Posts in category GameChat

GameChat – Twins @ Tigers #2, 12:05pm, 1500espn & MLB.tv only

May17
2012 Leave a Comment Written by CapitalBabs

[edit] I LIED! The calendar doesn’t have this broadcast listed for FSN but it seems to be on the FSN list!! woohoo!

photo courtesy of Jim Mone/ASSOCIATED PRESS

First of all, I feel it’s utterly appropriate to recognize that a year ago, today, we lost Harmon Killebrew. For the Twins fans and team, this was a HUGE loss. I think we are continuing to feel his absence both up in MN and in the minor leagues where he had such an impact on young players. You’ll always be missed Killer.

 

 

 

 

On to the game: today’s pre-game roster moves are not what anyone was actually expecting. After last night’s odd victory (both in on-field activity and record), we had some odd announcements. We expected to see Doumit moved to the DL after popping a calf muscle during the game and having Butera replace him defensively in the 8th. Turns out, he had an MRI and it was all good news! Doumit is day-to-day but could be available to DH very soon. Of course that means he joins the ranks of the bench-injured – a growing club with this team that includes Span and apparently Capps as well. In a rare move, the Twins actually did place someone on the DL – Nick Blackburn – with a strained left quad. That does explain the horrible 2 inning outing. However, the team brought up Ben Revere to take the open spot on the roster…  color me a tad confused. I’m sure the decision regarding Revere was made when the team assumed they were losing Doumit for awhile. But I certainly didn’t expect to see the team go to 12 pitchers the day after we used the entire available bullpen to win a game. I think that we have a lot of pressure on Walters today.. let’s see what happens.

Minnesota

@

 Detroit
Revere, CF Kelly, CF
Dozier, SS Dirks, LF
Mauer, 1B Cabrera, Mi, 3B
Willingham, LF Fielder, 1B
Morneau, DH Young, D, DH
Plouffe, RF Avila, C
Casilla, A, 2B Boesch, RF
Butera, C Peralta, Jh, SS
Carroll, 3B Raburn, 2B
  Walters, P   Fister, P

 

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Minnesota

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Detroit

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The Twins won a SERIES!!! Detroit may lead the division at some point (probable) this season but their defense is going to have to improve for that to happen. BUT if you have the bats, solid defense and miracle of all miracles, a BULLPEN, you can go places!! Justin Morneau got 3 of today’s 4 RBI so I gotta say it’s really good to have him back. And you’ll never guess who leads the team in Batting Average right now.. yes, it’s DREW BUTERA! *dies laughing* Statistically, Drew was 3/4 today but actually got on base all 4 plate appearances due to an error.

But, as I mentioned in the pregame notes, the pressure for today was all on PJ Walters. Since our bullpen had to cover 7 innings last night, there wasn’t a lot of room for anything but a deep outing from our starter today. And while Detroit may do their best circus emulation on the field, they DO bring the big bats to the plate. It’s no easy job to face that lineup inning after inning. So while we offer our heartiest thanks and plates of pastries to Doc & Drew for their stellar efforts today, the BOD goes to the new comer, PJ Walters! Congrats on your first Twins win!

Photo credit: Jim Mone / AP

Posted in Twins baseball - Tagged ,

GameChat – Twins @ Tigers, 6:05 pm

May16
2012 Leave a Comment Written by Jim Crikket

I haven’t seem much of the news today so I have no idea what may or may not have happened with the Twins. I do know Denard Span was scratched from the lineup with a tight hamstring and that Justin Morneau returns at 1B tonight.

I won’t be around much, if at all tonight, but I’m opening up the GameChat. Pray for the best!

