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Archive for game logs from previous seasons.

2019 Twins Game Logs

2019 Game 64: Two Identical Siblings vs. Large Striped Cats

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Starting Lineups

I don't mean to harp on the bullpen. We knew going into the season it was going to be the weakest link on this team. And statistically the bullpen isn't horrible, it's just that compared to an excellent offense and outstanding starting pitching and dazzling defense, an average bullpen looks somehow below average. But chin up, mates, the front office has about seven weeks to work with, more and more teams will become sellers as the trade deadline nears, we have a sizable lead in the division, lots of games against weak divisional foes to come, and the team is relatively healthy. So, laissez les bons temps rouler.

Today the Twins send Jake Odorizzi to the mound. Simply put, he's been awesome with sugar frosting on top. His 1.96 ERA leads the American League and gives him a 228 ERA+ on the season. He's struck out 70 batters while allowing just 21 walks (3.33 K/BB), and he's given up just four home runs in more than 61 innings pitched. With a 0.964 WHIP, he's extremely stingy giving up the bases. He's one of the primary reasons that after 63 games this season, the Twins have yet to lose more than two games in a row. I think it's fair to say The Jake has more than returned on his trade investment of infielder Jermaine Palacios (.266/.322/.386/.708 MiLB career). The Tigers counter the sweet odor of success with southpaw Ryan Carpenter (1-2, 6.23 ERA). He's 28 years old, has thrown a total of 48.1 big league innings, and this year he's given up almost two and half homers for every nine innings he's pitched. So no, he's not as good as Odorizzi, but as of right now, only a very small handful of big league pitchers are. A Twins victory today means another series win and a winning ten-game road trip. Play ball!

2019 Twins Game Logs

Game 62: Twins at Tigers

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Tonight the Twins start the final leg of their long road trip with the first of 3 in Detroit. A year ago we probably would have looked at that series in Cleveland and thought it showed promise - they had a chance to win all three games! This year... it feels like a let down. Hopefully they can turn things around against the Tigers (well, hopefully they turned it around last night with the win...).

Pineda has been called up from the IL, and hopefully he's able to quickly find his stuff again, because the Twins are facing Matthew Boyd, who has some pretty impressive numbers. Of course, he gets beat when he gives up the long ball, and the Twins... they hit those. So maybe you'll want to add multiple names to your HR guess list tonight.

In other news, Philosofette's surgery went well, and she's home and on the mend, though that'll be a long process. Hopefully the Twins can help keep her spirits up!

2019 Twins Game Logs

2019 Game 60: Minnesota Twins at Cleveland Indians

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Martín Pérez hopes to bounce back from his bad start against the Rays. He's lost some of his luster from the beginning of the season. Before the Rays was a workable start against the Angels and a good start against the Mariners (but, Mariners).

Carrasco is an unfortunate late scratch because of health. Cleveland has opted for a bullpen game opened by Clippard.

Insert the rest of what free wrote yesterday about beating Cleveland and driving their probability to win the division to 0%. The Twins already project to have the weakest rest of schedule with an estimated .477 win percentage. The team with the next weakest are the Astros at .481.

2019 Twins Game Recaps

2019 Recap: Game Fifty-nine

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CLEVELAND 5, MINNESOTA 2 IN CLEVELAND

Date:  Tuesday, June 4.

Batting stars:  Marwin Gonzalez was 2-for-4 with a home run (his seventh) and a double.  Eddie Rosario was 1-for-4 with a home run, his eighteenth.

Pitching star:  Tyler Duffey pitched a perfect inning and struck out one.

Opposition stars:  Francisco Lindor was 3-for-3 with two home runs (his ninth and tenth) and a double.  Roberto Perez was 1-for-3 with a home run, his eighth.  Jake Bauers was 1-for-3 with a home run, his sixth.  Shane Bieber struck out seven in seven innings, giving up two runs on five hits and a walk.

The game:  A walk and a single put Indians on first and second with one out in the first inning, but a popup and a line out ended the inning.  The Twins got on the board in the second when Gonzalez homered with two out.  They had a chance for more, putting men on second and third, but a popup ended the inning.

Cleveland got on the board in the third when Lindor homered.  The took the lead in the fifth when, with two out, Leonys Martin walked and Lindor hit his second homer, giving the Indians a 3-1 lead.

The Twins cut it to 3-2 when Rosario homered in the sixth.  In the seventh, however, Cleveland got back-to-back homers from Perez and Bauers to go up 5-2.  The Twins did not get a man past first after that.

WP:  Bieber (5-2).  LP:  Devin Smeltzer (0-1).  S:  Brad Hand (17).

Notes:  Nelson Cruz was back in the lineup but was rusty, at best, going 0-for-4 with three strikeouts.  Gonzalez was at first base, with C. J. Cron on the bench.

