Tag Archives: Scott Baker

2011 Twins Game Logs

2011 Game 39: Twins at Mariners

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Finally, the Twins get to pick on somebody their own size. The Worst Team in Baseball is 12-256; the Mariners, 16-23 and in last place in the A.L. West, percentage points "up" on the Bitch Sox for second worst record in the A.L.

Seattle returns home from an 0-4 East Coast (err, Bal'more and Cleveland) trip that ended with consecutive rainouts. So they should be well rested.

Pitching matchup

Scott Baker (3.71 ERA, 4.36 FIP, 3.76 xFIP, 97 tRA+, 40:15 K:BB in 43 2/3) vs.
Michael Pineda (2.84 ERA, 2.67 FIP, 3.31 xFIP, 145 tRA+, 45:13 K:BB in 44 1/3)

The 22-year old rookie right-hander Pineda has been very effective to date, echoing his minor league performance (2.49 ERA, 396:93 K:BB in 404 1/3). He's a fastball-slider guy and, according to PitchFx, Pineda has a VERY live fastball (avg 95.1 MPH), with the slider coming in at 84.7. A right-handed F-Bomb??

Oh, and in case that wasn't discouraging enough, here's some salt in your wounds from the Yahoo preview:

Minnesota outfielder Delmon Young(notes) went 1 for 12 with seven strikeouts against Toronto over the weekend in his return from rib soreness that sidelined him nearly a month. Young is a .227 lifetime hitter at Safeco Field with 18 strikeouts in 66 at-bats.

Enjoy some West Coast baseball, kids. I will be at the Girl's violin lesson for most of this one.

2011 Twins Game Logs

2011 Game 30: Minnesota Twins at Boston Red Sox

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Scott Baker vs Tim Wakefield

Knuckleball pitchers may be ageless, but Wakefield's time machine finally broke. Nonetheless, I think he will have a long leash in today's game. Knowing the Twins' offense, they might not be able to score enough runs in a single inning to knock him out of the game and expose the tired bullpen. Instead, they will have time to perfect the single/walk, steal, sacrifice, sacrifice (fly) strategy.

The Red Sox used their entire bullpen for Wednesday's game, including Wakefield, for a 13 inning game in which the starter lasted 4.1 innings. Naturally, the starter in yesterday's game also lasted a mere four innings, but it was mop-up time after that and anyone important was saved for today's game. The Sox have yet to top .500 after failing two previous times. Hopefully the Twins don't notice the "Red" part and treat these Sox like their bleached brethren.

2011 Twins Game Logs

2011 Game 25: Minnesota Twins at Kansas City Royals

298 Comments

Scott Baker vs Bruce Chen.

Well that sucked. It does amuse me that the team most often picked to win the division is doing just as well as the Twins. I think only Detroit is doing roughly as expected, though the Royals are very quickly returning to their expected level.

This is an awful streak and it's magnified by starting the season with it. If only there was some way to look at streaks within previous, full seasons...

First, some notes about this season's streak to compare to previous miserable streaks. The Twins have scored 77 runs and given up 124 runs, which comes out to 3.2 scored versus 5.2 against.

In 2010, there was a period when the Twins didn't play particularly well in the middle of the season. Concerning, yes, but no hysterics about it. Taking a look at 2010, I note that from games 85 to 94, seven times were the Twins 9-15 over the previously played 24 games (e.g. games 62-85 the first time). They also were 8-16 once and 10-14 twice. During the 8-16 stretch, they scored 109 runs and gave up 131 runs. That's 4.5 runs/game and 5.5 runs/game respectively. In terms of wins it was worse, but the run differential is just shy of one run a game instead of two runs per games.

Let's try another year that also started poorly but ended up okay. Like 2006. Oh look! They also started 9-15 and hovered around 10-14 for quite a few consecutive 24 game stretches. That was a frustrating early 46 games. Anyway, they scored 96 runs and gave up 148 runs to start the season. And that's with a True Ace anchoring the staff. That's an even 4 runs/game scored and 6.2 runs/game given up. And it got worse! From games 3-26, those figures were 3.7 and 6.1 respectively.

Going earlier, I see in 2003, the Twins were as bad as 6-18 with similar run differentials to this season's differential. Games 72-95 for instance they were 7-17, scored 79 runs and gave up 137.

Now, I am not saying things are going to go just like 2006 and the Twins will have a historically great second half of the season or they finally put some pitcher into the rotation and he pitches quite all right. Instead, awful stretches happen during seasons that otherwise end well. Truthfully, I do not foresee any big changes like in 2003 or 2006 that will dramatically alter the team's true talent level. They could continue to suffer from injuries and finish worst in the division, it happens, but that's a worst case scenario even now and acting like it's fated to be is, well, stupid.

2011 Twins Game Recaps

Game #21: Twins 4, Indians 3

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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.

2011 Twins Game Logs

2011 Game 19: Twins at Orioles

225 Comments

Hey, it's game 19? That's the number I wore as a kid! Can we lose?! Well, I was a terrible hitter, so maybe.

Scott Baker faces a Jeremy tonight, but he's not really a Jeremy.

Jeremy Guthrie, at least, is right-handed, for all the good that does us what with Mauer and Morneau out. Guthrie consistently strikes out about five guys per nine innings and walks about two and a half. He's prone to giving up the long ball - more so than Baker - so if the wind is anything like last night, this could be a shootout (although, given the run scoring the Twins have done this year, I'm not holding my breath).

All in all, Baker generally out-FIPs and out-WARs Guthrie, but the offense will have to score some runs for that to matter.

I've gotten aggressively sick throughout the day, so I'm begging the Twins to prop me up with a win here. It would be nice to have a series that was a non-loss. Baby steps.

GO TWINS

2011 Twins Game Recaps

Game #15: Twins 4, Rays 2

18 Comments

Twins record: 5-10
Fangraphs
MLB Game Wrap

After I read the news yesterday (oh, boy), I was pretty bummed. I went through most of the stages - I couldn't believe it at first. I felt a little angry - how could SBG take that place away, just like that? I felt a small piece of ownership; and really, I'm at best on the outer periphery of people who deserve to feel ownership of the place. I thought about doing some bargaining - trying to explain that it was all of ours, that it belonged to the community at this point. I then was depressed most of the rest of the day (the ballgame yesterday didn't help much there).
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