 HRs, 10-5 GB/FB. Tepesch: 6 2/3 IP, 7 hits, 0 walks, 4 Ks, 1 HR, 7-10 GB/GB. A WHIP of 1.00 for Correia is outstanding. Correia has 5 more Ks than BBs in his last 2 starts after not doing it all season. He's had 5+ Ks in a start 4 times this season, three of them in his last four starts. I was wondering why Correia was pulled in this game before Burton got hit around.

    1. The GB/FB rate is interesting- line drive outs are counted as grounders? That seems wrong.

      Going back over the play by play on Gameday, I see 7 line drives on balls in play (4 went for hits) for Correia. That's a lot of hard-hit balls.

      For comparison, Tepesch had 4 line drives on BIP, and two of those were categorized as "soft" line drives. I realize this is just one game (super small sample size!), but that seems a lot more conducive to long term success.

      1. Depends. My guess would be fly ball outs if the number of outs in play matches the groundout+flyout total.

        1. I also thought line drives would count as fly balls, but that doesn't appear to be the case. Gameday shows Correia with 7-5 GB/FB. Going through the play-by-play that matches up with what they qualify as FB's and GB's, but there's the 3 outs on line drives that evidently aren't counted in that total. Socal's 10-5 GB/FB ratio is even more confusing, since the only way I can see to get that ratio is to count the LD outs as grounders.

      2. 5K and 10-5 ratio seems a lot more conducive to long-term success compared to 4K and 7-10. It's SSS and all, but I was just pointing out that with a little better luck, we would have been complaining of Correia's lack of support not his lack of pitching.

        1. Oh, I agree that the lack of run support and Burton's pitching were by far the bigger problems today, but I still don't know where you're getting the count of 10 ground ball outs. There's only seven shown on Gameday.
          I'm glad Correia is doing a halfway-decent job of striking people out, but trading fly balls for line drives isn't going to play in the long run, though it might limit the number of homers given up.

  53. Tuned into MLBN to watch Hyun-Jin Ryu work on a perfect game, only to find it blacked out. Huh. MLBN Alternate showed it though and first batter gets a hit. The channel turns back to the Astros-Royals game and the Astros' camo jerseys are awful. Can't read the "Houston" on the front whatsoever.

    1. Camo in baseball uniforms is awful, period. Can'tv we celebrate our servicemen and women adequately without it?

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