So that road trip to open up the season was pretty fun, right guys?
I mentioned this elsewhere, but the AL Central standings are exactly the opposite of what I expected them to be. I don't expect this to continue.
Cleveland's over-performing right now. Their batters certainly are - Asdrubal Cabrera is hitting home runs at a pace of one every twenty at bats after hitting one about every 80 at bats through his MLB career and one every 60 in his minor league career, I would guess that would settle down a bit. Their pitchers are over performing, too. The team's getting lucky, and it's time for the Twins to change that.
It's been a busy week. I think I have the core features in place now, so it's on to other things. Like how the site looks. That will have to come from someone else.
In the meantime, time for the best team in the AL to take on the near worst team in the league. Unfortunately, they aren't in the order I wanted at the beginning of the season.
MINNESOTA 3, BALTIMORE 1
Record - 7-12 (Last in the Central)
Highest WPA - Baker (7.0 IP, 0 R, 9 SO) and Thome (2 for 4, HR, 2 RBI) Lowest WPA - Hoey (0.0 IP, 2 H) and Valencia (1 for 4, SB) Notable - Jim Thome has hit .455 (5 for 11) in the three Thursday games this season and has a positive WPA in all three. Fangraphs MLB Recap
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The story in this one was Scott Baker. For the second consecutive outing, he looked really good. Nine strikeouts (only one walk) in seven innings. Only four hits allowed, and the O's went 0 for 5, with a walk, against him with runners in scoring position. That was actually better than batters had done against Baker in that situation so far in 2011. With this game added in, now opponents are hitting .000/.048/.000 (21 PAs) against him with runners in scoring position so far this season. With that in mind it's probably unlikely that we'll continue to see Baker completely shut teams down as he has recently, but it's a good reminder that he's got the stuff to strike some people out when he's in a jam (24 K's in 25 IP in 2011) and if he keeps the ball in the park (6 of his 7 runs allowed courtesy of the longball - 14.3% HR/FB) he can be a real good pitcher.
Speaking of the longball, Jim Thome and Michael Cuddyer each poked one out, and Thome added an RBI single to supply the offense. It seems like a fool's errand to attempt to draw any conclusions about this team offensively when so many parts are missing, so I'll just stick with the sentiment that I'm glad the offense scored enough runs to make the gem that Scottie pitched stand up.
First Thursday win of the season!
And the first Thursday that didn't end up with a regular on the DL!! (Mauer last week, Nishioka the week before)
Hey, it's game 19? That's the number I wore as a kid! Can we lose?! Well, I was a terrible hitter, so maybe.
Scott Baker faces a Jeremy tonight, but he's not really a Jeremy.
Jeremy Guthrie, at least, is right-handed, for all the good that does us what with Mauer and Morneau out. Guthrie consistently strikes out about five guys per nine innings and walks about two and a half. He's prone to giving up the long ball - more so than Baker - so if the wind is anything like last night, this could be a shootout (although, given the run scoring the Twins have done this year, I'm not holding my breath).
All in all, Baker generally out-FIPs and out-WARs Guthrie, but the offense will have to score some runs for that to matter.
I've gotten aggressively sick throughout the day, so I'm begging the Twins to prop me up with a win here. It would be nice to have a series that was a non-loss. Baby steps.
According to mlb.com Blac_burn "is 1-2 with a 5.79 ERA in four career appearances against the Orioles." Change the ERA to 3.06 and you have pitching joe's numbers for this season. I refuse to look up any more stats for Nick, as with the way this week has gone ignorance is bliss.
Well. That sucked. "Staff Ace" Pavano was ugly, Nathan gave up a huge bomb in his first "low leverage" work since being relieved of closing duties, seemingly half of the team is on the shelf, and the bats are still made out of ass. I guess that's the bad news.
The good news is that there are 145 baseball games left in the season. The good news is that one of those games is tomorrow. The good news is that the Twins' east coast road trips are almost over. The good news is the offense can't possibly be this bad all year. The good news is that maybe the equipment manager will realize that he meant to order ash bats. The good news is that the White Sox have lost 6 in a row. The good news is that Tigers have given up 13 runs (and counting!) to the Mariners.
The silence is deafening.
Part of what I love about the WGOM, and a big part of what drove me to register and join the community, is that the people here are level headed (StatFreak101 excepted) and are comfortable riding out the ebb and flow of a baseball season. It is unfortunate that this isn't the prevailing attitude I hear about the Twins. Sports radio, the Star Tribune comment section, and lots of other Twins blogs are just frustrating to even look at. I assume a lot of this is due to the poor showings of the other professional sports teams, but this is a completely different team in a completely different sport. It sucks that this negativity rolls over for the Twins as well.
At least we have our little corner of the internet. This winter was long and very difficult, for a number of reasons. Twins baseball was one of the things I was looking forward to the most to try to get out of that funk. The season hasn't exactly started well, but it's early. Hey, the Twins won two out of their last 3. If they do that for the rest of the season, they'll be in good shape. I look forward to enjoying (most of) the rest of the season with you all in game logs, riding out the ebbs and flows together.
Final Score: Baltimore Orioles 11, Minnesota Twins 0. Twins Record: 6-11, 6.0 GB in the AL Central. WP: Jake Arrietta (2-1) | LP: Carl Pavano (1-2) Things I'm Looking Forward To: Not playing the AL East. Already Pitched More Innings Than Clay Condry: Eric Hacker.
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