Jorge Polanco was 1-for-4 and is batting .336.  Mitch Garver was 0-for-3 and is batting .314.  Ryne Harper pitched two-thirds of an inning with no runs, making his ERA 1.85.  Duffey has an ERA of 2.45.

Giving up five runs in 6.1 innings, you can't really say that Smeltzer pitched well.  But he really didn't pitch badly, either.  He gave up five hits--it's just that four of the five hits went over the fence.  It happens.  He walked three, which isn't as good, but it isn't terrible.  Both the game log and the few innings of the radio broadcast I was able to hear indicated that he was getting squeezed.  Unfortunately, there are umpires who seem to think it's part of their job to "make the rook pay his dues", which is yet another reason we need to use technology to call balls and strikes.  So we'll see how Smeltzer does next time.

As we said, these games are much more important to Cleveland than they are to the Twins.  If the Twins get swept, they'll still have a solid lead--they just will have missed a chance to put the Indians away.  If Cleveland loses the next two, they're in deep trouble, and even if they split the final two games they'll have missed a chance to gain significant ground.  You want to win every game, of course, but it's nice to have that cushion where you don't have to.

Record:  The Twins are 40-19, first in the American League Central, 10.5 games ahead of Cleveland.

Projected record:  We'll just have to settle for 143-19!

2019 Twins Game Logs

2019 Game 59: Minnesota at Cleveland

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Twins start a 3-game series against Cleveland today and it's the first time these two teams have met since the opening week of the season. Even though there is a little over 100 baseball games left to play, it seems like this is a critical series for the Spiders, especially given that these two teams don’t meet for another 5 weeks -- a mere 12 days or so before the trading deadline.

To show how dire it is for Cleveland, they would have to win 64 games (62%) to finish ahead of a .500 playing Twins. Both Cleveland winning over 60 percent of their games and the Twins just winning 50 percent seems unlikely. But hey, it’s baseball. It could happen, but if you’re Cleveland, you need for it to start happening over these next three games. Twins winning two or three of these games may just in fact push the Cleveland front office into tear it down mode.

Justin Shane Bieber on the mound for Cleveland and while he hasn’t done much on the charts lately, apparently he has a decent curve. He’s a high strikeout guy with 1.25 SO/Inning and a 4-2 record. This includes, however, his last game where he was hammered for 6 runs in 5 innings but still got the win statistic because of huge run support from his teammates. Talk about pitching to the score.

Devin Smeltzer on the mound for the Twins and let’s hope he can pitch another 6 or 7 inning gem and keep this train chugging along. Oh did I mention Nelson Cruz is back?

First pitch at 6:10p. Settle in for some nice Central Division Baseball as we hit the summer months of what so far is a very fun baseball season.

Twins Lineup
RF Kelpler
SS Polanco
DH Cruz
LF Rosario
C Garver
1B Gonzalez
3B Sano
2B Schoop
CF Buxton

2019 Twins Game Logs

2019 Recap: Game Fifty-eight

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MINNESOTA 9, TAMPA BAY 7 IN TAMPA BAY

Date:  Sunday, June 2.

Batting stars:  Miguel Sano was 3-for-3 with two doubles and a walk.  C. J. Cron was 2-for-3 with a double and three RBIs.  Jorge Polanco was 2-for-4 with two RBIs.  Byron Buxton was 2-for-4 with a double and two runs.  Jonathan Schoop was 1-for-4 with a two-run homer, his eleventh.

Pitching stars:  Jake Odorizzi struck out nine in six shutout innings, giving up three hits and a walk.  Taylor Rogers struck out the side in a perfect inning.

Opposition stars:  Ji-Man Choi was 2-for-3 with a double, a walk, and two runs.  Austin Meadows was 2-for-5 with two RBIs.  Brandon Lowe was 2-for-5.  Christian Arroyo was 1-for-3 with a two-run homer.

The game:  The first threat came in the second inning, when Choi led off with a double, was bunted to third, but failed to score.  The Twins started the scoring in the third.  Sano opened the inning with a single and a one-out double by Buxton put men on second and third.  Mitch Garver then singled home a run and a sacrifice fly made it 2-0 Twins.  With two out in the fourth, Marwin Gonzalez singled and Sano followed with a run-scoring double to make it 3-0.

The Twins had a big inning in the fourth.  Buxton had a one-out single and advanced to third on a stolen base-plus-error.  Garver was hit by a pitch and Polanco had an RBI single.  A ground out moved the runners to second and third and Eddie Rosario walked to load the bases.  C. J. Cron unloaded them with a three-run double to give the Twins a 7-0 lead.

