"like butterflies with hiccups"
*sigh*
Minnesota’s weather demons have struck again…
Today’s game has been postponed until tomorrow evening at 6:10pm. Tomorrow’s noon game stays as scheduled and let’s just hope that it’s not a foot of snow that they’re trying to clear off the field.
umm… yeah. It’s cold out there folks. It happens in this state in the Spring but none of us like it. At least Toronto is a “northern” team so they should be used to it right??
It will be interesting to see how the teams handle the game.. before the snow moves in for tomorrow. 🙁
| Toronto |
@ |
Minnesota |
| Cabrera, Me, LF | Dozier, 2B | |
| Kawasaki, 2B | Mauer, 1B | |
| Bautista, CF | Plouffe, 3B | |
| Lind, DH | Colabello, RF | |
| Encarnacion, 1B | Kubel, LF | |
| Navarro, D, C | Pinto, DH | |
| Sierra, RF | Suzuki, K, C | |
| Lawrie, 3B | Hicks, CF | |
| Goins, SS | Florimon, SS | |
| Morrow, P | Hughes, P, P |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | R | H | E | |
| Toronto | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 9 | 14 | 1 |
| Minnesota | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 7 | 1 |
I didn’t see or hear any of tonight’s Twins game, so I have no idea what happened beyond what I can see in the box score. But that’s enough to know it was ugly.
I do see Chris Colabello had three hits and Trevor Plouffe put up home run number 1 on the season, so I guess that’s something. Oh, and Phil Hughes had 7 strikeouts in his 5 innings of work and, from what some people seem to think, that’s a good thing. I personally think it’s not as good as it would have been without giving up the four runs, but what do I know? – JC
Almost a week ago, with the Twins in the middle of being swept by the Oakland Athletics, I wrote (over at BaseballTwins.com) that the Twins had no chance of being above .500 for the entire season, and then went so far as to loudly proclaim the same stance on the most recent Talk to Contact podcast. After a weekend of hot baseball, from the offense and pitching staff, the Twins are now back to .500, at 6-6, and with an off day today to prep for a three game series at home with the Blue Jays, I find myself on the verge of eating crow.
How did this happen?
The Twins pitching turned in their three best performances of the year, the Twins’ bats woke up in a big way, and some timely defensive miscues allowed the Twins to steal a victory on Sunday.
On Friday night, Kyle Gibson put in another strong start, going 6.1 innings and giving up just one run. Like his first start of the year, Gibson once again walked four batters, and recorded just three strike outs, so it wasn’t a perfect start, but he got the outs he needed and avoided any real damage (and the run he gave up in the first inning was directly related to Pedro Florimon booting a tailor-made double-play ball).
Not to be outdone, on Saturday afternoon, Ricky Nolasco pitched eight strong innings of one run ball, controlling the ball well, recording four strike outs and surrendering only a single walk.
While Nolasco and Gibson put up strong performances, the Twins hitters did their jobs too, scoring 17 runs in those first two games, with a balanced lineup that saw key hits from Dozier, Suzuki, Pinto, Mauer, Kubel, Colabello and Plouffe. Everyone was hitting except Florimon and Mastroianni, who managed to be 0-8 (but did chip in two walks) while the rest of the team recorded a .346 on base percentage.
On Sunday, Kevin Correia worked seven scoreless innings, but let the first three batters of the inning reach base, and Brian Duensing came in with two one and one in already. He couldn’t stop the bleeding and the Twins were down 3-2 going into the home half of the eighth. IN the bottom of the inning the Twins loaded the bases and Chris Herrmann grounded to the pitcher Wade Davis who tried to start a home-to-first double play, but instead threw the ball away allowing two runs to score.
While the Twins might creep over .500 before this home stand ends, I still think that the Twins next four series after that, against the Royals, Rays, Tigers and Dodgers will put the Twins firmly below .500 without much chance of a return.
For now though, the Twins are interesting, and I look forward to eating crow.