TWINS

@

 TIGERS
Komatsu, CF   Jackson, A, CF
Dozier, SS   Dirks, LF
Mauer, DH   Cabrera, Mi, 3B
Willingham, LF   Fielder, 1B
Morneau, 1B   Young, D, DH
Doumit, C   Avila, C
Plouffe, RF   Raburn, 2B
Casilla, A, 2B   Boesch, RF
Carroll, 3B   Santiago, SS
  _Blackburn, P     _Porcello, P
  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 R H E
Minnesota 2 3 1 0 0 2 1 0 2 11 14 0
Detroit 1 5 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 7 11 4

Well that was kinda fun!

It’s a good thing that all runs count instead of just “earned” runs or these two teams might still be playing. Before the season started, I recall poking fun at what I expected to be a pretty inept defense that Detroit would be putting on the field. I haven’t watched more than a handful of innings from their season so far, but I’ve been reading and hearing that their defense isn’t as bad as some of us thought it would be. You wouldn’t know that to be the case based on how they booted and tossed the ball around against the Twins tonight.

Regardless of how poorly the Tigers defended, the Twins deserve credit for (a) putting the ball in play, and (b) coming through with some timely hitting, as well. Yes… the Twins… timely hitting! I know… I couldn’t believe it either, but it was happening. In fact, our guys were 6 for 15 with runners in scoring position tonight. Six hits! For that matter, even having 15 ABs with guys in scoring position is pretty remarkable lately!

We’ll skip the discussion of Nick Blackburn’s start… after all, he wasn’t really in the game long enough to worry about it. But the bullpen did a heckuva job again. Jeff Gray, Alex Burnett, Brian Duensing, Jared Burton and Glen Perkins combined for seven innings of 5-hit baseball, giving up just one run.

That was good enough to hold off the Tigers while the Twins bats set about pretty much raking the Tigers’ pitchers. Josh Willingham had three hits (including 2 doubles), while Joe Mauer, Jamey Carroll and Brian Dozier all had two hits apiece. In fact, among the position players who got in the game, only Erik Komatsu failed to get at least one hit (and Komatsu managed to reach on a Tiger error and score a run).

It was a tough decision to come up with just one Boyfriend of the Day, with the entire bullpen proving worthy, as well as probably half a dozen hitters, but in GameChat voting, Brian Dozier’s defense and his critical 3-run home run in the second inning earned him the honor! – JC

Brian Dozier

EDIT: The news apparently wasn’t all good for the Twins after the game. The Strib’s Joe Christensen reports that Ryan Doumit has been placed on the 15-day DL with a strained calf (what… already? What happened to waiting around for a week to decide that kind of thing?). Ben Revere is on his way up to take Doumit’s spot on the active roster.

EDITED EDIT: Thursday morning, the Twins announced that they were a bit premature in declaring Ryan Doumit would be placed on the DL. Instead, they decided Doumit would be day-to-day (sigh) and Nick Blackburn would be the player DL’d, with his strained quad. That drops the pitching staff to 12 as they head in to the weekend’s interleague series with the Brewers. Hopefully, Doumit’s able to contribute in some manner.

Posted in Twins baseball - Tagged ,

GameChat – Cleveland @ Minnesota #2, 12:10pm

May15
2012 Leave a Comment Written by CapitalBabs

First things first – Happy Birthday to Justin Morneau & Brian Dozier! It would be REALLY great if they could get a win to honor the day! Good baseball would be a gift to us all quite honestly but a Win would be the icing… There has to be something you can gain off birthdays right?

Phil Mackey put out a very interesting piece about Pavano’s start last night. I definitely recommend giving it a read but to sum up, Pavano is basically in charge of his own rehab (given recent history, I don’t blame him) and he says that he IS feeling better even if it’s not improving as fast as he would prefer. It sounds as though he is not going on the road with the team – at least for the Detroit portion – and work with a soft tissue specialist here in the cities. This could make the pitching rotation a little interesting and with this rotation, that’s kind of hard to do.

