Tag Archives: Milwaukee Brewers

2011 Twins Game Recaps

2011 Game 82 (2nd Half, Game 1) Recap: Brewers 7, Twins 9

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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



2011 Twins Game Logs

2011 Game 80: Milwaukee Brewers at Minnesota Twins

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Yovani Gallardo vs Francisco Liriano

I think the Yankees just own every Midwest team. The Brewers swept the Twins but were then swept by the Yankees. They scored a meager four runs compared to the 22 by the Yankees over the three games. Which leads to somewhat interesting interleague records for the Twins:

Twins away record against the NL: 1-8
Twins home record against the NL: 5-1

Just where the Twins want them. Sweep time!

2011 Twins Game Recaps

Game #76: Brewers 6, Twins 2

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Fangraphs
MLB Game Wrap

I was going to write up a semi-long (for me) recap of the Rockies-Yankees game on TBS, which was actually pretty interesting. But then I saw that wonderful post by meat and decided I don't want to take up too much space with either sincere Twins talk (in brief: we suck) or sarcastic real-baseball-teams talk. Go read that recipe just below here and commence salivating instead.

Hitter and Pitcher of the Week: Sesame Pork Roast

2011 Twins Game Recaps

2011 Game 74 Recap: Twins 3, Brew Crew 4

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Weather: 67 degrees, cloudy
Wind: 12 mph, out to center
Time: 2:28
Attendance: 39,819

Box Score
Fangraphs

The Case of the Missing Mojo - Part II

The doll had no idea what she was getting into when she poured herself into my office on a dreary summer night a couple of weeks ago. Then again, I had no idea myself that the hunt for the Twins' mojo would take me from the Twin Cities to the sunny California coast and all the way back east to Brewtown. The name's Twayn. I'm a shamus.

I'd been on the case for two weeks, trying to find out who had the mojo, but this puzzler had more twists and turns than a barber pole. It seemed clear as gin at first - the starting rotation had to have it. Pavano, Baker, Liriano, Blackburn, they were pitching like a carnival barker - hard, fast, crooked and all night long. How else could you explain the way they've been dominating on the mound? Then in San Fran the offense took off like a Chinatown rocket, at least for an inning, so maybe they had the mojo. One thing was sure, there was no shortage of guys suddenly playing better than they were before the start of June.

Continue reading 2011 Game 74 Recap: Twins 3, Brew Crew 4 →

2011 Twins Game Logs

2011 Game 74: Twins at Brewers

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Scott Baker vs Randy Wolf

One thing that jumped out at me as I perused Light Rail's B-R page was his strikeout rate: 8.6 K/9. What? It did increase from 7.3 in 2009 to 7.8 in 2010, but I wasn't expecting another 0.8 jump. However, the season is just shy of 50% complete and so, how much of the increase is real? Fortunately, that was recently answered.

What we want is the K/(PA-IBB-HBP)* line, and that says at 126 denominator units, 50% is the player's ability and 50% is the mean. Baker has 369 PAs, which means 74.5% of the 8.6 K/9 is him while the other 25.5% would be regression to the mean. The mean we want would be Baker's historical performance with however much regression is needed.

Taking the last three years, Baker has 2240 PAs, which means we need 94.7% of those three years and 5.3% league average. Baker's three year average for those three years is 7.5 K/9, which is reasonably close to the league average of 6.8. Let's just use 100% Baker. More rounding error.

Putting it all together means the best estimate for his talent right now is 8.3 K/9. Combined with the miniscule (0.09) increase in his BB/9 rate equals good things for his results. His xFIP so far is easily his best yet and his FIP is slightly better than from 2008. Finally, an ace!

* I'm calling these PAs from now on, despite it actually not being a plate appearance. He has one intentional walk and four hit batters, so it's basically rounding error anyway.