It begins.
Hope you got your Predictions in.
It begins.
Hope you got your Predictions in.
Another season, another postseason prediction contest. Spoiler your predictions below. They are due by first pitch of today's game.
ALWC: OAK at NYY
NLWC: COL at CHC
ALDS: CLE at HOU
ALDS: OAK/NYY at BOS
NLDS: ATL at LAD
NLDS: COL/CHC at MIL
ALCS:
NLCS:
World Series:
We've got some unfinished business heading into the postseason. One side note: this is still considered regular season baseball, so all teams still have the expanded 40-man rosters.
Continue reading 2018 Games 163: MIL vs. CHC / COL vs. LAD
Inspired by Rhu_Ru's question in Saturday's game, I decided to look it up. An hour later and I have something to check every game from 1901 through 2017. I split up the analysis into two groups, one team and combined teams, and categorized that based on length of game: fewer than nine innings, nine innings, and extra innings. The nine inning games can be either the full nine innings or nine for the visitor and eight for the home team. Fewer than nine innings required both teams to play no more than eight innings while extra innings requires both teams to play at least ten.
I went above ten runs scored in an inning but it gets uninteresting quickly. While searching through games with higher number of runs scored in an inning I came across two games I found interesting in some way.
First, I believe this game has the most runs scored in a single inning in modern baseball.
Second, the start of this game must have been extremely depressing for any Reds fans following the game.
With this being the birthday of John Gordon, Dan Gladden, and Cory Provus, it seemed like an appropriate time to write a short essay about the Twins radio broadcasters.
Continue reading A Brief History of Twins Radio Broadcasting
Odorizzi v. Giolito
Getaway Day Recently-regular lineup.
Play ball.
!Day Game Alert!
The Twins haven't scored a ton of runs, but their differential is not as jaw-dropping as I'd expected to see. Competent-to-Good pitching helps I guess. If this team can stay within a half-dozen games of first, I'd love to see them add some offense before the deadline. I'd even be happy with the return of second-half-2017 Dozier, Morrison, Buxton & Polanco with a little Santana (and eventually Sano ... hopefully sometime later this summer?) sprinkled in.
Anyway, Boston's legit, and no matter the outcome of today's game (Good Gibson v. Porcello ... yeah), I'm encouraged by the Twins' play against 'em. Add some offense and a continued mediocre run by Cleveland and this team may still be competing in late August.
What a goofy club. Win series' against the teams ahead of you in the standings: took 2/3 against Detroit and 3/4 against Cleveland, but lose to those chasing you: only 1/3 against KC and in danger of losing 3/4 against Chicago.
In an attempt to salvage a split with the South Siders, the Twins give Jose Berríos the ball whose lone loss in the past four starts was a no-show by the Twins offense in Seattle - 1 run on 4 hits. Jose scattered 8 hits over 7 1/3 innings, allowing only 2 earned runs (the 2nd the result of walking his last batter faced and Duke & Reed combining to untie the 8th inning tie ... in Seattle's favor) while striking out 8 and walking 1.
White Sox counter with 36-year-old RHP James Shields, owner of a 1-6 record on the year with a 91 ERA+, 4.27 FIP & 1.258 WHIP. In his last outing against Minnesota (May 6), Shields left in the 7th with one out, a one-run Chicago lead and runners at the corners. His replacement, Luis Avilan, promptly gave up a 2-run double to Logan Morrison.
Let's see what these two mediocre teams have to offer today.
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.