Err, I mean, Jim Croce with New York's Not My Home
You will be missed, gentlemen masher.
(7 votes, average: 8.57 out of 10)
Loading... Twins record: 55-71
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MLB Game Wrap
Hitter of the Week: Jim Thome
Pitcher of the Week: Anthony Swarzak
How many taters is that? Well, it's exactly twice the number of homers Chuck Klein hit in his career. It's 154 more than the next two active players, Vladimir Guerrero and Chipper Jones. It's 15 40-homer seasons. It's 1 more than the combined career totals of Lou Pinella, Honus Wagner, John Kruk, Lonnie Smith, Todd Hollandsworth, Chuck Knoblauch, Jason Tyner, Al Newman, and Don Sutton. It's 100 more than the combined totals of Kent Hrbek and Kirby Puckett. It's twelve bushels' worth, if you figure one homer is the equivalent of one pound of potatoes.
It's a whole lot of mashin', that's what.
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And now, this week's View from the Ballpark:
photo by Flickr user joyosity
Remember, no embiggening.
I just got this message from "ThaReal_elm_n":
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryAeNSzanKY
Thome Watch continues. Younger and wussier players around him continue to wilt in the August heat, but the Masher keeps on keeping on. The Tiggers have pretty much pwned the Twins for the last year, having won 12 out of their last 13 against our boys.
pitching matchup:
F-Bomb (tRA+: 92, FIP: 4.53, xFIP: 4.41, fWAR: 0.8, 97:66 K:BB in 117 innings)
Rick Porcello (tRA+: 108, FIP: 3.92, xFIP: 4.00, fWAR: 1.9, 76:30 K:BB in 126 innings)
The 22-year old Porcello is having a solid season. Amongst the mortal starters on the Tiger staff, he leads the way in pRAA at +4.8 (Verlander is at +33.0, tied for 7th in the Majors; he's third in pitching rWAR). But the real strength of this club is the offense, which weighs in at +43.2 bRAA and is 5th in the A.L. in runs per game at 4.44 (Twins are 12th at 3.87 -- behind Oakland, for goodness sake). So, tell me again why they wanted _elm_n???
Porcello is a ground-ball inducing righty. The Twins have a lefty-heavy lineup, with no _elm_n and a questionable Cuddy.
It'd be nice if Jim Thome would hurry up and hit number 600, so I can move on with my plan of watching games until we're losing by two, because we're back to the point where the starting pitching is bad, and a Twins lead sometimes seems like an insurmountable deficit. Things are tough to watch, a few players excepted.
The Smartest Pitcher in Baseball takes the mound tonight against Zach Stewart, who is making just his 4th big league start. Our favorite tater-masher should get some good cuts in today.
Let's see some dongers jacked... I mean... umm... yeah.
Twins record: 50-58
Fangraphs
MLB Game Wrap
Hitter of the Week: Jim Thome
Pitcher of the Week: Brian Duensing
Twins record: 44-49
Fangraphs
MLB Game Wrap
Truth be told, I spent most of this game busy drawing hearts around the name "Alex Morgan" which I had written in my notebook...but it looked pretty good on Gameday, especially the part that said "J. Thome homered to deep center, B. Revere and J. Mauer scored". So, three out of four from the Royals to kick off The Most Important Homestand Ever? So far, so good.
Hitter of the Week: I kind of want to pick Jim Thome for this every time he gets closer to 600 from now on.
Pitcher of the Week: I think I'll go with Joe Nathan here, I'm feeling nostalgic.
Minnesota (36-46) - Milwaukee (45-40)
WP: Dumatrait (1-1)
LP: Loe (2-7)
SV: Perkins (1)
JI JIM Mashes Taters and the Iceman cometh up big time as the pair drove in 4 runs and scored 4 runs. Jim crossed home plate 3 times but arguably the biggest moment was not career HR 595 in the 2nd (which was nice), it was the 2-out walk off of Grienke in the 4th. Juicy followed with his first hit of the day, a double, which paved the way for Rene Tosoni's 3-run blast. The Iceman's donger got the Twins back into the game after a terrible top half of the 4th saw the visitors throw up a 5 spot.
After that, it was all Twins bullpen (with a little help from Kotsay in the 7th). Snicklefritz, Dumatrait, Nathan, Capps and Perkins combined to go 5 innings giving up only 1 run on 4 hits. Twins batters scored 4 times in the 7th - all with 2 outs and all off of walks or singles...or on the hilarious fielding error by Mark Kotsay.
