All posts by nibbish

2012 Twins Game Recaps

Game 87: Twins vs. A’s: The Video Game!

Yes, now you can relive the excitement of yesterday's Twins/A's game anytime you like. Just copy the following code and enter it into a QBasic shell, then run it. Exciting text baseball action!

10 PRINT "Welcome to today's game pitting the visiting A's against the Twins.
20 PRINT "It's a scorcher out here - hot as hell, really. I don't know how these guys are going to do it."
30 PRINT "Cole De Vries takes the mound, looks in for the sign, and here's the pitch."
40 PRINT "It's a thigh high fastball out over the plate, and the batter crushes it for a home run."
50 LET X=X+1
60 PRINT "The score is now" X$ "to nothing"
70 GOTO 30

You've got all that you need for a riveting game of baseball. Go to it.

2012 Twins Game Log

Game 87: Twins and A’s

49 Comments

Coles De Vries takes the ball for the Twins tonight. I could have absolutely sworn when he was sent back to Rochester the first time that we'd seen the last of him. However, as it turns out, he's been pretty persistent, and here he is making his sixth start. He's rapidly becoming a semi-fixture in the rotation, and the fact that he's the second pitcher starting off the post-All Star break seems to imply that he might be here a while.

Is that a good thing? I suppose if we had an ideal major league roster, a 5.17 FIP (4.37 xFIP) wouldn't get my heart all aflutter, but looking over some of the rest of the rotation - Duensing (who I wish would just get left alone in the bullpen), Hendriks (is he still with us? It's always so hard to tell), Blackburn (I know he's not in the majors, but you know it won't be long...) - it's hard to say that he's the first person I'd drop.

The A's are sending out Tommy Milone, who's gotten decent results in his rookie season, but seems to be pretty heavily built up by a super low walk rate. If the Twins can hit some line drives, he'll be toast, and De Vries can pick up his third win. Not bad for someone I figured would be kicking it in Rochester for the remainder of his career.

2012 Twins Game Log

Game 84: Twins @ Rangers

109 Comments

Let's all welcome Sam Deduno back to the big leagues. Even if this if probably one of only one or two starts he'll ever make for the team, I'm interested. For the most part, this is because he's not at all a typical Minnesota Twins starter. Through his minor league career, he's struck out lots of batters, walked lots of them, and not given up many home runs. I'm not expecting much, it'll just be interesting to see how another anti-contact pitcher works out.

Deduno's opponent will be Derek Holland. He's making his first start in a month or so. It's going to be sort of boring to look up much info on him, so just imagine a guy who strikes some people out, walks some folk, and gives up some home runs. There. Now you're either picturing Derek Holland, or pretty much any other major-league capable pitcher.

Hopefully Deduno's first major league start is a solid one, and the 'Sam Deduno' tag that I'm debuting today gets to be used for a while longer.

2012 Twins Game Log

Game 70: Twins @ Reds

58 Comments

10 starting pitchers before the All-Star break. I wonder how often that happens (idle question... don't anyone look up how common this occurrence is, or anything).

It seems like it's probably Brian Duensing's destiny to be a starter. By all means, he's a much better reliever, but he ends up being the type of pitcher who's just good enough at starting every once in a while that he get more and more looks at it. Also, to be honest, I'd prefer him in the starting rotation to Blackburn. We already have two late inning guys (Burton and Perkins), and Duensing's got to be a better option in the starting 5 than Blackie, right? (right??)

Duensing (1-2, 4.44 xFIP*) vs Cueto (8-3, 3.73 xFIP) today. Not many strikeouts, not many walks, not many home runs. Seems like a good time for Revere to be up to some shenanigans.

* He does has a pretty nice 3.03 FIP. Getting lucky on some fly balls, it seems (only 2.3% have left the park).

My buddy is a huge Reds fan, so after the game last night, he of course had to send me a text...

Sweep the Indians. Sweep the Mets. Lose to the freaking TWINS?!

I reminded him that a Dickey-free sweep of the Mets only counts as a half a sweep, and that he shouldn't expect to win any more games until the Twins leave town. Here's hoping they can make that slightly exaggerated trash talk come to pass.

2012 Twins Game Recaps

Game 65: RE-RUN

I DVR'd this and tried watching it, but I got a rerun of that game where Plouffe hit no home runs and Hendriks didn't pitch very well. I think I'm going to call DirectTV about this box, this is like the tenth time it's shown me this game instead of the one I was trying to watch.

Anyone want to fill me in on what happened?

2012 Twins Game Log

Game 64: Twins and Brewers

87 Comments

The WGOM would like to extend a hearty "welcome back" to Liam Hendriks. May you have a Plouffeian turnaround.

Speaking of Babe Plouffe, some of Thome's at bats in 2010 are the only times I can remember being as sure that a particular Twins hitter was going to hit a home run as I was that Plouffe was going to hit one in the 6th inning of last night's game. It's been a joy to watch for everyone - except, I'd imagine, for Danny Valencia, who will now almost certainly get traded at absolute bottom dollar, angering Linds to no end.

The aforementioned Liam Hendricks gets the start today. He was doing quite well in AAA, so hopefully that bodes well for MLB, rather than AAAA.

Mike Fiers gets the ball for the Brewers. This is only his 4th big league start, but in the minors, he seemed to combine strikeouts with good control and very few home runs. Yesterday was his birthday, so going by Plouffe's rampage yesterday, we probably just dodged a bullet there.

Go Twins!

2012 Twins Game Recaps

game 58 recap: cubs @ twins

3 Comments

Tragedy struck in the ninth inning of yesterday's baseball game between the cubs and the twins. The potential was there for an epic three inning save, but apparenly a little thing called "letting a guy finish what he came into the seventh inning of" is a foreign concept to Twins management. I have but one question.

"Why do you hate joy, gardy?"

In better news, the bats got going yesterday. Plouffe has declared war on all opposing pitchers. Pretty much everyone seems to be hitting well lately.

Meanwhile, Scott Diamond's ERA is 1.61. Seriously. I know it's a flaawed stat and all, but that's pretty sweet.