Today’s lineup is a bit interesting but then again, Gardy has a reputation to uphold for getaway day “B” lineups… Of course it doesn’t look all THAT different from our regular lineups but that is mostly because we don’t exactly have a big bench. Span is out today with a tight hamstring – supposedly nothing serious. It’s kind of fun to see a kid like Mastro showing up in that leadoff spot instead of Lexi for a twist. Hope to see him have a good time.

Also, the talk is that Morneau will be activated after the game today – I guess that’s SOMETHING for your birthday anyway – and Gardy has said that he will NOT go to 12 pitchers so one of position players is going to go back to Rochester. I don’t think it’s going to be a “last in, first out” situation. ;) Reports are that either Plouffe or Parmelee will be heading back down. Given Plouffe’s performance lately, I can believe that but I’m trying to figure out how the platoon situation for 3B works without him – full time Carroll? Parmelee is more likely given the existing coverage I think.. we’ll just have to see what happens in the post game.

oh yeah, today’s game is only on MLB.tv or 1500espn radio.. (not that there’s a whole lot of people other than me that have mid-day TV access)

Cleveland

@

 Minnesota
Choo, RF Mastroianni, CF
Kipnis, 2B Mauer, C
Cabrera, A, SS Willingham, LF
Santana, C, DH Doumit, DH
Brantley, CF Dozier, SS
Lopez, Jo, 3B Parmelee, 1B
Damon, LF Komatsu, RF
Kotchman, 1B Casilla, A, 2B
Marson, C Carroll, 3B
  Lowe, D, P   Marquis, P

 

 

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Minnesota

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Well… the weather was gorgeous? not much else you can say about this game that is all that positive.. Derek Lowe managed to pitch a complete game shutout – without throwing a single strike. So, congratulations to Derek Lowe? The twitter stream started a meme of “worm killing” to describe the Twins hitting – fairly appropos. Thank you Phil Mackey.

Yeah, not sure what else I can pull out of this experience for you other than I think this was a very good game to not have televised.

[Edit] I was right about the Plouffe/Parmelee scenario. Despite Plouffe not hitting OR fielding worthy of the big leagues, Parmelee was optioned down to AAA immediately following the game and Justin Morneau was activated and will play tomorrow in Detroit.

Posted in Twins baseball - Tagged

GameChat – Indians @ Twins, 7:10 pm

May14
2012 Leave a Comment Written by Jim Crikket

It only SEEMS like the Twins have been moved to the American League East Division this season. In fact, they remain members in good standing of the AL Central Division, despite having played only two of their first 34 games within their division.

Tonight, they begin to rectify that issue as they host the first game of a brief two-game series against Cleveland.

Justin Morneau, who is eligible to come off the DL on Wednesday, reportedly took live batting practice before the game, though we still have no official word on when he may find his way back in to the lineup.

I’m sure we’ll all be watching Carl Pavano closely tonight for evidence that his arm is about to separate from his shoulder. He either has or hasn’t been having shoulder soreness, did or didn’t have an MRI, which did or didn’t show anything wrong, but was or wasn’t sent to an outside physician for a second opinion and may or may not lead to a cortisone shot, after which he may or may not miss a start or even may or may not go on the DL himself.

Thank goodness we’ve cleared that up.

INDIANS

@

 TWINS
Choo, RF Span, CF
Kipnis, 2B Dozier, SS
Cabrera, A, SS Mauer, 1B
Hafner, DH Willingham, LF
Santana, C, C Doumit, DH
Brantley, CF Plouffe, 3B
Lopez, Jo, 3B Mastroianni, RF
Kotchman, 1B Butera, C
Duncan, LF Carroll, 2B
  _Gomez, J, P   _Pavano, P
  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 R H E
Cleveland 0 0 0 2 2 0 0 0 1 5 8 1
Minnesota 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 3 0 4 5 0

Our guys made it interesting, thanks to a Ryan Doumit moon shot in the bottom of the eighth, but the Tribe scored one run off of Matt Capps in the top of the 9th and that was the ballgame. We did see Francisco Liriano’s first relief appearance and he was very good… right up to the point where he walked three straight batters. He got a strike out to end the inning at that point, so I guess on balance it was a successful appearance. Starting pitcher Carl Pavano threw just 72 pitches in his six innings of work.

