Game Times - 3:07 p.m. CDT & 6:07 p.m. CDT
The White Sox own the Twins this year and brother do they have the receipts. After losing yesterday's matinee and the home series to the Pale Hose in what's become a typically scowl-inducing fashion, the Twins hopped a plane to the West Coast to make up two games with Anaheim from April that were postponed because of the COVID. They'll do that with a doubleheader today, after which the team will wing its way to Cleveland to open a weekend series on Friday. That's a lot of miles to log in just a couple of days.
In game one of today's twin bill, the Gemini will send southpaw Lewis Thorpe to the mound. He was added as the 27th man (I still have not internalized this rule) to the roster for the makeup games. His only other appearance this year opened the truncated series in Anaheim on April 16th that's being completed today, a spot start in which he gave up two runs on three hits over four inning. The Angels counter with right-hander Alex Cobb coming off the injured list for his first trip to the mound since Star Wars day. He threw five scoreless innings against the Rays in his last start before he was sidelined with a blistered finger.
Game two today figures to be the better pitching matchup of the pair, with the Twins featuring Jose Berrios and the Angels handing the ball to Griffin Canning (no, that is not some mythical beast putting up preserves). Both Berrios and Canning hold 3-2 records and pitched well in their last starts. Canning has an overall ERA of 4.78 after some rough outings in April, but he's notched a 1.59 ERA over his last three games. Berrios leads the Twins with 49 strikeouts and his ERA sits at 3.74 on the season.
It seems the statfreak mentality has taken hold among some in the media and the prophets of doom are already casting their gaze to the trade deadline and speculating on what the Twins could get for looming free agents like Nelson Cruz and J.A. Happ and Big Mike Pineda. They may be right, maybe this is a lost season and the front office should look beyond this year already, but then again a lot of people lost good money betting against the New York Giants when they were down by 13 games in August of 1951. Now I'll always have to wonder what they could have gotten in return for Bobby Thompson if only Chub Feeney had been a little more aggressive with his roster moves.
Play ball!