Notebook 7/30: José Berríos vs. Shane Bieber

Hope Berrios has his good stuff tonight, Indians look tough this year.

After this series our schedule gets easy for a while.

Throwing 97 isn't necessarily a good thing.   A few years ago in the 1 game playoff with NY Ervin Santana was about 4mph harder than he was all season.   Very little command and his best pitch slider didn't respond well to his  livelier arm.   Berrios performance reminded me a bit of that.   He was throwing hard but his waste pitches truly were wasted pitches cuz he wasn't even coming close to the plate.  Overthrowing fastball and curveball, imo.   Less is often more.  Ask Rich Hill.   Would be great to win the 1st game of he series.

this is what we want and need - if you can beat the good teams you can dream of a world series.  If you can only beat the mediocre teams the dream stops with a one and out.

Just my personal opinion of course, but it looks to me like the betting line is overweighting recent pitching performances. If Berrios reverts to more of what we'd expect him to be, and the Twins' lineup keeps executing like it has against most everyone - including Bieber - then I'd call the Twins slight favorites.

Edit: Vegas caught up. Looks like the line flipped.

Hope Berrios has his good stuff tonight, Indians look tough this year.

Meh, they've played KC and the apparently still not ready White Sox. Lets see how they handle our line up  

Hard to believe that Berrios is the Twins worst starter so far this year after one start each. Bieber might have had the best start of the entire MLB. Berrios needs to step up and perform. No excuses.

Regarding the 8 game suspension for Kelly..... good. This is ridiculous. And both teams not paying atttention to the conditions and masking and breathing all over. These are young men. Time to grow up. This is not the time to spit and spray spittle all over each other. This behavior puts the whole league and games this year in jeopardy. Seriously. I don't understand this crap. Childish. These are extraordinary times. Players need to take responsibility and man up, and not act like babies, and have these fake fights. Kudos for the Twins, and Baldelli in the dugout, for masking up. Let's get this unique season in, and not sabotage it with childish behavior. Whether you like it or not, the MLB has already decided the Astros punishments, and that is past. Every instance of purposely throwing at players and inciting rubarbs needs to be handled with a no tolerance policy. Let's get these games in.

"and José has held fellow Puerto Rico product Francisco Lindor to a .231/.286/.346 line (.632 OPS)"

You jinxed him.....