First Pitch: 7:10pm in Minneapolis.
Pitchers
Twins: PJ Walters (Decilious Sandwich)
Phillies: Cole Hamels (Disgusting Lignite)
Lineups:
Twins: Heroes. Probably. Except Butters.
Phillies: Anti-Heroes. Definitely. Except Thome.
GO TWINS!
Archive for game logs from previous seasons.
First Pitch: 7:10pm in Minneapolis.
Pitchers
Twins: PJ Walters (Decilious Sandwich)
Phillies: Cole Hamels (Disgusting Lignite)
Lineups:
Twins: Heroes. Probably. Except Butters.
Phillies: Anti-Heroes. Definitely. Except Thome.
GO TWINS!
Padre covered for me - I'll pay it forward.
Big night offensively for both clubs as they combined for 31 hits. Blackburn gets the W and the Twins got 3 homeruns (Willingham, Span, Plouffe!). Revere, Doumit and Plouffe all went 3-5, Carroll 3-4 and Mauer 2-4 with a walk. Dozier was 0-5 but committed no errors.
JI JIM was 2-4 with 2 RBI.
Burton, Perk-n-play, and Capps all pitched clean innings after Dunce gave up 3 runs in the 6th (that mess was cleaned up by Burnett).
The Twins are now 7-3 in their last 10 and 6-1 at home since being swept by Detroit at the end of May.
Kyle Kendrick
v
Nick Blackburn
As already explained by Gleeman earlier, today's matchup is going to involve a lot of balls in play.
The Twins lost. That's the way it goes. Sometimes it goes that way more than other times. We'll just have to settle for 127-35!
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.
The Twins go for their first three-game sweep of the season today, right?
Ryan Dempster, who's on pace to have the best year of his career (though he only has one win...the poor guy's offense won't help him) faces Francisco Liriano, who is not, but has come back strong. Not that any of us ever know which version of him to expect.
Winners of 9 of their last 11, the Twins are now 24-34, which is bad, but certainly doesn't put them at some embarrassing outlier. I can live with that for now.
Samardzija
v
Diamond
The Twins are 8-2 in their last ten games, which is the best in the majors. Plus, they're only a game and a half behind the Royals. Time to beat up on some more NL teams and move firmly into "mediocre".
Denard Span could feel his brain swimming laps between his ears.
This whole game has been one big blur, people rising up out of the dizzying maelstrom of colors and sounds shouting that we were "coming back!". How many times do we have to come back in this one? It seemed like they had come back 3 or 4 times already, let's see there was the Doumit homer (ed. note - to give the Twins a 6-5 lead), the Plouffe homer (ed. note - to tie the game at 2), the time Babe the Blue Ox ran over the Cubs catcher while Jim Thome dressed as Paul Bunyan applauded from the third base coaches box (ed. note - ????), the time Mastrioanni hit a triple - wait, Mastrioanni hit a triple? this flu is seriously messing with my head (ed. note - Mastrioanni did indeed hit a triple, it scored Dozier and tied the game at 5), and now Morneau had tripled to score Willingham and Gardy is shouting something at me.
Liddle is next to me now. Suddenly I'm on the field. Third base, I think. Yes. I focus all my energy on the bright yellow dragon standing in the batters box (ed. note - Casilla, probably). I hear the crack of the bat and I just start running. It's only after I get back to the dugout that Joe explains to me that I was out by about 20 feet and looked kind of like a fool. Honestly, at this point I'm more focused on not passing out than whether the game is over or not.
Because of that focus it took me a while to realize that I might have to bat. I'm conscious enough to realize this is probably a bad idea as the pitcher's mound currently appears to be occupied by a particularly malevolent shade of purple to my eyes. Josh Willingham looks at me in the on-deck circle and asks if I'm feeling OK. I try to reassure him, but given his look of concern, I'm guessing I ended up speaking in tongues again. I hear him mutter "I had better just take care of this myself." As he walks up to the plate.
Travis Wood
v
P.J. Walters
Finally a game where the Twins have the superior record.
Twins 4, Royals 2
WP: Blackburn (2-4 7.74 ERA), LP: Mendoza (2-3 5.36 ERA)
SAVE! Matt "Busta" Capps (14)
Twins Record 22-34, but the boyos are 7-3 in their last ten #itsmaybenotgoingtobethatbad
Let's look at the King of the Savers leader board, shall we. Perez sits atop the the list with 19 saves in 20 chances, but only Papleboner remains perfect with 15 saves in 15 opportunities.
This is all Nibbish's fault. Blackburn pitching respectably, Capps shutting the door, the offense not being offensive, wild betting, cats and dogs living together. It's mass hysteria. #itshappening
Culture club: Tomorrow I may be back to fill this in, but for now feast on this.