Bauer (4-7, 4.18 ERA) vs. Gibson (11-9, 3.96 ERA)
Now that the Twins have finished up helping the Royals stay ahead of the Tigers, they're hanging around Target Field to see if they can't get the Clevelands into the wild card race. I really haven't been paying a lot of attention, because last place, but at least it sounds like Mauer is back to being Mauer and Gibson has been throwing pretty good as of late.
Gibson (3-0, 0.93) vs. Price (2-1, 4.39)
I think its safe to call Gibson the ace of this "staff" at the 11% point of the season after three good outings, with that last one being pretty stupendous. It may have been somewhat smoke and mirrors, since he's not striking out a whole lot of guys at 4.7/9, so hopefully we aren't looking at a Blackburn type of situation. I don't think that is the case, but I'm not the most optimistic of sports fans. I mentioned it last night in the CoC, but if Gibson can keep this going the starters for next year might be halfway competent, which would be nice.
His poor opponent is David Price, who recently got knocked around by the punchless Yankees, who are just 22nd in runs scored, but, like, top 5 in dollars per run scored (possibly as high as #2 behind the Dodgers). He's striking a bunch of guys out, though, and has had a couple good outings with a couple bad outings. Hopefully today is one of the bad outings.
On an unrelated topic, I used a new hoppinh technique on Saturday that was kind of fun called first wort hopping. Making an IPA, I took the hops I was going to use near the end of the boil (where flavor/aroma hops are added) and put them in the kettle during the sparge before the boil. This is said to increase the utilization of the flavor/aroma acids in the hops. It simplified things, for sure, and I'm excited to see how it turns out.
Gibson (2-2, 6.45 ERA) vs. Hanson (4-2, 5.10 ERA)
Well, the Twins are out on the West Coast, which from a "following the game" standpoint might as well be the other side of the world. Because of that, I have no idea what is going on. What I've been able to gather is that the Angels also suck, most likely still reeling from the loss of ii's leadership.
Gibson (1-1, 7.94 ERA) vs. Archer (2-3, 4.17 ERA)
I think I completely missed Gibson's crappy start that makes his ERA look really bad. Since I have no recollection of it, it must not have happened and the stats are all just typos.
Anyway, this AL East trip has shoved me all the way down into indifference for the year. That, and I've had to increase my time away from the internet at home to take care of stuff around the house and help with the Trinket now that we're nearing the end of this pregnancy. I hope the next manager of the team (I assume it'll be Mientkiewicz since his team is winning) is able to beat these guys next year. Also, the Twins are double digit games out of first base. I think its time to trade away all the vets (Joe excepted) and just bring up everyone from the minors and see what we got.
