Diamond's on the mound tonight. That's good.
Vargas takes the mound for the Mariners. That's good-ish (he doesn't strike many out, doesn't walk many, and gives up a fair number of long balls, but seems to be getting lucky so far this year.)
Go twins!
Time is running out for Ben Revere. If he's going to hit an honest-to-God over the fence homerun, you'd have to figure it'd be here or New Yankee bandbox. The problem, of course, is that in his entire career, he's only hit four balls in the air out of the infield. Things look grim, but this is the ballpark that has walls just over 300 feet from the plate (seems gimmicky, but I've been assured that it's not) If he really got into one, and the wind was blowing out at about 30 miles an hour, and the fielder Canseco'd it, he might have a shot.
Cole DeVries takes the ball for the good guys today. I've mentioned it before, but I really thought that when DeVries was sent back down that first time that he was gone for good. Instead, he's pretty much become our second best starter. I like his strikeouts, such as they are*, I love his walk rate, if he can figure out how to avoid throwing two or three BP fastballs every single game, I'd be good with him the rest of the way. Good Lord, though, those home runs... he gets grounders on fewer than a third of the balls hit in play, and a full 15.8% of those fly balls leave the playing field. If he keeps this up, I don't know how we're going to be able to rely on him come playoffs.
Clay Buchholz is also pitching, but he's a thoroughly mediocre pitcher, and no one cares about him.
* Fun Fact: At 6.2 k/9, DeVries has the highest rate of any of our starters (including injured ones), and the third highest strikeout rate of any pitchers who are still with the team who have pitched more than 15 innings this year. How is that even possible??
Coles De Vries takes the ball for the Twins tonight. I could have absolutely sworn when he was sent back to Rochester the first time that we'd seen the last of him. However, as it turns out, he's been pretty persistent, and here he is making his sixth start. He's rapidly becoming a semi-fixture in the rotation, and the fact that he's the second pitcher starting off the post-All Star break seems to imply that he might be here a while.
Is that a good thing? I suppose if we had an ideal major league roster, a 5.17 FIP (4.37 xFIP) wouldn't get my heart all aflutter, but looking over some of the rest of the rotation - Duensing (who I wish would just get left alone in the bullpen), Hendriks (is he still with us? It's always so hard to tell), Blackburn (I know he's not in the majors, but you know it won't be long...) - it's hard to say that he's the first person I'd drop.
The A's are sending out Tommy Milone, who's gotten decent results in his rookie season, but seems to be pretty heavily built up by a super low walk rate. If the Twins can hit some line drives, he'll be toast, and De Vries can pick up his third win. Not bad for someone I figured would be kicking it in Rochester for the remainder of his career.
The Twins won last night. It was a pretty good game. Between that and sitting out on the deck drinking delicious gin and tonics most of the afternoon, I'm feeling pretty positive.
Tonight might change that. Drew Hutchison hasn't shown up on any elite prospect lists that I know of, but he compiled a pretty good FIP throughout the minors (2.22) whereas our pitcher (P.J. Walters) didn't wow folks quite as much.
But this is positive day, so rather than judge our starting pitchers by their minor league record, we'll note that Hutchison hasn't exactly wowed anyone in his cup of coffee thus far. Theorhetically, he'd be the type of high-strikeout, low walk guy that would eat the Twins alive, but nothing is stopping this winning streak from hitting '2'.
The internet connection is extremely spotty at my house right now, so instead of giving you the well thought out, well researched behemoth of a game log intro that you all deserve, I'm going to spout off random things that I like and dislike about the team without backing any of it up with anything resembling a fact.
Likes
Dislikes
Pavano* takes on Shields* tonight.
I'm to predict a win. 6-3. Mauer gets a double and a couple of RBIs, but Willingham's hit streak ends (he'll make a comment in the aftergame interview on how all that stuff is cool, but "it doesn't matter, so long as we get the 'W'").
* Both of them have presumably played baseball at some point this season, but if you want all those sexy stats, you'll have to look them up yourself, my computer is currently in a hate/hate relationship with any kind of site where I could look them up for you.
New season, same result - 'meh' pitching, and 'too little, too late' hitting.
I think Sean had it right last game log when he says that the front office knows what they've got, and they know that it's not happening this season. Fair enough, but I'm impatient - I want a World Series this year. Therefore, I've put together a little cheat sheet for how this team can be turned into a contender. If someone with connections could route this to the powers that be, I'd appreciate it.
Pitching
Obviously, the big problem is going to be pitching, so they must obviously trade for some strong starters, and some strong relievers. I've taken the liberty of drawing up some proposals.
Batting
As we saw yesterday, hitting is going to be this team's biggest obstacle (except for pitching, because Lord, do those pitchers suck). Here's a few quick ways to change that.
Until my brilliant ideas are brought to the front office, we're stuck with what we've got. What we've got today is..
F. Liriano (0-0, a disappointing 0 k/9, and a awe-inspiring, but probably unsustainable 0.00 ERA)
T. Hunter (0-0, 3.20 FIP, 0 ERA)
Normally, I'd say that the Twins are totally screwed, but come on... this is Tommy Hunter we're talking about.ZiPs has him projected for something like a 5.00 ERA. Even the Twins should be able to get some runs off this guy, right?