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2019 Twins Game Logs

Game 131 — Twins at White Sox

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Twins back battling the White Sox in the first game of a three game series. This was supposed to be the middle of the "easy" part of the schedule but the White Sox have been playing well lately and are now on track to lose less than 90 games this season. Lucas Giolito on the mound for the Sox and he has been anything but easy. 1.09 WHIP, 11.5 so/9 innings, batters with an OPS of .636 against Giolito this year. Plus he was just dominate against the Twins last week; they had no chance in Giolito's 3-hit, 9 shutout inning performance. Hopefully with some familiarity the Twins can get something going tonight. Pineda up for the Twins and you just never know with this guy. Fortunately the bullpen appears to be well rested.

Should be a gorgeous night for baseball tonight on the Southside. First pitch at 7:10p Cleveland plays Detroit this week so a good effort is needed to keep the hammer down on those dreaded Spiders.

2019 Twins Game Recaps

2019 Recap: Game One Hundred Thirty

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MINNESOTA 7, DETROIT 4 IN MINNESOTA

Date:  Sunday, August 25.

Batting stars:  C. J. Cron was 1-for-2 with a three-run homer (his twenty-first), two walks, and two runs.  Jonathan Schoop was 1-for-3 with a two-run homer (his eighteenth) a walk, and two runs.

Pitching stars:  Martin Perez pitched six innings, giving up two runs on five hits and a walk and striking out five.  Cody Stashak pitched two shutout innings, giving up one hit and striking out one.

Opposition stars:  Jordy Mercer was 2-for-4 with two doubles and two runs.  John Hicks was 2-for-4 with a double and two RBIs.  Harold Castro was 2-for-4.

The game:  The Tigers put two men on in the second but did not score.  In the third, the Twins broke through for two runs.  Schoop walked and scored on a Mitch Garver double.  A pair of ground outs, which should have brought all kinds of joy to the old school baseball types, brought Garver home and made the score 2-0.

It went to 5-0 in the fourth.  Miguel Sano led off the inning with a double, Max Kepler was hit by a pitch, and Cron delivered a three-run homer.  The Tigers bounced right back with two in the fifth, though.  Mercer and Hicks started the inning with doubles, making it 5-1, and a two-out single by Castro cut the margin to 5-2.

The Twins got the run back in the sixth.  Cron drew a one-out walk and with two down, Schoop hit a two-run homer, making the score 7-2.  Detroit made it somewhat interesting in the ninth.  With one out, Willi Castro singled, Mercer doubled, and Hicks singled, dropping the lead to three runs at 7-4.  The next two batters went out, however, and the victory was preserved.

WP:  Perez (9-5).  LP:  Matthew Boyd (6-10).  S:  None.

Notes:  Kepler was in center and Marwin Gonzalez in right in the continued absence of Byron Buxton.  Luis Arraez was in left in the absence of Eddie Rosario.  Arraez was 0-for-2 with a walk and is batting .335.

The Twins were out-hit in this game 9-5, and yet still won 7-4.  They drew six walks and had a hit batsman, which helped.  It also helped that of the five hits, one was a double and two went over the fence.  And it helped that the two that went over the fence came with a combined total of three men on base.  The Twins went 1-for-3 with men in scoring position.  That's a good average, but it's hard to score seven runs with only three at-bats with men in scoring position.  It worked for this game, though.  If someone has time, I'd be curious to know what some of the extremes are for that sort of thing--most runs on fewest hits, most runs with only a few at-bats with men in scoring position, that sort of thing.  Obviously, I'm not going to take the time to find out, but if someone else wanted to, that would be cool.

Now that players weekend is over, I hope someone takes those white-on-white uniforms and burns them.  I wasn't crazy about the black ones, either, but at least you could read the numbers and the nicknames on them.  The whole Players Weekend thing doesn't do much for me, but if we have to have it, let's at least do it well.  It's hard for me think how many people had to look at those white-on-white things and approve them.  I don't know what they were thinking.

A 3-3 homestand against two of the weakest teams in the league is not exactly what we hoped for.  On the other hand, it's a lot better than the 1-3 we had two days ago.  And you know, you can have all kinds of fun with artificial endpoints.  In their last six games, the Twins are 3-3.  If you look at their last ten games, they're 7-3.  If you look at their last eighteen games, they're 9-9.  If you look at their last twenty-two games, they're 13-9.  And so on.