It looked like the Twins were in control, and they were as long as Odorizzi was pitching.  He came out after six, however, and in the seventh the Rays got back into the game.  Willy Adames and Choi singled to start the inning.  With one out, Kevin Kiermeier drove in a run with a single and a hit batsman loaded the bases.  A strikeout gave hope that the Twins might get out of the inning, but Meadows had a two-run single, Yandy Diaz walked, and Lowe had a two-run single to cut the Twins' lead to 7-5.

The Twins got two back in the top of the eighth.  With two out, Sano doubled and Schoop hit a two-run homer to make it 9-5 and again give the Twins a seemingly secure lead.  But the Rays got back into it again, as Choi walked leading off the bottom of the eighth and Arroyo hit a two-run homer to cut the lead to 9-7.  That was all the would get, though, as Rogers came in to strike out the side in the ninth and preserve the Twins' victory.

WP:  Odorizzi (8-2).  LP:  Ryan Yarbrough (4-2).  S:  Rogers (5).

Notes:  Gonzalez was in right field, with Max Kepler on the bench.  Willians Astudillo was the DH.

Polanco raised his average to .338.  Garver returned to the lineup and went 1-for-4, making his average .325.  Odorizzi's ERA is 1.96.  Blake Parker allowed two runs in 1.1 innings to raise his ERA to 2.61.  Rogers has an ERA of 2.06.

The bullpen meltdown was discouraging, of course.  Still, it should be pointed out that most of the damage came of Matt Magill, who would probably not have been in the game had the score been closer.  Magill has been pitching quite well, though, and almost everyone has a bad game once in a while.  It's the second poor outing out of three for Parker, but to his credit he did get the side out in order after giving up the two-run homer.  It is obviously easier to be forgiving about all this when the Twins win, but even though a lot of them have pitched pretty well I don't think anyone looks at this as a lockdown bullpen.

I like Cory Provus, but for some reason this year he seems to go on and on talking about "momentum".  When the Twins were ahead 7-0, they had momentum.  Then the Rays scored five in the seventh and they had momentum.  Then the Twins got a two-run homer in the eighth and they had momentum.  Then the Rays got a two-run homer in the bottom of the eighth and they had momentum.  Confidence and enthusiasm are important in sports, of course, but it appears that the best way to acquire momentum in baseball is to bat well, pitch well, and field well, and the best way to stop the other team's momentum is to bat well, pitch well, and field well.  If you consistently do those things, momentum will probably take care of itself.

So, this team that supposedly can only beat up on bad teams took three out of four from Tampa Bay on the road.  After a day off, they go to Cleveland for a three-game series which it would appear is much more important to the Indians than it is for the Twins.  The Twins currently lead Cleveland by 11.5 games.  A Cleveland sweep would make us all unhappy, but the Twins would still have a comfortable lead.  If the Twins sweep, or even take two out of three, the Indians might be done.  As it stands now Cleveland is tied for second with Chicago, and when all is said and done it may be that the White Sox will be our toughest competition.  There's still a lot of season to go, however, so we shall see.

Record:  The Twins are 40-18, first in the American League Central, 11.5 games ahead of Cleveland.

Projected record:  We're still on track for 144-18!

2019 Twins Game Logs

2019 Game 58: Rays at Twins

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Don't look now, but Jake Odorizzi (7-2, 2.16 ERA) is the best pitcher in the Twins starting rotation by just about any set of numbers you peruse, and one of the best in the game as of today. The ESPN Cy Young Predictor currently ranks him fourth, behind Justin Verlander, Roberto Asuno and Domingo German, and just ahead of our own Jose Berrios. That's two Twins starters with a legitimate shot at the Cy Young award. We haven't enjoyed rotation riches like this since Santana and Liriano combined to light up the league back in 2006. Odorozzi starts his 12th game of the year for the Twins today. The Rays will start lefty Ryan Yarbrough (4-1, 5.53 ERA), who struggled early in the season but rebounded after a recent minor league stint. Yarbrough's given up just two combined runs in his last two starts since being recalled from AAA Durham. Play ball!

2019 Twins Game Logs

Game 58: twins @ rays

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I was working in the video studio recording graduation last night, so I only saw the last inning of the game. It was a good inning to watch.

Like Jeff A, I haven't totally figured out the pattern for Rocco's bullpen usage, other than it seems that Taylor Rogers is probably the only reliever he trusts 100%. That's probably wise, as Rogers is obviously the best in the pen by a fair margin, but I sort of worry about overuse. It would be nice to get one more very good-to-elite arm out there, or for May or someone else to truly step up to the point where Rocco feels confident putting him out there in late and close against top teams.

Hopefully, we get Good Gibson and the bat's come out furious against Yonny Chirinos, a person I've never heard of, who has nonetheless put up a pretty solid season so far.

That ends today. Let's go, Twins!

Also... Burn the Trop to the ground. What a horrible stadium.