Game 162: Twins vs. Red Stockings
Posted by ubelmann on Sunday, September 30th, 2007 at 12:00 pm
Game results I would like to see today:
- Twins win
- Rockies win
- Mets win
- Phillies win
- Padres lose
Of course, whenever these four-way tie situations present themselves, it never works out, because getting four games to go a particular way is generally tough to do, but it'd be kind of fun nonetheless.
If you were a betting man, you could try to bet on the parlay that would cause a 4-way tie. 4 team parlays usually pay off around 11-1 or so. It would definitely make things even more interesting.
I want to see the 4-way tie as well. Go RockiesMetsPhillies!
Anyone listening to the Twins radio broadcast?
No. What's the dynamic duo doing?
It appears that Team WGOM has already cleared out their lockers.
Sorry, I'm making pickles right now.
Yes, literally making pickles. It's not some sort of metaphor.
I prefer to think of it as a metaphor.
Get your head out of the gutter.
There is nothing that can prepare you for the smell of a blast of boiling vinegar vapor when you take the lid off of the pot of pickles so you can stir. Every time - BAM! right in the face.
Drinking with rugby players one day, pickle-making the next. You're a complex young man, Andrew.
Life's to short not to be. You gotta go out, grab the world by its haunches and you gotta hump it into submission!
I am not a pickle.
Well, be safe and stay away from the salt and vinegar.
Manny Ramirez really needs a haircut.
Garza's command is a bit shaky.
Mets folding like a sweater at The Gap. Gene Mauch smiles from beyond.
Hey SF!
Garza's pitch count climbs. 69 through three.
[threadjack] (or what there is of a thread)
I got some decent pictures of the rugby game I went to yesterday. I love how close to the field the crowd is. You can't get that kind of access anywhere else without a press pass.
Rugby Pics
[/treadjack]
Nowhere in those pics do I see a keg. What the hell kind of rugby game were you attending? It's an affront to all that is holy!
I actually had to drive to go pickup the new keg post-match because even though I'd been drinking steadily throughout the game. The players tore into the one they had and ran out in like 45 minutes after the game and I was the only one left in a condition to drive.
A crisp groundout to Jones.
Everything Coco does is crisp.
NL Playoff Update - 2:30 PM
Marlins 8, Mets 1 - Top 6
Nationals 1, Phillies 3 - Top 6
Padres 3, Brewers 0 - Bottom 4
Rockies o, D'Backs 0 - Bottom 1
Lugo had third base stolen before the ball left Garza's hand.
Sometimes I come here and forget there's even a baseball game happening. Granted, it's usually me who is starting the tangential conversations. I'm sure my baseball-to-random crap comment ratio is very skewed away from baseball.
I've had 20-30 comment games where I didn't mention anything game related.
It helps, though, where there is a meaningful game being played. And that's been a while.
true dat.
Good God, even I could steal off of LeCroy, and might not even get a throw. Sorry Matt, you're not scaring anyone.
In Crawdaddy's defense, that SB was all on Garza. That said, you probably could steal off Lecroy.
Sounds like Dazzle got an email from Morris asking him to talk up the pitch count/complete game pablum again.
NBB wanted everyone to post a picture summing up their feelings on the Twin's 2007 campaign. (At least, I think that was the gist.)
Can't stick around until the bitter end, so here's my offering:
Heh.
[catching up] Twins holding on to a slim 3-1 lead here going into the bottom of the 6th.
Torii left the game before I could make it! Edsel roaming CF.
And Baker on to pitch! That's kind of a nice surprise. (I wish I'd caught some of Garza today, but it's good to see that Baker's hand is good enough to pitch today.)
And Baker allows a HR to the second guy he faces.
I missed Torii leaving the game too...I am watching the Packers eat up the Vikings. (Woo hoo!!)
Let's see if the Twins can hold on.
I waiting for the Colts to start.
Comments in StL Post-Dispatch rankings (Twins #16): "Pitching-short Twins never did overcome lefthander Liriano's lengthy loss."