The Twins have a shot at an early season series sweep today against Kansas City.They’ve proven the last two games what their capable of if they get a bit of hitting AND some quality starting pitching in the same game.
Kyle Gibson and Ricky Nolasco both stepped up their games the past two games and today, it’s Kevin Correia’s turn to show what he’s capable of. The Royals send lefty Jason Vargas to the mound. Vargas is off to a hot start for KC, giving up just two earned runs in 15 innings over the course of his first two starts. Correia’s start has been somewhat less impressive.
FSN’s Tyler Mason pointed out that Twins sit at or near the top of three AL offensive stat categories two weeks in to the season. Brian Dozier is tied for the HR lead with four, Chris Colabello is tied for the RBI lead with 14 and Jason Kubel sits second in the AL in batting average with .405. Yeah, we all expected to see that, right?
Manager Ron Gardenhire is back with the club today. How much you wanna bet that if the Twins trail early, we’ll see “send Gardy away again” tweets before the 7th inning stretch?
| ROYALS |
@ |
TWINS |
| Aoki, RF | Dozier, 2B | |
| Infante, 2B | Mauer, 1B | |
| Hosmer, 1B | Plouffe, 3B | |
| Butler, B, DH | Colabello, RF | |
| Gordon, A, LF | Kubel, LF | |
| Perez, S, C | Pinto, DH | |
| Moustakas, 3B | Suzuki, K, C | |
| Cain, L, CF | Hicks, CF | |
| Escobar, A, SS | Florimon, SS | |
| _Vargas, P | _Correia, P |
It wasn’t the prettiest game, but what matters is that the Twins had more runs than the Royals when it was over. That means our guys are back up to .500 on the year AND it means a SWEEP of the Royals!
The Twins managed just five hits on the day and Joe Mauer was the only hitter with a pair of them. That might put him in contention for BOD honors, but we just can’t quite go there, given his strikeout in a clutch late-game situation.
Josmil Pinto’s two-run HR to open the scoring in the home half of the 7th certainly earns him consideration.
But, once again, if there’s one thing that stands out when you think about how the Twins managed to win all three games against the Landed Gentry of KC, it’s the starting pitching. Today it was Kevin Correia’s turn to step up his game. He was eventually tagged with all three Royals runs, but he put up seven innings of goose eggs before those runs came across in the 8th and let’s just say the Royals had a little help getting those runs across from a couple of Correia’s team mates.
We want to encourage this kind of work from our rotation and to that end, we are awarding our third straight BOD to the starting pitcher.
iouy
Since today is so much cooler, I’m glad that it’s an afternoon game. AND I am glad we’re coming off a win. However, I always get nervous the game after a big hit parade…
Let’s see if a little public shaming will work on Ricky… Mr. Nolasco, you were chosen to be our #1 Starter so far. Has it escaped your notice that our #5 guy – basically an MLB rookie – is KICKING YOUR ASS in pitching ability so far this season? Let’s work on that shall we?
| Kansas City |
@ |
Minnesota |
| Aoki, RF | Dozier, 2B | |
| Infante, 2B | Mauer, 1B | |
| Hosmer, 1B | Plouffe, 3B | |
| Butler, B, DH | Colabello, RF | |
| Gordon, A, LF | Kubel, LF | |
| Perez, S, C | Pinto, DH | |
| Moustakas, 3B | Suzuki, K, C | |
| Cain, L, CF | Hicks, CF | |
| Escobar, A, SS | Florimon, SS | |
| Shields, P | Nolasco, P |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | R | H | E | |
| Kansas City | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 6 | 2 |
| Minnesota | 1 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | x | 7 | 6 | 0 |
That’s two straight W’s for our guys!
Not a ton of hitting by either team, but the Twins made the most of what they got and took advantage of one bad inning of pitching and defense by the Royals.
It was a game that saw some Mauer Pauer as Joe launched a home run in to the right-center field seats.
