Tag Archives: Toronto Blue Jays

2012 Twins Game Log

2012 Game 34: Blue Jays at Twins

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In searching for a positive theme to this year, I've mostly come up with this: if the season ended today, the East would have three teams in the playoffs, and it would be the teams not in New York and Boston.

The Central's not so nice, as I've taken to watching the Twins on mute and favoring the NBA playoffs and various movies. Tuning out when the Twins are playing the Blue Jays is always a good idea to some extent, of course, but at least we've won one or two already (I wrote this before the Saturday game, as my schedule will rob me of seeing that one and this one.

The very American Ricky Romero will be facing the very Canadian Scott Diamond, so let's not screw this up with any stupid chants out there, eh, New Guy Target Field?

2012 Twins Game Recaps

Game 32 Recap: Twins 7 – Blue Jays 6

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MINNESOTA 7 -- TORONTO 6
Twins Record: 9 - 23 (5th in the Central, 30th in MLB)
Highest WPA - Doumit (1 for 2, 2 BB, 2 RBI), Mastroianni (2 for 4, 3 RBI), Bullpen (4 IP, 1 R, 5 H, 0 BB, 2 SO)
NOTES - Twins hitters drew 9 walks, 5 of those runners scored.
Fangraphs - MLB Recap
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Rain delay pushed this one into a West-Coast game time-slot, and with Blackburn going against the homer-happy Jays lineup, you could be forgiven for turning in early. If you did, you will not be surprised to learn that the Jays hit 4 home-runs (Bautista with 2) that accounted for 5 of their 6 runs. But the Twins, armed with the ability to watch Kyle Drabek and Carlos Villanueva throw lots and lots of pitches (not many for strikes), would put across a bunch of runs without hitting any balls over the fence.

Ryan Doumit, who has been hitting well (last 3 weeks - .275/.350/.549), started things off with a 2-run single in the first to erase the 1-0 deficit resulting from Bautista's first homer. Then a nice mix of walks (Mauer, Doumit, Parmelee) and doubles (Span, Willingham) in the 5th broke the game open for the Twins as Darin Mastrioanni's first big-league hit came with the bases loaded to drive in two and cap the 4-run inning.

Blackburn did everything he could to give all those runs right back, giving up 3 runs without recording an out in the 6th, but got pulled with the score 6-5. Both teams would add a run in the end to get us to the final score, with Capps pitching a scoreless ninth to earn a save.

The HR that Perkins allowed to Encarnacion was only the second time all season that a Twins reliever has allowed a run in a Friday game (3 runs allowed in 16 innings on Friday this season - 1.69 bullpen ERA). If one were only paying close attention to the games that one had to recap on Friday nights, one might conclude the bullpen has been pretty good.

2011 Twins Game Recaps

Game #38: Blue Jays 11, Twins 3

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Twins record: 12-26
Fangraphs
MLB Game Wrap

To be honest, I did not watch much of this game today. When I first turned it on, the score was already 2-0. I heard there was a fair amount of _elm_n being _elm_n today. I also noticed that Jose Bautista had more at-bats in which he hit a home run than at-bats in which he did not. Instead, I paid more attention to the Phillies-Braves game on TBS, which was an intriguing pitching duel between Roy Halladay and Tim Hudson, and which featured what appeared to be actual major league baseball players in both teams' dugouts. Dan Uggla put the Braves ahead 3-2 with a homer off Doc in the bottom of the 8th and Craig Kimbrel pitched a damage-less 9th for the save.

On the bright side, I'm ready to see what glories the newly-begun Phil Dumatrait Era has in store for Twins Nation.

Ex-Twins Player of the Week: J.J. Hardy went 2-for-5 with a grand slam (off of fellow ex-Twin Rob Delaney) to finalize his slash line for the week at .400/.444/.640. If there are any other ex-Twins with worthy weekly performances, please direct your humble recapper's attention to them. (Programming note: The Twins Hitter and Pitcher of the Week Awards will be replaced by Ex-Twins Player of the Week for all subsequent weeks this season in which the Twins fail to win a game.)

2011 Twins Game Logs

2011 Game 37: Blue Jays at Twins

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"It's been tough to watch lately. Really tough."

Just about every game log, regardless of writer, has started with some permutation of that phrase. It's been horrifically true, though. When the pitching's good, the offense declines to score any runs. When the offense does click and puts up a gargantuan run total (maybe something like five runs or so), the pitching blows it.

The injuries have played a factor, obviously, but Delmon Young, Joe Mauer, and Jim Thome are not going to turn this team into a division winner. In fact, I'm becoming increasingly pessimistic about our chances of breaking even (we'd have to play 69-57 from here on out to make it to .500. That's .547 from now on, and I don't know if we've seen more than a couple of games all year where they looked like they could play that way for any length of time.)

So, that's that. The team needs to turn around, and they can't wait for the star catcher to come back. They can't wait for the MVP first baseman to get his head right. They can't wait for the "mvp" (lower case) to Just. Stop. Sucking. It needs to happen right now. It probably won't happen (Sean's historical searchings didn't exactly provide a silver lining), but come on... giving up before June is for Pirates fans, right?

We've got Blackburn on the mound today, they've got Jo-Jo Reyes. Both seem to be fairly allergic to striking people out (though Blackburn's 3.5 k/9 is just absurd*), so I guess we can expect lots of hits today. That'll be a nice change of pace, at least.

Blackburn's our "big game pitcher" right? Well, we need this one. Go get 'em, Blackie.

2011 Twins Game Logs

2011 Game 36: Toronto Blue Jays at Minnesota Twins

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Ricky Romero vs Carl Pavano.

Number of teams to make the postseason since 1995 that started at 12-23: one. The previous team to do that was the Blue Jays in 1989. In 1981, the Royals made the postseason with a worse record after 35 games, but unless the players plan on striking for a third of the season, I don't think it's a good model. After that, just one more team* did it: the 1974 Pirates.

It doesn't look good my friends.

* Caveat: I only checked for the years since divisional play started.