Nathan looked good in the 8th. Conversely, Capps looked pretty bad in the 9th. Gardy, quite surprisingly, pulled him out after he managed to put runners on 1st and 2nd with only 1 out and Prince Fielder due up. Perkins got the call and struck the big vegetarian out on 3 pitches! The Brewers still had one more batter, but you just knew it was in the bag after that.
Neither Grienke nor Blackburn figured in the decision. Zack went 6 innings giving up 5 runs on 5 hits, 4 of them earned. Nick went 4 innings giving up 6 runs on 6 hits, all of them earned.
Cuddyer is our All Star representative. They announced it during the game and he got a pretty good ovation. After that, it's a good thing he got in on the scoring with 2 RBI on 2 hits as he badly misplayed a ball off the right field wall in the 4th, leading to a triple for Kotsay and at least one of those 5 runs for the Crew.
On a personal note, I'd like to post a thank you to Cornsilk (thanks for that one guys) who took me to the game today. She doesn't follow the World's Greatest, but I am blessed and wanted to share it with you all.
Weather: Gorgeous
Time of Game: 3 hours 14 minutes
Attendance: 41,195
Weather: 75°F, partly cloudy
Wind: 9 mph
Attendance: 37,498
Time: 3:40
Twins record: 15-31 (last in AL Central, 15.5 GB)
Fangraphs boxscore | MLB wrap
Highlights:
Lowlights:
Over a decade ago I had a side gig as a yard maintenance lackey for a realtor who owned a bunch of rental properties. The guy lived in my neighborhood, in a huge red brick Victorian house with white trim and a huge front porch that I can't remember him ever sitting on in the evenings. Well, the guy must've decided that he'd had enough of living near the college (and his tenants), or maybe business was just that good, but he and his family bought an even bigger Tudor close to the Big Lake in Winona. Being that I worked for him, he asked me if I would help move them out. I don't remember what he paid me, but whatever it was, it wasn't enough.
The day of the move arrived, and I walked down the block to his place. One of the guy's tenants showed up around the same time, either to work off some unpaid rent, get a reduction in rent, or pick up a little cash, I don't remember which. We were told to head down to the basement, which was our main focus for the day. Once down there, we just about turned around and walked back up the stairs and away from what was in store for us. I honestly don't know what made us stay. There was crap everywhere. Collections of bicycle rims, coffee cans full of random junk, old sheet metal signs, rusty miscellaneous iron componentry - you get the picture. And it wasn't organized. Oh no. It was just strewn about, almost as if the guy had opened the basement door, stood at the top of the stairs, and heaved whatever was in his hands into the depths beyond. He was the Smaug of low-grade scrap metal, at least for an area supposedly zoned as residential.
Well, my temporary coworker and I schlepped that junk up the stairs all day, piling it in the back of an old quarter-ton pickup, the gloss of the maroon and white two tone paint on its flanks long gone. It was pretty wretched work, but what took the cake was, near the end of the day, unearthing a freakin' barber's chair down in the basement, one of the old ones with more chrome parts on it than a 1958 Buick. That sucker was heaaaavy, but we were duty-bound to lug it up the basement stairs, hoist it up into the truck bed, and haul it in one of the last loads over to the big Tudor. As we got in the truck for the drive across town, bed piled high with barber chair, rims, and all kinds of other detritus, the tenant looked at me and said, "You remember that TV show, Sanford & Son?" I looked at him, sighed, and said, "Yeaaah...," and hoped nobody I knew saw us until the job was behind us.
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This week's View from the Ballpark:
photo by Flickr user kevin wen
Remember, no embiggening.
Twins Record: 9-12
Fangraphs
MLB Game Wrap
If the Twins had somehow lost this one, I was seriously considering whipping up a Downfall parody video in which ol' Adolph would have cursed the days of birth of Alexi Casilla, Steve Liddle, and whichever pitcher ended up coughing up the lead. Thankfully I can save that one in the DK Box of Tricks for some later date.
Things are starting to look up (he says, hopefully). First series win of the season; first series sweep (basically) of the season. The offense is starting to pick up; Thome made contact today that sounded like it deserved eight total bases, but only got three. Meanwhile, Pavano keeps on Pavanoing. Next stop: .500 (he says, again, hopefully).
Hitter of the Week: Jason Kubel
Pitcher of the Week: You think, when a guy gives up zero runs, only one walk, and strikes out nine, I'm going to give it to anyone else? It's again yours, Scott Baker.