But, in the end, whether or not it was Babs’ public shaming, Ricky Nolasco showed the stuff Twins fans hoped he would bring to Target Field, going eight strong innings for the win… and good for the BOD award, as well.
The Twins first evening game of the year… kind of nice that it’s still 60 degrees out there this evening!
Let’s see if we can’t do better against the Royals than we did against the A’s – who are legitimately really good this year. Anyone know if the Royals have better pitching than we do?
| Kansas City |
@ |
Minnesota |
| Aoki, RF | Dozier, 2B | |
| Infante, 2B | Mauer, 1B | |
| Hosmer, 1B | Plouffe, 3B | |
| Butler, B, DH | Colabello, RF | |
| Gordon, A, LF | Kubel, LF | |
| Perez, S, C | Pinto, DH | |
| Moustakas, 3B | Suzuki, K, C | |
| Cain, L, CF | Hicks, CF | |
| Escobar, A, SS | Florimon, SS | |
| Chen, B, P | Gibson, P |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | R | H | E | |
| Kansas City | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 5 | 1 |
| Minnesota | 2 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | x | 10 | 11 | 0 |
Ten runs! again. That’s three times already this year that the Twins have racked up double digit runs. They managed to do that a total of six times all of last season. Kind of fun seeing all those runs on the board, isn’t it?
Kurt Suzuki and Chris Colabello both had two hits and Trevor Plouffe had three. Josmil Pinto went yard and Jason Kubel had a triple (?!).
It would be one of those games where choosing a BOD from among all those bats would be a tough call. But Kyle Gibson shrugged off a dicey first inning and pitched in to the seventh for his second win and longest outing of his career. That’s the kind of thing we’d like to see more of out of this starting staff and it’s enough to earn tonight’s BOD!
(We really need to get us a picture of Gibson in his Twins uniform soon.)
– JC
Another sunny day in the 50’s – great spring baseball weather. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could see some great spring baseball? I’d go for that.
Let’s see what Pelfrey can do for us.
Oh, in honor of a visit from Little Nicky Punto, I thought I would share this link from Deadspin showing a fantastic play from SS Andrelton Simmons.
| Oakland |
@ |
Minnesota |
| Fuld, CF | Mastroianni, RF | |
| Lowrie, SS | Dozier, 2B | |
| Donaldson, 3B | Mauer, 1B | |
| Moss, RF | Colabello, DH | |
| Cespedes, LF | Kubel, LF | |
| Callaspo, DH | Plouffe, 3B | |
| Norris, D, C | Pinto, C | |
| Barton, 1B | Hicks, CF | |
| Punto, 2B | Escobar, E, SS | |
| Straily, P | Pelfrey, P |
|
|
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
R |
H |
E |
| Oakland | ||||||||||||
| Minnesota |
Some people will say that the story of this series is that the A’s hitting just beats ours… That may be true but to be honest, we matched them HR for HR – they just got theirs with people on base and we didn’t, and many of their HR RBI were WALKS.
The REAL story of this series is that their starting pitching rocked and ours sucked. I would like to see that change (I’m sure that Gardy would also like that) but it’s pretty much been the ongoing Twins’ issue. You have to have good pitching to get wins.
For the first time in a long time we have a full week of Twins baseball to talk about on the podcast. We talk about Ron Gardenhire‘s 1000th managerial win, a couple of disabled list moves that brought both Chris Herrmann and Darin Mastroianni back to the Twins, and pontificate on what early season attendance numbers mean for the club going forward. You can download the new Talk to Contact (@TalkToContact) episode via iTunes or by clicking here.
We’re running a promotional giveaway. Make sure to listen to the end for the details and your chance to win a 1991 World Series box set (#TwinsNickname).
Enjoy the show.
You can follow Cody on Twitter (@NoDakTwinsFan) or read his writing at NoDakTwinsFan, you can find Paul on Twitter (@BaseballPirate) and read his writing at PuckettsPond.com, and you can find Mr. Jay Corn on Twitter (@Jay__Corn)!
