From Andrew Albers’ controlled soft-tossing last night to Sam Deduno’s hard, dancing fireballs tonight. It should be quite a contrast for Indians hitters to adjust to. On the other side, the Twins will face Zach McAllister. McAllister’s a big guy, but the Tigers knocked him around pretty good in his last start, scoring five earned runs in just 2 1/3 innings.
The Twins completed the trade that sent Drew Butera to the Dodgers back on July 31. They received 19 year old Miguel Sulbaran as the “player to be named later.” Sulbaran is a smallish lefty pitcher from Venezuela. His numbers don’t scream, “can’t miss prospect,” but he was MLB.com’s #14 ranked Dodger prospect, so that alone makes him more of a prospect than I expected the Twins to get in return for Butera.
Sulbaran is reportedly going to be assigned to the Cedar Rapids Kernels, so I’ll likely get a close-up look at him in the coming days. He’s been a starting pitcher for the Dodgers’ Midwest League affiliate, the Great Lakes Loons, this season. Like many of the Kernels’ starting pitchers, Sulbaran has seen his innings cut back recently as he approaches the 100 inning mark for the season, so it will be interesting to see how he’s used by the Kernels.
Cedar Rapids can certainly use some starting help. Jose Berrios was placed on the Disabled List today (likely just as a cover to allow them to replace him while he skips a start to limit his innings down the stretch) and David Hurlbut was promoted to the Fort Myers Miracle.
Anyway… on with the Twins game.
| INDIANS |
@ |
TWINS |
| Bourn, CF | Dozier, 2B | |
| Swisher, 1B | Mauer, 1B | |
| Kipnis, 2B | Morneau, DH | |
| Cabrera, A, SS | Willingham, LF | |
| Brantley, LF | Arcia, RF | |
| Santana, C, DH | Plouffe, 3B | |
| Raburn, RF | Herrmann, C, C | |
| Chisenhall, 3B | Thomas, C, CF | |
| Gomes, Y, C | Florimon, SS | |
| _McAllister, P | _ Deduno, P |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | R | H | E | |
| Cleveland | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 5 | 1 |
| Minnesota | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 5 | 2 |
I didn’t really follow the game much, but just from the looks of things, it doesn’t appear that there was much good going on for the Twins. Five hits. Two errors. On the other hand, I guess the Tribe only had five hits, as well. But they got five runs and that’s what matters.