Noon game on Tuesday to wrap up the short series.

.

Posted in Twins baseball

GameChat – Blue Jays @ Twins #4, 1:10 pm

May13
2012 Leave a Comment Written by Eric Pleiss

Happy Mothers Day!

The Twins have an opportunity to split the series with the Blue Jays with another strong performance from Scott Diamond.  A little run support would be nice too, as the Twins burned a nice pitching performance, from P.J. Walters, yesterday by scoring just a single run in a 2-1 defeat.  Denard Span is the only Twins player with more than 10 plate appearances against Blue Jays’ starter Ricky Romero and Span has been very successful, posting a 1.088 OPS in 18 plate appearances.

Alexi Casilla is off again today, and since starting back to back games on May 5 and 6, he has not appeared in back-to-back games and has not played at all in 4 of the last 6.  Last night he entered the game late and was o-1 with a strikeout, not exactly giving Gardenhire reasons to pencil him in.

Here are the rest of the line ups:

Toronto Blue Jays

@

 Minnesota Twins
 Johnson, K, 2B  Span, CF
 Escobar, Y, SS  Dozier, SS
 Bautista, RF  Mauer, 1B
Encarnacion, 1B  Willingham, LF
 Francisco, B, DH  Doumit, DH
 Lawrie, 3B  Plouffe, 3B
 Rasmus, CF  Komatsu, RF
 Arencibia, C  Butera, C
 Davis, R, LF  Carroll, 2B
  _Romero, R, P   _Diamond, P

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 R H E
Toronto 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 0 3 10 1
Minnesota 0 0 1 0 3 0 0 0 x 4 10 1

The bullpen did not do Scott Diamond any favors this afternoon, but the Twins held on to a 4-3 victory thanks to 7 scoreless innings from Scott Diamond.  Diamond scattered just 5 hits throughout his afternoon of work, also picking up 4 strikeouts along the way.  Newcomer Brian Dozier had a solid day defensively and providing some offensive power with a solo homerun into the 2nd deck out in left field.

While Dozier certainly was exciting to watch, he’s only getting a small package of Girl Scout Cookies (his preference) for his work today.

Scott Diamond, Boyfriend of the Day (Credit: ESPN)

Scott Diamond is the BOD for the 2nd time in as many starts.  Congratulations Mr. Diamond, you earned it.

-ERolfPleiss

Posted in Twins baseball - Tagged , , , ,

GameChat – Blue Jays @ Twins #3, 6:10 pm

May12
2012 Leave a Comment Written by Jim Crikket

If today’s lineups look familiar, there’s a good reason… the Twins are sticking with the lineup that was a winner last night and the Jays are only swapping out their catcher in the #9 spot of the batting order.

Both teams have some young pitchers on the mound. Rookie Drew Hutchison is making the fifth start of the year… and of his career… for the Jays. In his last outing, Hutchison was the pitcher that gave up Albert Pujols’ first HR of the season. Of course, recent call-up PJ Walters is making his first start for the Twins. Walters made one brief relief appearance last year for Toronto after being acquired from the Cardinals organization but was sent to AAA immediately after that appearance.

For those of you who were wondering whether sending Brian Duensing out to pitch three innings on Wednesday was part of some sort of plan to stretch him out in case he needs to join the rotation, the Strib’s Joe Christensen tweeted that such was, in fact, the case.

On the injury front, things sound encouraging for Justin Morneau’s return at some point during the upcoming road trip. His wrist feels fine after some cage work and he hopes to face live BP this weekend some time. He’s eligible to come off the DL on Wednesday.