If you enjoy our podcast, please take a couple extra minutes and rate and review us on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are like t.p. for our bung holes.
STUNNINGLY beautiful day outside.. can’t wait for the continuing increase in temperatures.
There is quite a breeze though so it could be interesting to see how that effects play at Target Field. I’m pretty sure those who were able to take the time to be there won’t care about the wind though.. It’s just TIME for it to be spring in this state and every resident is going to use whatever opportunity to suck up the sunshine.
| Oakland |
@ |
Minnesota |
| Fuld, CF | Dozier, 2B | |
| Lowrie, SS | Mauer, 1B | |
| Donaldson, 3B | Plouffe, 3B | |
| Moss, 1B | Colabello, DH | |
| Cespedes, LF | Kubel, LF | |
| Callaspo, DH | Suzuki, K, C | |
| Jaso, C | Herrmann, C, RF | |
| Reddick, RF | Hicks, CF | |
| Sogard, 2B | Florimon, SS | |
| Chavez, J, P | Hughes, P, P |
|
|
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
R |
H |
E |
| Oakland | ||||||||||||
| Minnesota |
Again, the silver lining today was that the weather was absolutely the perfect reason to enjoy extra innings…
Phil Hughes had a really rough start which handed a sizeable lead over to the A’s. The good news at that point was that Phil settled in well enough to give the Twins a chance to get back into the game. Both Kubel and Dozier put points on the board with the long ball. A 9th inning collapse in the A’s pitching meant that we had everything tied up…
yeah, until Norris put one in the seats for a three runs… The Twins even loaded the bases and brought the go-ahead run to the plate – of course, with 2 outs. Yeah, got us all worked up for the typical reward.
But like I said, it was a beautiful day to watch baseball and for those who could be there, they got a couple extra innings on top of it!
It’s just about as perfect a spring day as you get in Minnesota. No, really, as hard as it is to believe since we just got 10 inches of snow on Friday, it’s almost 60 and gorgeously sunny out there.
KL and I aren’t actually AT the game today although I have to admit we both wish we were. It’s a sure sign you’re getting old and stodgy when you choose to prioritize “bills” before you go for fun like the baseball opener.. My NEPHEW is at the game though so we are at least raising the kids right in our family. Instead, KL and I did a little shopping for baseball findings to finish up a pair of booties for the baby to match her Twins stuff for when we DO go to games.
Miss Margaret was all ready for the opener too!! KL and I met for lunch and showed up in our baseball accoutrements as well – we did discuss getting a group selfie of the three of us girls all ready for baseball but.. yeah, well, she and I aren’t really big fans of being on camera as much as we are being BEHIND a camera so you get the cute baby in gear as a substitute.
Quick DL update – Bartlett has been put on the 15 day DL and our super-utility back-up Catcher, Chris Hermann, is up here for awhile. Considering that both Arcia and Willingham aren’t swinging a bat at the moment, it’s nice to have Pinto be able to be in the lineup since Hermann can fill in if necessary behind home plate.
Let’s see what the boys can do in their home debut for 2014!
| Oakland |
@ |
Minnesota |
| Fuld, CF | Dozier, 2B | |
| Lowrie, SS | Mauer, 1B | |
| Donaldson, 3B | Plouffe, 3B | |
| Moss, 1B | Colabello, RF | |
| Cespedes, LF | Pinto, DH | |
| Callaspo, DH | Kubel, LF | |
| Reddick, RF | Suzuki, K, C | |
| Norris, D, C | Hicks, CF | |
| Sogard, 2B | Florimon, SS | |
| Kazmir, P | Correia, P |
|
|
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
R |
H |
E |
| Oakland | ||||||||||||
| Minnesota |
yep… the story for the Twins is still “the pitching sucks” so that could get a little old before it gets too warm.
BUT if they aren’