Month: May 2013

It’s time for the Twins to get back in the win column. I’m not sure how they’re going to do it, but getting Joe Mauer back in the line up would seem to be a good start. Having Scott Diamond on the mound can’t hurt, either.

Diamond and Sox pitcher Ryan Dempster went head to head in Boston and the Twins came out ahead 6-1.

I haven’t really followed Twins news today, but I do believe I saw where they activated Cole DeVries… and then optioned him.

I do note with interest that Justin Morneau is hitting ahead of Josh Willingham. Phil Miller of the Strib reports that the first time that’s happened this season.

I’m covering the Kernels tonight, so I won’t likely be in the chat much, if at all, but for those of you who are, I hope you enjoy the game and the company!

The Twins only lost by one… if you keep score by number of hits instead of runs. And they didn’t commit any errors, so they’ve got that going for them.

Alas, what matters is runs and the Red Sox scored a lot of them while the Twins scored far fewer.

Tomorrow should be a better day, if for no other reason than it’s the day the Twins are celebrating the 20th anniversary of the release of the movie “Sandlot” and are going to be showing it on the video boards.

So the Red Sox are in town – and we greet them with soggy, grayness. Yay.

And we face Clay Buchholz with no Mauer (out tonight with a sore back) and with Parmelee in the 2-hole. THAT’s kind of interesting.. not sure what I think about that.

At any rate, let’s see what the boys can do since I’m pretty sure that they’ll get the game in..

I was watching an extra-inning game tonight, but it didn’t involve the Twins (at least not the current Twins), so I couldn’t begin to comment on what happened. I did note from Twitter that Vance Worley seemed to have one of his better games on the mound since joining the Twins, but it wasn’t enough to get the win. For that, your bats typically need to accumulate more than four hits. – JC

Getaway Day! This  is the last day of the series of course and I would be GREAT if the Twins could manage a series win by taking this afternoon’s game. That makes it a pretty big deal of a game for Mike Pelfrey. He’s going to have to continue to improve rather than backslide – and to me that means: a) keeping the pace moving – if this game goes 4 hours, it better be because we played 3 extra innings (not that I want to); b) keeping hits and walks to a minimum – he doesn’t have to be perfect but both those items have come back to bite him on the rear already this season; and c) going deep into the game – we’re past the point in the season where 4-5 innings is acceptable from a starting pitcher, our bullpen needs the rest.

Who knows who will be around to chat during the middle of the work day – I’ll be watching the curiousity that the strike zone has become on gameday while the rest of you enjoy the radio or whatever.

Ouch.

Ok, it wasn’t all bad. Mauer has extended his hitting streak to 14 games (I believe his personal record is 16) so that is cool. According to Dustin Morse, he also now has 7 games with at least 3 hits, currently tied for the most in baseball (Loney, Lowrie). That’s great too..  it just didn’t translate into enough RUNS to compensate for those given up by our pitching.

Really, I’m trying to temper my frustration because that is what I knew this season would be like but I still can’t help but say we need to expect more from Pelfrey than he is giving us. It’s just not enough. Sadly, the bullpen didn’t really do all that well for us today either – except for Perkins who came in after a several day break dealing with an oblique strain and looked pretty good.

But still.. the White Sox.. ouch.

Given my well-announced nerves for the games following nights of double-digit run explosions, I’m hopeful that Correia can keep the White Sox in line just in case we aren’t hitting as well as we were yesterday.

It’s HOT in Minnesota for the record – it hit 95 at the airport today tying a record high for this day set back in 1932 [correction: NEW record high of 98 at MSP & higher elsewhere] – and who knows if that hot weather will help the ball carry a bit more …

I laughed at a tweet from Chris Parmelee earlier today in which he claimed it’s finally baseball weather! Yeah, if you say so Parmesan. Glad I don’t have to wear all those layers and a cup and go stand in the sun of Target Field.

Every TIME!! I swear.. *sigh* I think there is something called a Run Hangover that means they aren’t in “performance ready” shape the night after they get a lot of runs. It just hasn’t been scientifically/statistically examined… yet.

The White Sox win one… Correia wasn’t on that roll that we would need to have to match up against Jake Peavy. We needed to have him keep the Sox batters as off balance as we expected ours to be.. that didn’t happen so much.

The good news is that at least Willingham got a timely, great hit – maybe he’s breaking HIS streak?