Ultimately, the only numbers that really matter are the ones that are shown below:  their record for the season and how far ahead they are of the second place team.  As we've said before, they don't have to win a certain number of games to win the division, they just need to win one more than their nearest rival.  Right now, they've won three more with thirty-two games to play.  Those are really the only numbers that count.

Record:  The Twins are 79-51, in first place in the American League Central, 3.5 games ahead of Cleveland.

Projected record:  We're still on track for 111-51!

2019 Twins Game Logs

2019 Game 130 or so: Tigers at Twins

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Starting Lineups

Win Probability: 61.7%

There's been a decided turn in the weather the past week - cooler and drier, almost autumnal. It's the kind of weather that prompts one's mind to pivot towards fall. The leaves changing colors. A touch of frost on the grass of a morning. And my favorite team battling a worthy rival in a close-fought pennant race. Never mind that the Twins followed up their most recent butt-kicking road trip by coming home and screwing the pooch against the Pale Hose. Today is ripe for a little redemption. Here's hoping they win this game and series and salvage a split on the home stand.

Martin Perez starts for the Twins today. He's had some ups and downs this season, but a cursory glance at this BBR.com page will show that for the most part, we got what we paid for. In most major stat categories, Perez's performance metrics for the year are all closely aligned with his career averages. Taking the ball for the Motor City today is lefty Matthew Boyd (6-9, 4.24 ERA, 201 K) in his first start since coming off paternity leave. He was oh-fer in his three starts at Target Field last year. Play ball!

2019 Twins Game Recaps

2019 Recap: Game One Hundred Twenty-seven

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CHICAGO 4, MINNESOTA 0 IN MINNESOTA

Date:  Wednesday, August 21.

Batting stars:  None.

Pitching stars:  Ryne Harper pitched a scoreless inning, giving up a hit and a walk and striking out one.  Sam Dyson pitched a perfect inning and struck out one.  Tyler Duffey struck out two in a perfect inning.  Trevor May pitched a scoreless inning, giving up a hit and striking out one.

Opposition stars:  Lucas Giolito struck out twelve in a complete game shutout, giving up three hits and no walks.  Jose Abreu was 3-for-5 with a double and two RBIs.  Leury Garcia was 2-for-5 with two runs.  Tim Anderson was 2-for-5.

The game:  The Twins helped the White Sox get two runs in the first inning.  Garcia led off with a single, and runners were on first and second when Jorge Polanco failed to touch second on what should have been a force out.  Abreu then singled home a run, a wild pitch moved runners to second and third, and Matt Skole singled to make it 2-0.

In the third, singles by Garcia, Anderson, and Abreu made it 3-0.  In the fifth, Abreu doubled, went to third on a ground out, and scored on a wild pitch to make it 4-0.

Meanwhile, the Twins could get nothing accomplished on offense.  Polanco had a bunt single in the first, Nelson Cruz had a one-out single in the fourth, and Jonathan Schoop had a one-out double in the eighth.  That was all the offense the Twins had, with Schoop the only Twin to get as far as second base.

WP:  Giolito (14-6).  LP:  Jake Odorizzi (13-6).  S:  None.

Notes:  Max Kepler remained in center field, with Jake Cave in right, in the continued absence of Byron Buxton.  Luis Arraez was at third base, with Miguel Sano moving to first.  Eddie Rosario started in left, but was removed in the fifth inning due to a tight hamstring.  Rather than use an outfielder, the Twins moved Arraez to left, Sano to third, and put Ehire Adrianza in the game at first base.  I'm not sure why you'd rather have Sano at third than Adrianza, but I admit that I haven't looked at their defensive stats at third base.

Arraez was 0-for-3 and is batting .341.  Cruz was 1-for-4 and is batting .303.  Duffey has an ERA of 2.95.

The Twins made another error and threw three more pitches to the backstop.  I'm probably sounding like Johnny One-note mentioning this all the time, but I'd be happy to stop mentioning it if the Twins would stop doing it.  I could easily have missed it, but I don't remember Rocco or the front office publicly addressing the defensive lapses.  The only thing I've hears is the occasional comment that "No one feels worse about that than [the responsible player]", which is probably true but doesn't do anything to solve the problem.  I have no idea what may be going on privately, of course, nor is there any reason I should.  But whatever they may be doing privately doesn't seem to be helping, and publicly they don't seem very concerned.  They should be.  When you play bad teams, you can sometimes rely on your batting to overcome your defensive woes.  When you play good teams, you can't afford to give them free bases and extra outs.  The Twins had better get the defense tightened up pretty soon.

