Twins start a 3-game series against Cleveland today and it's the first time these two teams have met since the opening week of the season. Even though there is a little over 100 baseball games left to play, it seems like this is a critical series for the Spiders, especially given that these two teams don’t meet for another 5 weeks -- a mere 12 days or so before the trading deadline.

To show how dire it is for Cleveland, they would have to win 64 games (62%) to finish ahead of a .500 playing Twins. Both Cleveland winning over 60 percent of their games and the Twins just winning 50 percent seems unlikely. But hey, it’s baseball. It could happen, but if you’re Cleveland, you need for it to start happening over these next three games. Twins winning two or three of these games may just in fact push the Cleveland front office into tear it down mode.

Justin Shane Bieber on the mound for Cleveland and while he hasn’t done much on the charts lately, apparently he has a decent curve. He’s a high strikeout guy with 1.25 SO/Inning and a 4-2 record. This includes, however, his last game where he was hammered for 6 runs in 5 innings but still got the win statistic because of huge run support from his teammates. Talk about pitching to the score.

Devin Smeltzer on the mound for the Twins and let’s hope he can pitch another 6 or 7 inning gem and keep this train chugging along. Oh did I mention Nelson Cruz is back?

First pitch at 6:10p. Settle in for some nice Central Division Baseball as we hit the summer months of what so far is a very fun baseball season.

Twins Lineup
RF Kelpler
SS Polanco
DH Cruz
LF Rosario
C Garver
1B Gonzalez
3B Sano
2B Schoop
CF Buxton