68 thoughts on “Game 109: Royals at Twins”

  4. That might be the first time ever Alex Gordon didnt make a great defensive play against the Twins.

  5. If i were Johan, I'd slap dick every time he brought up any similarities between him and Perez.

  13. I like Thorpe as a bullpen option too but maybe not the soft-tossing lefty after another lefty with only a tick more on the fastball.

  15. Kepler walks on strike 3. Dick tries to explain the box on FSN is the front and maybe it crossed somewhere else while the replay shows it firmly in the box. Nice call West.

  16. Tired the family out at Waterworld then crab dinner at Joe's Crab shack. Back into the hotel for the new positive (or at least less negative) attempts here.

      1. The kids all falling asleep on the way back to the hotel confirms!

        Im pretty sure my new attitude is directly responsible for this 7th inn rally.

    1. Again, if I never had to see Sano attempt one of those again, I'd die a happy man.

      1. I was surprised to see Sanó at third and Adrianza at first. One of those players can cover shortstop and he's the one stuck at first?

  25. Strangely, this outing doesn't feel that bad. Threw 75% strikes but some pretty bad luck on slow grounders.

        1. I'm not saying it should have been scoreless, but only one or maybe two runs should have scored normally. No walks, a (gift) strikeout, and weak contact is good process.

          1. First batter - Ball up in the zone, strike looking, double on a sinker left up in the zone

            Second batter - Strike looking on a pitch left up in the zone, solid single on another bad pitch in the zone

            Third batter - Tough infield single on a good pitch - compounded by Sano's error

            Fourth batter - 50/50 strike out called by Joe West

            Fifth batter - Strike out

            Sixth batter - Seeing eye single scores another run

            Definitely improvement from the first outing and reasons to believe that Dyson will be fine and come October we won't be worried about this - it will just be a fun story about his rough first starts. But that is far from the outing "not feeling bad" and just some "bad luck" IMHO.

            1. That third batter was definitely bad luck on a good pitch, but I really don't see why Rocco was pushing to get him into games so quickly. Thursday he barely had a chance to get introduced to his catcher before he's throwing to him.

              1. Yeah putting him in Thursday's game makes absolutely no sense at all and the results speak for themselves.

                But given what happened on Thursday - putting him back the very next day with a big lead totally made sense IMHO. Give the guy a quick chance to get that bad taste out of his mouth. It just didn't work out.

                1. Yes, agreed. Thursday was just silly. Flying across the entire country and rushing to the park. I know when I fly that far I just want to sleep off the jet lag.

                  It will be interesting how this bullpen shakes out. Graterol has had a few good outings coming back from his shoulder issues. Hit 101 on the gun already. There is a story floating around on some other site that he could possibly be a September call up as a reliever. I can see a tough call for a second lefty come playoff time between Thorpe and Perez (who has pitched himself out of the playoff rotation).

                  1. The Giants were on the road, so he did fly down from Philadelphia, not across the country. It sounded like he didn't sleep much the night before, though.

                    1. To be fair... I was jet lagged when I typed that. I guess that fact makes it a bit less silly, but still rushed in. I am always a bit surprised how these athletes are able to perform with the travel burdens. I know they are paid plenty for it, but its got to be tough.

  31. Dyson never should have been in yesterday's game after arriving in the middle innings. Then today he would be working on four days rest and would not be trying to make up for yesterday's mess. At least with a four run lead he was throwing strikes. The third hit was bad luck and made worse by Sano's error. He did strike out a batter. We need to win big tomorrow because Rogers and Romo will have pitched in 3 of last 4 days and Dyson has pitched in 2 straight and no way he's going 3 in a row after those 2 outings, so we might be back to putting May in a critical spot.

    1. Everything about Dyson's stat line and everything about what we are learning about him as a person says that these two outings are anomalies and he is going to be fine.

      I haven't read/heard Baldelli's comments about putting Dyson in for that first game - but 20/20 hindsight clearly screams that it was a mistake. Putting him in last night makes total sense to try and give him an immediate opportunity to get on track and instead it compounded the problem but provided Romo an opportunity to shine. Dyson will be fine and maybe these bad outings will be a positive in the long run as he overcomes it and settles in.

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