It's obviously disappointing to lose two of three to the lowly White Sox, and it's tempting to get really upset about it.  But the thing is, that's baseball.  A bad team takes a series from a good team sometimes.  Giolito is a very good pitcher, and he'll shut a team down sometimes.  Ivan Nova is not as good as Giolito, but he's good enough that he'll have an occasional really good game, too.  And the Twins did not have a lot of luck in this series--fourteen hits with only four runs in the first game, lots of soft-contact hits for the White Sox in the last game.  It happens.  Yes, the Twins made some contributions to their bad luck, but it was still a factor.  It happens, because it's baseball.  That's why there's no such thing as an upset in any particular baseball game.  As Joaquin Andujar told us, the one word that describes baseball best is youneverknow.

The good news is that Cleveland lost, too.  The Twins don't have to win any specific number of games to win the division.  They just have to win one more than the Indians.  Right now, they've won three more.  I'm not saying "All is well", but I'd still rather be three games up than three games back.

Record:  The Twins are 77-50, in first place in the American League Central, three games ahead of Cleveland.

Projected record:  We'll just have to settle for 112-50!

2019 Twins Game Recaps

2019 Recap: Game One Hundred Twenty-six

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MINNESOTA 14, CHICAGO 4 IN MINNESOTA

Date:  Tuesday, August 20.

Batting stars:  Nelson Cruz was 4-for-5 with a home run (his thirty-third), three doubles, three runs, and three RBIs.  Max Kepler was 2-for-5 with a home run (his thirty-fourth), three runs, and three RBIs.  Eddie Rosario was 2-for-5 with two RBIs.  Jorge Polanco was 1-for-4 with a two-run homer (his nineteenth) and two runs.

Pitching stars:  Michael Pineda pitched seven innings, giving up four runs on six hits and no walks and striking out four.  Trevor May pitched a perfect inning and struck out one.

Opposition stars:  Tim Anderson was 2-for-4 with a home run (his thirteenth), a double, two runs, and two RBIs.  Jose Abreu was 1-for-3 with a two-run homer, his twenty-eighth.

The game:  It didn't look good early.  The Twins did nothing for the first two innings, as their first six batters were retired on just twenty-one pitches.  In the third, Yolmer Sanchez singled and scored on a two-out double by Anderson.  Abreu followed with a two-run homer and the White Sox quickly took a 3-0 lead.

Mitch Garver led off the bottom of the third with a double, but with two out he had only gotten as far as third base.  Kepler solved that problem, hitting a two-run homer to get the Twins back into the game at 3-2.  In the fourth, Cruz led off with a home run, tying the score 3-3.

The Twins took control in the fifth.  The first two batters went out, but Jake Cave singled and Kepler reached on an error.  Jorge Polanco was hit by a pitch, putting the Twins in the dreaded bases loaded situation.  But Cruz said, "Fear not" and belted a two-run double.  Rosario followed with a two-run single and the Twins led 7-3.

Anderson homered leading off the sixth, cutting the margin to 7-4, but that was as close as Chicago would come.  The Twins put it away in the eighth.  Cruz led off with a double and scored on Miguel Sano's double.  Luis Arraez singled, putting men on first and third, and later stole second, moving men to second and third with two out.  Marwin Gonzalez was intentionally walked, and again the Twins came through with the bases loaded.  This time it was pinch-hitter C. J. Cron delivering a three-run double.  He would score on Kepler's double and Polanco then hit a two-run homer.  It was 14-4, and that's where it would stay.

WP:  Pineda (9-5).  LP:  Reynaldo Lopez (7-11).  S:  None.

Kepler returned to the lineup in center field, with Jake Cave in right in the continued absence of Byron Buxton.  Gonzalez was at first base in place of Cron.  Cron remained in the game after his pinch-hit and played first, with Gonzalez moving to right field.

Arraez was 1-for-4 and is batting .346.  Cruz raised his average to .303, the first time he's been over .300 since May 6.

The Twins did not throw any wild pitches, and they were not charged with any errors, although there were at least two that could have been scored.  Still, I guess it's progress.  I know there's a lot more to defense than not making errors, but most of the errors have been on routine plays, and coupled with wild pitches and baserunning mistakes, it just leads to an overall sloppiness of play that I find annoying.  They've been able to hit enough to overcome it most of the time, and they did so again last night, but it still bothers me.