Let’s see if our guys can win two in a row for the second time this season! – JC

BLUE JAYS

@

 TWINS
Johnson, K, 2B Span, CF
Escobar, Y, SS Dozier, SS
Bautista, RF Mauer, C
Encarnacion, DH Willingham, LF
Thames, E, LF Doumit, DH
Lawrie, 3B Plouffe, 3B
Rasmus, CF Parmelee, 1B
Lind, 1B Mastroianni, RF
Mathis, C Carroll, 2B
  _Hutchison, P   _Walters, P
  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 R H E
Toronto 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 2 7 0
Minnesota 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 5 0

If I was PJ Walters, I might be wondering what the heck happened to the Major League hitting he was supposed to have supporting him when he got called up to the Big Leagues. Walters threw six very good innings, striking out five and walking none. He gave up just six hits, but one of those was a “just barely” home run to Jose Bautista and that provided the margin of victory for the Jays.

Once again, the bullpen did its job, with Brian Duensing throwing two shutout innings and Jeff Gray adding another. The Twins had opportunities but were a combined 0 for 9 with runners in scoring position. You won’t win often with stats like that… but then that’s a lessen you’d think this team would have learned by now.

Posted in Twins baseball

GameChat – Blue Jays @ Twins #2, 7:10pm

May11
2012 Leave a Comment Written by CapitalBabs

Oh, baseball season, constantly in battle with yard season…

The bad thing is actually I’m off to help a friend with a new fence instead of working on my own new yard..

The good thing? yeah, I’m going to have to miss at least part of the game to get the work done.. the way the Twins are playing these days though maybe that is a good thing. Of course, it also looks like there might be a bit of a rain delay. It’s a bit windy and cool but I think they will get the game in tonight.

My fondest wish is that I’ll come back to the radio to find out the Twins have chosen to spite me and made it a fabulous game since I couldn’t watch. I’d still be cool with that.

Toronto

@

 Minnesota
Johnson, K, 2B Span, CF
Escobar, Y, SS Dozier, SS
Bautista, RF Mauer, C
Encarnacion, DH Willingham, LF
Thames, E, LF Doumit, DH
Lawrie, 3B Plouffe, 3B
Rasmus, CF Parmelee, 1B
Lind, 1B Mastroianni, RF
Arencibia, C Carroll, 2B
  Drabek, P   Blackburn, P

 

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 R H E
Toronto 1 0 0 1 0 3 0 1 0 6 11 0
Minnesota 2 0 0 0 4 0 1 0 x 7 7 1

Our guys don’t do anything the easy way these days, but we’ll take a win at this point any way we can get it.

Nick Blackburn went 5+ innings for the Win. The 5 went alright, but the + part was a problem as Nick coughed up 2 home runs and a total of 3 runs in the sixth inning without recording an out. Fortunately, his teammates had provided a 4 run lead at that point, so he had a run of cushion.

Alex Burnett stopped the bleeding in the sixth and after Darin Mastroianni provided a key RBI single to provide a much needed insurance run, Jared Burton threw another of his patented 1-2-3 innings of relief work. Glen Perkins coughed up a solo home run to Encarnacion in the eighth, but Matt Capps slammed the door in the ninth with the tying run on 3B to secure the save and, more importantly, the win for the Twins.

Burton certainly earns baked goods for his performance, while Denard Span went 2 for 4 with a double and a couple of runs scored and Ryan Doumit came through with a pair of critical ribbies, also earning some pastries for their efforts.

