Game Score: Cleveland 3, Twins 1

Think Canterino and Duran could be our Karinchak and Clase, both in terms of dominance but also in terms of style.

At this point in this season, good starts from young pitchers make me almost as happy as wins. Cool to see Ober solid yet again.

Bases loaded, nobody out, and the Twins go groundout-strikeout-groundout to suffocate the rally. Seen that movie one too many times this year.

Great start for Ober. Cleveland's offense isn't exactly Murderer's Row, but they are an MLB team with Jose Ramirez batting 3rd. Nice work kid. Let's keep the theme going and win the 4th straight series today before going to dreaded NYC.

Very nice to see good pitching lately.  Not good to see the Team not score when given opportunities.  Hope they can take the series by winning on Wednesday

Solid start by Ober.  It's great to see him making the adjustments to hitters and being a solid contributor.

Also going to tip my cap to Cleveland's pitcher Morgan... give credit where credit is due, he pitched a great game.  At the end of the day, I love to see good pitching and the game last night had it.

A couple of interesting tidbits from last night’s broadcast: 

1. Entering the game the Twins have committed 85 errors - most in the majors and responsible for giving up the third most unearned runs. Simmons, our best fielder, is having his worst defender year and Sano, despite being benched at 1B for Kiriloff for much of the year. has committed more errors than our SSs combined.

2. Sano leads the team in bases loaded at bats with 18. He has two hits (a single and a grand slam) and NINE k’s. 

3. With RISP, Donaldson is hitting .260 with 0 homers and 25 RBIs. 

Just a reminder - Donaldson, Sano and Sano will make over $44MM this season. 

38 minutes ago, Mike Sixel said:

260 .... That is way over the MLB average this year. Also higher than his average in general.... So he's better with men on base then not. 

Of course it should be higher. RISP means better pitches. Arraez’s is 16 points higher (.333 vs. .317). Still zero dingers and 25 ribbies for $23MM?  That’s a fail. With two years left now. The signing didn’t work out. Its ok - it happens. I liked it when it was announced. It was a good bold move by the FO and ownership. But the FO should consider it now a sunk cost and move on in the off-season. Donaldson is not a part of the future and should not impede the progress of any player who could be. 

4 hours ago, bighat said:

Bases loaded, nobody out, and the Twins go groundout-strikeout-groundout to suffocate the rally. Seen that movie one too many times this year.

Great start for Ober. Cleveland's offense isn't exactly Murderer's Row, but they are an MLB team with Jose Ramirez batting 3rd. Nice work kid. Let's keep the theme going and win the 4th straight series today before going to dreaded NYC.

No HRs = no runs for this team. Hopefully their homer happy approach is worked on over the off season. 

I'd rather see someone whiff with the bases loaded than commit an error. The Twins have committed the most errors!! That must be corrected.

I still cannot understand why Kepler over Arraez as the the leadoff hitter. Arraez has an outside chance at the batting title, but (as was so astutely pointed out by others on TD) he may not get enough PAs. That's just one reason. He also has the highest OBP on the team and he doesn't strike out much (unlike Kepler).

Everything matters in baseball because things happen in the moment. If you are 0-5 with 4 k's and then hit a walk-off HR in your final AB..you're the hero. If you don't make many errors, and then you boot a ball in the 9th to cost your team the game....well thats not good even tho the stats aren't going to magnify it. Some errors are insignificant to the outcome of a game. Some RBI don't contribute very much to the outcome of a blowout win or loss. Baseball is played everyday. All kinds of neat stuff happens. You lose 10-0 today and win 2-1 tomorrow. Thats why I love the game and don't get too bogged down in all the stats.

2 hours ago, Nashvilletwin said:

Of course it should be higher. RISP means better pitches...

Wait.. what? You think a pitcher is more likely to give a batter something to hit with RISP? Aside from that making no practical sense because giving batters good pitches to hit would likely score runs. The absolute, hands down, number one scenario a batter will see nothing to hit is RISP (runner on 2nd, nobody on first with 0-1 outs).

If there is a time when a pitcher is looking to induce the weakest contact possible or get a strike out while throwing absolutely nothing in meat of the zone, it's with RISP. I mean... pitchers will even walk in runs with the bases loaded rather than give a good pitch to hit.

38 minutes ago, bean5302 said:

 

Wait.. what? You think a pitcher is more likely to give a batter something to hit with RISP? Aside from that making no practical sense because giving batters good pitches to hit would likely score runs. The absolute, hands down, number one scenario a batter will see nothing to hit is RISP (runner on 2nd, nobody on first with 0-1 outs).

If there is a time when a pitcher is looking to induce the weakest contact possible or get a strike out while throwing absolutely nothing in meat of the zone, it's with RISP. I mean... pitchers will even walk in runs with the bases loaded rather than give a good pitch to hit.

 

Can’t walk batters with ducks on the pond.