West coast baseball for a short spell. The beginning of this game will compete with the Wild game so make sure you give your thumb a warm up before you furiously flip back and forth between the two games.
On paper, this is a good pitching matchup. Phil Hughes throws for the Twins, King Felix for Seattle. I hope the Twins win 2 out of 3 this weekend.
Mariners trying an interesting strategy here and handing the game to their bullpen straight from the get-go. The Twins take the field behind their young right-hander Pino and look to go 75% in Seattle before they head to Colorado (because I guess the official game scheduler has a sense of humor).
It's a late one tonight, so make sure to brew an extra cup.
Continue reading 2014 Game 91: Minnesota Twins vs. Seattle Mariners
I don't have a slew of things to say about Seattle, and the less I say about the Twins right now the better my chances of avoiding profanity. I don't know if the Twins are a mediocre team in a bad slump or a bad team in a mediocre slump. Either way, at this point in the season and with my frustration turning quickly to ennui, it's probably just as well that the Twins kick off a seven-game road trip in Seattle tonight before breaking for the All-Star game next week. The games will be on late enough that I can safely ignore them without feeling too much fan guilt.
Tonight the Twins send Kevin Correia (4-10, 4.95 ERA) to the mound. His performance of late is better than his record might indicate, losing five of his last nine starts, but with a 3.50 ERA over that span. Seattle trots out Hisashi Iwakuma (6-4, 3.33 ERA), an All-Star last year who is having just a decent season this year after missing the first month with a torn finger tendon. Play ball!
...the quest to rise above .500 continues.
I think it happens tonight. Deduno is going to have one of his terrifyingly beautiful games, and Dozier's going to hit a home run on a pitch that was intended to be an intentional ball.
It's been a nice, busy day, full of golf and lawn mowing. Now it's time for a brat, some beer, some bird watching, and a Twins win.
Deduno v. Vargas
2014 ALL STAR GAME!
GO TWINS!
First Pitch - 7:10 p.m. CDT
Television - FSN
Poor Liam Hendriks. Just his second game back in the show after spending most of the summer in Rochester and he's pitted against King Felix, who rolled a perfect game just a couple of weeks ago. Twelve strikes in a row, a Thanksgiving turkey. But Felix wasn't just the king for that one game this season, he's been pretty awesome throughout. In just his last 13 outings he's won eight and lost none while holding hitters to a .184 batting average. Yeah, the dude has the unique abilitiy to turn everyone he faces into something worse than Drew Butera or Danny Valencia with a bat in their hands. Hernandez has led something of a second half surge for the Mariners with team going 25-16 since the All-Star break. Hendriks is also going into tonight's game without much in the way of backup. The bullpen is pretty gassed after throwing a ton of innings in the Texas series. So I wouldn't expect much from the Twins' pitching staff tonight, and not much from the offense, either. If you need a reason to watch, we might see Joe Mauer break the franchise records for games caught if he crouches behind the plate tonight. I used to know who holds the record, but I Earl Battey'd the guy. That's got to be worth tuning in for one inning, anyway. Is it football season yet? Basketball? Hockey? Bueller? Anybody? Bueller?
Play ball!
MINNESOTA 3 -- SEATTLE 2
Twins Record: 7 - 18 (2-9 since my last recap, oh boy)
Highest WPA - Mauer (1 for 3, 2 BB, RBI), Bullpen (3 IP, 0 H, 0 BB, 5 SO)
Fangraphs - MLB Recap
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Twins win!
Mariners bullpen revealed to be vastly inferior to Minnesota equivalent!
Recap posted much later than expected!
Joe Mauer drove in a key run!
We face King Felix tonight! (focus on the positive)
A win, an honest-to-God win. I haven't seen on of these on my recap day since....
(goes to check the archives) ....
(scrolls further back in the archives) ....
Ah, here it is - July 14 was the last time the Twins won on a Thursday (they moved to 6 games under .500 on that day, 6 games out of first). Which reminds me, let's check out the day-of-the-week standings with 6 days and 7 games (double-header on Saturday, get excited!) remaining.
| W | L | PCT | |
| Sunday | 10 | 14 | .417 |
| Monday | 4 | 15 | .211 |
| Tuesday | 10 | 12 | .455 |
| Wednesday | 12 | 11 | .522 |
| Thursday | 8 | 10 | .444 |
| Friday | 8 | 16 | .333 |
| Saturday | 8 | 17 | .320 |
I would have bet and lost a large sum of money that there wasn't a day of the week over .500 this season. I will note that Tuesday now has the longest losing streak at 8 games (going back to July 26).
@
Next up in the Race to the Bottom™, the 1997 Twins. From Wiki:
The 1997 Minnesota Twins will not be remembered as the strongest team the Twins ever fielded. Manager Tom Kelly's team consisted of a few solid players, but mainly past-their-prime veterans and never-to-be-established prospects. One of the few bright spots was pitcher Brad Radke’s breakout season. The team finished with a 68-94 record, good enough for fourth place in the league’s weakest division.
And to update that for this season
The 2011 Minnesota Twins will not be remembered as the strongest team the Twins ever fielded. Manager Ron Gardenhire's team consisted of a few solid players, but mainly injured veterans and never-to-be-established prospects. One of the few bright spots was Jim Thome's 600th home run. The Twins promptly traded him. The team finished with a 61-101 record, good enough for fifth place in the league’s weakest division.
Time to start reading Baseball America and get a feel for next year's draft, you guys.
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.