There was some discussion in the game log about Rocco making an unnecessary pitching change in the eighth, bringing in Sergio Romo with two out and none on with the Twins holding a three-run lead.  I would tend to agree that the change was unnecessary, but on the plus side:  a) Romo got the job done, b) he only threw three pitches, so he should be fine to pitch today, and c) there's an off day tomorrow, so he'll have at least one day where he won't pitch.  So, even if it was unnecessary, it looks like there's no harm done.

Cruz has to be having one of the best seasons a thirty-nine-year-old ever had.  I'm sure Barry Bonds has him beat, and there are probably a few others, but there can't be very many.  He is batting .303/.390/.667, for an OPS of 1.057.  He has thirty-three home runs.  And he's not wearing down as the season goes on--granted that he missed some time, but August is so far his best month of the season.  It's pretty incredible.

Record:  The Twins are 77-49, in first place in the American League Central, three games ahead of Cleveland.

Projected record:  We're still on track for 113-49!

2019 Twins Game Recaps

2019 Recap: One Hundred Twenty-five

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CHICAGO 6, MINNESOTA 4 IN MINNESOTA

Date:  Monday, August 19.

Batting stars:  Luis Arraez was 3-for-5 with a double.  Eddie Rosario was 3-for-5.  Jake Cave was 2-for-4.  Jorge Polanco was 2-for-5 with a home run (his eighteenth), a double, three runs, and two RBIs.  Nelson Cruz was 2-for-5.  Miguel Sano was 2-for-5.

Pitching stars:  None.

Opposition stars:  Ryan Goins was 3-for-4 with two runs.  Jose Abreu was 1-for-4 with a three-run homer, his twenty-seventh.  Ivan Nova pitched 5.1 innings, giving up two runs on ten hits and one walk and striking out two.

The game:  The Twins once again scored early.  Arraez and Polanco started the first inning with back-to-back doubles and Cruz followed with a single, putting the Twins up 2-0.  They missed a chance to add to the lead in the second, putting two on with two out but failing to score.  It cost them, because in the third singles by Matt Skole, Yolmer Sanchez, and Goins and a three-run homer by Abreu put the White Sox ahead 4-2.

The Twins put two on with two out in the fourth and did not score.  They had men on second and third with one out in the sixth, but the contact play cost the Twins again, as Sano was thrown out at the plate on a grounder to third.

In the seventh, Tim Anderson doubled, went to third on a ground out, and scored on a squeeze bunt to make the score 5-2.  Polanco hit a home run in the  bottom of the seventh to cut the margin to 5-3 and give the Twins some hope.  The hope was quickly dashed, however, as Chicago got the run back in the eighth.  Goins singled, Jon Jay walked, and Eloy Jimenez singled to make the score 6-3.

The Twins did threaten in the ninth.  Singles by Arraez, Cruz, and Rosario cut the lead to 6-4 and brought the winning run to the plate with two out.  But Sano struck out, and the game was over.

WP:  Nova (9-9).  LP:  Kyle Gibson (11-6).  S:  Alex Colome (24).

Notes:  Max Kepler was held out of the game, presumably due to lingering effects of his heat-related illness Sunday.  That means the Twins went with an outfield of Rosario-Cave-Marwin Gonzalez.  That's not a good defensive outfield.  It's hard to tell whether it made any difference--no defense can stop a three-run homer--but it certainly didn't help.

Cruz returned to the lineup as the DH.

Arraez is now batting .348.

Gibson pitched 6.2 innings, giving up five runs on six hits and one walk and striking out four.

This was not the way the start of the "soft spot in the schedule" was supposed to go.  Still, it's not realistic to expect the Twins to win every game, even against bad teams, and if the Twins win the next two to take the series, that would be an acceptable outcome.  It also seems like, as much as anything, the Twins simply had some bad luck.  They out-hit the White Sox 15-8.  They had twelve singles, two doubles, and a home run.  They also drew a walk.  And they were 3-for-9 with men in scoring position, so it's not like they weren't producing in the clutch.  Yet, they managed to score only four runs.  That's not very easy to do.  It's frustrating, but it's baseball, and it happens.  I'll go out on a limb, though, and predict that if the Twins get fifteen hits again tonight they will score more than four runs.

Record:  The Twins are 76-49, in first place in the American League Central, two games ahead of Cleveland.

Projected record:  We'll just have to settle for 113-49!