In a rain delay, but game start should be around quarter to 7.
Dylan Cease vs ALL STAR® Sonny Gray
Are the Twins a good team? Can they be a contender? I don't know if we actually know yet. If the bats play, I think they could be, but I don't actually know what the potential of this lineup is.
Hope tonight's potential is around twelve runs against Cease.
Go Twins!
Louie Varland
vs
Dylan Cease
Overall good pitching last night. Not so much the same for the batting part. The White Sox, through yesterday, have averaged 6.17 runs allowed per game while the Twins have scored an average of 4.53 runs per game. Today is a good day to get closer to those averages. Cease strikes out a bunch and the Twins love strikeouts, ranking fifth in most batter strikeouts. I'd suggest stealing some bases as Cease also walks four per nine, but that's simply not happening with this team.
Michael Pineda
vs
Dylan Cease
The Twins hope to split the series by winning the bookends. We meanwhile hope certain relief pitcher(s) show enough improvement to fetch anything in a trade.
Bailey Ober
vs
Dylan Cease
Closing in on 50% of the season finished so lets take a look at what the projections think for the final half of the season.
Pro-rated Record: 69 - 93 (+3 wins since last time)
Runs scored: 757 (+7 runs)
Runs allowed: 860 (+38 runs)
Pythag prediction: 71 - 91 (-4 wins)
Offense has picked up some but the pitching/fielding was much worse over the last 20 games. The pro-rating now expects the Twins to give up an additional 38 runs since I looked at this at the beginning of the month.
FanGraphs now projects 77 wins for the season, down two wins from last time. This still feels about right. If they win tonight, that will put the June winning percentage at .480 and above May's .448. Losing will drop it to .440.
Lineup
Arraez - 2B
Donaldson - 3B
Larnach - LF
Cruz - DH
Kepler - RF
Kirilloff - 1B
Gordon - CF
Rortvedt - C
Simmons - SS
Big four game series starting against the Sox tonight. I mentioned this somewhere else but it sure feels like a long time since the Sox and Twins were going down to the wire at the end of a season, such as it is.
Hopefully we get another outing of good Berríos, for both the Twins and my fantasy team! Cease is getting his third major league start, and the first two weren't great.
As weird as this season has been, at least it's been interesting for us Twins fans.