But the Boyfriend of the Day can be none other than Darin Mastroianni, who not only collected his first MLB hits, but plated three VERY important RBI in the process! – JC

Darin Mastroianni (Photo: CapitalBabs)

Posted in Twins baseball - Tagged ,

GameChat – Blue Jays @ Twins, 7:10 pm

May10
2012 Leave a Comment Written by CapitalBabs

so.. here’s your new look Twins… anyone wonder if the result will be any different? At least the weather is absolutely perfect…

Toronto

@

 Minnesota
Johnson, K, 2B Span, CF
Escobar, Y, SS Dozier, SS
Bautista, RF Mauer, 1B
Encarnacion, DH Willingham, DH
Thames, E, LF Doumit, C
Lawrie, 3B Plouffe, 3B
Rasmus, CF Komatsu, RF
Lind, 1B Mastroianni, LF
Arencibia, C Casilla, A, 2B
  Alvarez, H, P   Marquis, P

 

 

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well that just sucked… SOOOO many bad things about this game.. I really debated finding a copy of the Keystone Cops theme (interestingly enough called Bag of Rags) and having it play for anyone who pulled up this post but I thought that might be adding insult to injury for us fans. There was a ridiculous amount of miscues, bad plays, horrible officiating and in general, bad baseball. And the score didn’t end up favoring us either…

The only good thing I can think of from tonight’s game is that finally, the Twins came out on top of the HR count in a game against Toronto… thank you Willy… but that’s a pretty weak positive for us “optimists”.

Posted in Twins baseball

GameChat – Angels @ Twins #3, 7:10pm

May09
2012 Leave a Comment Written by CapitalBabs

I really hope that we can repeat last nights result (ie the WIN) but more importantly, I would really love to see a repeat of that kind of starting pitching!!! It was really exciting to see a team NOT hit the hell out of the ball when we’re out there…

Is it asking too much to see it again??

And Congratulations to TC Bear! This is his 1000th game! that’s a lot of games to have never missed one since he started.

 

LA Angels

@

 Minnesota
Trout, CF Span, CF
Callaspo, 3B Dozier, SS
Pujols, 1B Mauer, 1B
Morales, K, DH Willingham, LF
Hunter, To, RF Doumit, DH
Kendrick, H, 2B Valencia, 3B
Wells, V, LF Komatsu, RF
Aybar, SS Butera, C
Wilson, Bo, C Carroll, 2B
  Santana, E, P   Pavano, P

 

 

 

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 R H E
LA Angels 0 0 3 0 2 1 0 0 0 6 14 0
Minnesota 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 2 6 1

Another ugly game. Carl Pavano was clearly not himself but Josh Willingham hit his sixth home run and Brian Duensing threw three hitless innings of relief. – JC

Posted in Twins baseball

GameChat – Angels @ Twins #2, 7:10 pm

May08
2012 Leave a Comment Written by Jim Crikket

No Denard Span tonight, but apparently that was the plan all along so we’re not supposed to read anything in to it. We’ll see.

The Knuckleballs crew is taping a podcast tonight during the first 45 minutes or so of the game, so if you don’t see us around, don’t freak out… wait until you hear the podcast, THEN you can freak out. Thanks to Phil Naessens for having us on. We’ll try not to screw it up too bad.

Go Twins!

ANGELS

@

 TWINS
Trout, CF Komatsu, CF
Callaspo, 3B Dozier, SS
Pujols, 1B Mauer, 1B
Hunter, To, RF Willingham, LF
Trumbo, DH Doumit, DH
Kendrick, H, 2B Valencia, 3B
Wells, V, LF Plouffe, RF
Aybar, SS Butera, C
Iannetta, C Carroll, 2B
  _Haren, P   _Diamond, P
  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 R H E
LA Angels 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 4 0
Minnesota 3 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 x 5 12 0

Seven innings of shutout baseball thrown by a Twins starter… now that’s something we haven’t seen this season. Add to that 12 hits and five runs and you’ve got pretty much a complete effort. Josh Willingham had an early RBI double and Ryan Doumit hit his fourth HR of the season. Joe Mauer added a couple of hits of his own. Jared Burton and Matt Capps each added scoreless innings of relief.

But in his first MLB start of the season, Scott Diamond limited the Angels to just four hits over his seven innings and that’s good enough for tonight’s Boyfriend of the Day award!

Scott Diamond

Posted in Twins baseball - Tagged ,
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