White Sox 9, Twins 0: Another Gimenez Game

White Sox 9, Twins 0

Box Score

Win Expectancy (via Fangraphs)

Nik Turley was one of the feel-good stories of this season, but after Thursday’s thrashing you can’t help but feel bad for the guy. In his third career start, the 27-year-old former Indy leaguer recorded just two outs and gave up five runs off six hits, two of them homers.

The nearly five-hour rain delay couldn’t have helped Turley’s preparation for this start, but it’s pretty tough to give a free pass to a guy who now has a 16.39 ERA. The bullpen had to mop up 7.1 innings, but thank goodness Chris Gimenez came to the rescue once again to save another arm from being used. It was Gimenez’s sixth pitching appearance of the year.

When the Twins lose, they really go all out.

The team was also shut out for the first time all season, so this one was just terrible all around. Not the way you want to head out to play Cleveland. The offense combined for 11 strikeouts and left 14 men on base. The team combined for seven hits, all of them singles.

As you'd expect, the team is shuffling players around to try and get some reinforcements in for the Cleveland series.

https://twitter.com/SJacksonMLB/status/878070932027219968

One of the new pitchers will be Trevor Hildenberger, who has a 2.05 ERA, 1.14 WHIP and 10.3 K/9 for Rochester this season. Seth has an excellent article on Hildenberger's callup, give it a read.

https://twitter.com/DWolfsonKSTP/status/878082612895535105

And we have the second name, Dillon Gee.

https://twitter.com/LaVelleNeal/status/878095373142827008

The Twins just signed Gee, who has a 4.13 ERA over 151 career appearances for the Mets, Royals and Rangers.

Bullpen Usage

Here’s a quick look at the number of pitches thrown by the bullpen over the past five days:

Friday

Twins (Adalberto Mejia, 5.53 ERA) at Cleveland (Trevor Bauer, 5.54 ERA), 7:10 pm CT

Bauer has been tough on the Twins this season, picking up a victory in all three of his starts while posting a 3.26 ERA and 0.98 WHIP. Twins hitters have hit just .206/.267/.324 (.590 OPS) off Bauer in 2017. After working the bullpen hard Thursday, the Twins will be desperate for some depth from Mejia, who has only managed to eclipse five innings in two of his nine starts this season. The most pitches he’s thrown in a start this season is 95, and he’s only surpassed 85 pitches three times in those nine starts.

AL Central Standings

Cleveland 39-32

Twins 36-34 (-2.5)

Kansas City 35-36 (-4)

Chicago 32-39 (-7)

Detroit 32-40 (-7.5)

Be sure to also check out Seth’s preview of the projected roster of the E-Town Twins, who start their season tomorrow, as well as today's Minor League Report.

Also, I was on Cory Engelhardt's Baseball is Good podcast and talked a bit about this game, Twins Daily and these game recaps. It was a lot of fun, give it a listen.

https://twitter.com/BaseballByTom/status/878101627588280321