The 2021 season ends with zero chaos. Time to invent our own chaos and make predictions! Spoiler your predictions below.
ALWC: NYY at BOS
NLWC: STL at LAD
ALDS: CHI at HOU
ALDS: NYY/BOS at TB
NLDS: ATL at MIL
NLDS: STL/LAD at SF
ALCS:
NLCS:
World Series:
Casey Mize
vs
Michael Pineda
My first projection post had FanGraphs predicting the Twins to finish at 79-83 while Pythag had them at 69-93. They reached 70 wins yesterday to finally surpass Pythag's prediction from four months ago but FanGraphs' prediction is unreachable.
I tried again two weeks later and had a rosier Pythag prediction of 75 wins. That is technically possible but I doubt the Twins are done losing this season.
Berríos takes on the Twins again. Game in progress.
Joe Ryan
vs
Kyle Hendricks
Joe Ryan received a few extra days off but avoided a trip to the IL. Kyle Hendricks lost whatever mojo he had and his now not that good. He's given up the most hits in MLB this season.
Cal Quantrill
vs
Griffin Jax
Final game against Cleveland for the season. The Twins already won the season series, 11-7, outscoring them 88-63.
The Twins already finished the season series with the White Sox, losing 13 out of 19 against them. Twins are also 7-9 against the Royals with three games remaining so unlikely to finish with a winning record against them. The record against the Tigers is flipped at 9-7 so also unlikely to finish with a losing record against them. If the Twins win tonight and get take four out of six against the Royals and Tigers, they would finish .500 against the division. *does the math* Oof, that is not good against all the other divisions.
Game 1:
Triston McKenzie
vs
Joe Ryan
This game went well last time and now Ryan only needs to finish seven innings.
Game 2:
Logan Allen
vs
Charlie Barnes
Game one has two right-handed starters and game two has two left-handed starters. Both of their ERAs start with a 6 and are closer to starting with a 7 than a 5. Naturally one team won't be able to score at all this game.
Joe Ryan
vs
Triston McKenzie
Ryan makes his second start tonight and the Twins hope to make it four wins in a row and win the series. Cleveland is also at 68-68 so another lose would put them back under .500. They topped out at 10 wins above .500 a couple times, last on June 24 in a win against the Twins. They then lost two, won once, and lost nine times to back to .500. They've since been at best three games over .500 and at worst three games under .500.
Justin Steele
vs
Joe Ryan
Olympic silver medalist, Joe Ryan, makes his MLB debut tonight. He's done well throughout his minor league career. He put up a 12.5 K/9 and a Rhu_Ru-approved 1.6 BB/9 this year in AAA with the Rays and Twins. Only two of those starts came as a Saint and struck out half of his batters faced (17 strikeouts, 34 batters faced). I am skeptical he will be that good in this start, but it is the Cubs.
Bailey Ober
vs
Nick Pivetta
This is, after I did the math twice, game 126 for the Twins. Any player needs to have a minimum of 390.6 PAs after tonight's game to qualify for all of the batting categories. Arraez is now at 352 PAs so he needs 38.6 more to not have outs added to his totals to qualify. Added to the rest of the season and he needs to average 4.05 PAs per team game. His current batting average would place him third, 0.00025 points behind Brantley.
Zach Plesac
vs
Lewis Thorpe
As of this writing, Thorpe is still listed as in the minors.
A win tonight would make it yet another series win. The Twins need all the momentum they can get for the upcoming road trip through New York and Boston.
