Honestly, it doesn’t get much more perfect in Minnesota for baseball than today. It’s just stunning out there… (so much so that I’ll be out working in the yard listening to the game rather than watching on TV indoors.. We’ve had way too few days like this and the plants are WAY behind schedule)
Today, we match up against King Felix. While his crown may have a touch of tarnish on it this season, he is certainly nothing to sneeze at and can really bring it to the mound. Nolasco is going to have to focus his skills to match – no half-assing it today – because the offense has their own job to do today and shouldn’t have to be there to cover his backside if he gives up anything extra in the run department.
But that being said, we have shown that our offense can match theirs so far this series which given our record doesn’t say much for them but is still fact. We can do this and win or lose, for every fan in Target Field, this will be a fantastic day of baseball.
| Seattle | @ | Minnesota |
| Jones, J, CF | Dozier, 2B | |
| Saunders, M, RF | Mauer, 1B | |
| Cano, 2B | Plouffe, DH | |
| Hart, DH | Parmelee, RF | |
| Smoak, 1B | Suzuki, K, C | |
| Seager, 3B | Kubel, LF | |
| Ackley, LF | Escobar, E, 3B | |
| Zunino, C | Hicks, CF | |
| Miller, B, SS | Santana, D, SS | |
| Hernandez, F, P | Nolasco, P |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | R | H | E | |
| Seattle | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 6 | 11 | 0 |
| Minnesota | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 8 | 0 |
Ok, so we didn’t win today precisely because we let too many Mariners get on base and couldn’t touch the King for more than we gave up… That is how that works with him quite often. We still won the series AND the home-stand so that’s better than I really have any reason to hope for this series – the truth hurts.
Twins announced after the game that they are sending Tonkin back down to AAA and bringing Chris Herrmann back up in preparation for the road trip and NL play. Yeah, we’re going to need the extra bat.