Minnesota Sports Forum

Twins are tied with Detroit after this game.

The Pitching gave the team a chance and the Twins were a hit away from sending the game to extra innings or winning it in the 9th. I hope Jon Ryan Murphy likes it in AAA because with Gimenez playing all over the place and hitting when he does play...yeah.

LST I did feel like a power hitter would have been nice at a couple spots in this game but Grossman did get on base twice so tough to complain about that and playing 1b Gimenez walked twice.

I watched the game yesterday, monster...Detroit's RF made a terrific play in the 9th to hold Castro to a single on a ball that could have rolled all the way to the fence...if he doesn't cut it off, Castro gets extra bases and scores the tying run on Mauer's bloop. It was discouraging that a not very good pitcher kept us so off balance with his junk, but our pitching continues to excel. Who would have thought that our ERA would be a run lower than everyone else after 7 games?

longstrangetrip wrote:I watched the game yesterday, monster...Detroit's RF made a terrific play in the 9th to hold Castro to a single on a ball that could have rolled all the way to the fence...if he doesn't cut it off, Castro gets extra bases and scores the tying run on Mauer's bloop. It was discouraging that a not very good pitcher kept us so off balance with his junk, but our pitching continues to excel. Who would have thought that our ERA would be a run lower than everyone else after 7 games?

Yeah if ai remember right their OF made a couple nice plays and the Twins wasted a couple opportunities.

I only watched the condensed game but it felt like the Tigers were getting a lot of close pitches and the Twins weren't. Duffy came in and did his job and Breslow looked sharp.

Have I mentioned my weird thought that visually Sano reminds me of Wiggins for some reason? It's kinda funny partly because their body types couldn't be more more different than they are. Lol

Hey that Ervin Santana guy is pretty good.

Kepler may have found his groove.

Buxton hit a ball for a hit and looked good doing it. Sweet.

LST's favorite player Robbie Grossman had a pretty good day. :)

With a Detroit loss the Twins are tied for 1st place again. Fun stuff.

Twins are getting back to the team we thought we would see. Yesterday the defense should have been better and they would have had a chance.

Mejia went down and Haley is on the DL. Vargas and Boshers up. I guess that means Duffy is in that 5th spot? He has looked pretty good in the pen.

Still they are 8-9 and some good things have happened. None of them include that Robbie Grossman guy what a bum. :)

Sano ate his veggies.

bleedspeed177 wrote:Sano ate his veggies.

Right now he is on pace for a monster year. I still can't shake how every time I see his face I think of Wiggins. It's weird

A few thoughts.

Last game Hughes was good enough to win. Both teams had adventures in the outfield and he could have easily been off the hook for one run. To me if Hughes can average 5 2/3s innning and have an era under 5 that could be good enough to help this team especially compared to last year where that would stake him as 2nd best starter on the team. He is doing what he is doing with speeds under 90mph so you got to give him credit for that. The other day on the podcast Smalley was saying that Hughes always has had some weird aspect of his deliever that makes the ball seem to get on hitters faster than what the radar gun says and that helps him now but he really tips his hat to one of his outings last week where he really pitched because he just doesn't have the stuff that he once had. He also said he is encouraged because he said Hughes threw more changeups. To me they need Hughes to at least be a serviceable 5th starter type this year I don't think the other young guys are ready. It's also possible he gets better as the year goes on as he returns from a year off. The bar is low for him but for a few months they are probably gonna have to run him out there if he is at all effective.

The Twins did a nice job of righting the ship after a bit of a dreadful slide for a few games. I was looking back at last year's schedule and they are only a handful of games ahead because after going 0-9 they played .500 ball for around 10 games. The next 20 or so games last year's Twins won like 3 games or something brutal. They had a 9 game losing streak and soon after an 8 game losing streak or something. Is the Twins can keep from that type of slide they could get 70 or more wins and that would be a nice step in the right direction.

Some of the young hitters are doing better. Smalley was telling a story about how he was struggling early one year and Olivia told him one year the first month he hit a buck eighty and then I won the battling title. Either I remember the details of the story wrong or Olivia made up a story to make Smalley feel better because the splits I looked up don't match. Lol speaking of batting champs...man Mauer has struggled this year there is no way he keeps hitting this bad. Smalley said it's amazing what he is able to do with the long swing he has and then went on to explain what a long and short swing was and I don't think I understood that before. Kudos to Souhan for having Smalley explain it.

Also that KC pen is far from impressive right now. It's kinda sad to see.

Good stuff. How about our Cy Yong contending pitcher.

http://www.espn.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/79131/mvp-and-cy-young-watch

AL Cy Young

Ervin Santana, Twins

The lessons learned at the end of last season have paid off for Santana, who has been the game's dominant pitcher, with an 0.77 ERA. Elias research shows he's the only pitcher to begin a season with five straight starts allowing no more than one run and four hits, since the mound moved to 60 feet, 6 inches in 1893. This might not be a fluke. Santana had a 2.41 ERA in his last 18 starts in 2016.

Dallas Keuchel, Astros

As long as Keuchel can keep the ball at the bottom of the strike zone like he has for the first month, he's likely to be quite successful. His current run is unprecedented. Keuchel is the first pitcher in Astros history to begin a season with six straight starts of at least seven innings and no more than two runs allowed.

Chris Sale, Red Sox


Through his first five starts with the Red Sox, Sale is looking Kershawian, with 52 strikeouts, six walks and one home run allowed. It has been Sale's fastball that is popping, averaging 94 mph; his miss rate (28 percent) with it is back up to 2015 levels (remember, he took some velocity off the pitch in 2016). And now that he has catchers who can handle his stuff, Sale's called strike rate with his fastball (41 percent) is in line to be considerably higher than it was during his White Sox days.

Jason Vargas, Royals (Dark Horse)

We could have easily tabbed James Paxton here, but Vargas' story is slightly more interesting. After making 12 starts in the previous two seasons, Vargas was great in his first three starts, faltered in his fourth, but then bounced back with a strong start to open May. A great changeup is what propelled it -- the most valuable one in baseball in April per Fangraphs' run values.