Odorizzi vs. Bieber*
Shane Bieber is Cleveland's #3 prospect. The 23-year-old makes his MLB debut tonight.
After a bad outing in NY on April 23, Odorizzi has only 2 decisions, both W's, and the team is 3-3 in games he's started (all three L's were 1-run games ... shocker). He's still not generally giving them more than ~5 innings per start, but he's been quietly better, allowing no more than 3 earned runs in 5 of his past 6 starts.
I'm not going to talk about the offense, because there isn't any...
There's almost no chance the Twins can make the playoffs via the wild card ... they need to make up ground on the division leaders - tonight's opposition. At 22-29, the Twins currently have the 4th worst record in the AL.** Lucky for them, two of the three below them are in the Central Division.
*
**the NL has only 2 teams with fewer wins: the Marlins and Reds.
Rookie umpire behind the plate tonight and he was VERY thorough going over the ground rules.
Its not ideal giving up a bunch of runs early.
I'm sitting three sections over from the Beliebers, and they were very loud after the Dozier strikeout. Then, an usher approached and gave them a yellow card.
I don't remember the details, but not sure it's happened before: MLB debut on his birthday.
So, Mauer has a setback? Dammit!
Well, geez, I'm not even watching and this game sucks.
Even more.
Not a bad evening to sit outside, though.
Well, no reason to keep that browser tab open anymore.
That play set baseball back about twenty years. Bad fielding, bad baserunning, and then more bad fielding. Yuck.
Not a shutout!
4 more solo home runs to tie the game
SANOOOOOO!!! WOW!
huh.
Wonder how they're going to lose this in the 17th.
Yeah, my first thought was "another one run game?"
Actually, that was my second; first was on the order of "how about that - Cleveland's bullpen sucks."
Sanó and Lindor both hit homers that were sooooo high.
Yan Gomes and rookie umpire jawing about something at the end of Olson's warmup. Weird.
At least it's not going to happen in the 17th.
And I turn on audio for one pitch...guess which one? :/
that was unusal
What a bananas play
When do we acknowledge that Dozier kinda sucks now?
I think that's been acknowledged several times recently.
Yeah, he's been bad lately. His history at least shows he has tended to be better as the summer heats up. He actually has better numbers now than at the same point in 2016, his career year. After May, he hit 37 homers that year with a .989 OPS.
Welp...blow it up.
I'm ignoring this team largely to avoid the shocking number of tough losses. I know there's no reason for it to continue, but I'll be damned if I've got the patience.
HPR's team is 2-4 with three of those losses coming by 1 run (and the other by 13). (They were well ahead in another game that was called on account of lightning before it was official.)
His team was down 0-4 and 2-6 on Tuesday only to go up by 7-6, down by 7-11, and tied it up again 11-11, only to give up just one run in the last inning (because it wasn't yet the 6th, it wasn't a walk-off... they got all 3 outs only giving up the one run).
Point being: I think he can relate.
Still an huge improvement over Last year where his team won 2 games (one the first game of the season which he couldn't make), and we all got very well-acquainted with the run-rules (you can't stealing when you're up by 10!).