How is it that mainstream media hasn't figured out that it isn't the pitching that is hurting the Twins this year?
That's really pretty ridiculous, even by traditional statistics. The Twins are 25th in baseball in runs scored and 9th in baseball in runs allowed.
It's just lazy reporting about the other league's teams. They just don't care.
They just wanted to use that alluring alliteration they thought up.
Oops. 'Tek goes yard on Baker. That one was a no-doubter. Twins now nursing an even slimmer 3-2 lead.
I really like this Ellsbury kid.
Cap'n V Homer
That was some intriguing warning track power from Garrett Jones there.
Wow! Gordo praising Kubel, and wishing he'd been played more! Gordo's making some sense, finally.
I'd really like to know definitively if Gardy's been keeping Kubel at DH/out of the lineup on some days because of future injury concerns. Obviously, some days Kubel's not in there because Gardy has some crazy half-baked theory about someone else being more valuable that day.
According to Joe C from the Strib, Gardy was going to replace White with Kubel...
But like usual, Gardy is full of shit and went with the inferior player.
Rondell seems like a good guy. It's too bad his body has completely betrayed him.
It’s too bad his body has completely betrayed him.
...and us.
It is pretty sad when athlete's bodies give out. I sometimes wonder if people really appreciate what athletes go through physically to entertain us.
These NESN guys really can't say Punto, eh?
Casilla moved over to SS, with Luis Rodriguez at 2B, and Tyner has come on for the Insanity.
The Brewers have taken a lead on the Padres late in that game. Mets look like toast, unless the Nationals miraculously come back against the Phils. Rockies and D-Backs still tied.
Nick K for Baker. Good to see Kielty helping us out a bit with the GIDP.
Nation, I present you the fruit (OK, vegetable) of my weekend's labor. My very first jar of pickles ever.
Looks like pickles.
Which would be a good thing.
Yeah, that's what I was going for.
I was expecting something a little more metaphorical.
That might get the WGOM blocked at some offices, then what would Citizens do during the day?
Make pickles of course.
Walked right into that one. Well played sir, well played.
Aunt G. had a great refrigerator pickle recipe made from watermelon rinds. Many things like that have passed on.
Grandma S too had the watermelon pickle thing. Mmm. cinnamony. I think she made about a dozen different kinds of pickles.
but my favorites were the dill pickles. My dad now makes them with, roughly, the same recipe. Very similar to Bubbies, which is by far my favorite brand of commercial pickle (even if they are contract-brewed in Canuckia now and cost about twice as much as Claussen's or Nathan's).
No baserunners since the first inning for the Twins? Yikes.
My gosh, the Twins have 3 hits.
3 friggin' hits.
Nah, the friggin' hits don't get the runs in. These were run scoring hits. Twins haven't had any friggin' hits this game yet.
Are the Twins in get-out-of-town mode, or what? Fortunately, the Red Sox are too much in let's-start-the-playoffs mode to take advantage (so far).
And I'm still not a pickle.
I'm going with "these hitters aren't very good at hitting" mode. It doesn't especially look like a lack of effort or anything. (And I'm sure, for instance, that Rondell would have liked a couple of hits in his last game ever.)
Woah, I just missed that...
Who did Terry Ryan say they have to figure out if they're a starter or reliever?
Kubel.
Actually, I don't know. I'm getting the NESN feed on mlb.tv.
Ha!
And I thought he said Perkins.
That would make sense.
I thought they said Guerrier, but that wouldn't make much sense.
To me, Perkins profiles much better as a reliever than a starter. Relief pitchers tend to have better HR/FB rates than starting pitchers, and there's not much getting around Glen's fly ball tendencies.
Personally, I prefer him as a starter...good fastball, good curveball, and a developing changeup.
I think Rick Anderson prefers him as a starter too, but with the current situations that the bullpen faces going into 2008 along with the abundance of possible starting pitchers within the organization, I think he'll find himself in the pen.
When comparing FB rates, Perkins does have a higher GB rate than Slowey.
Slowey has a much, much, much better walk rate in the minors than Perkins. Walks + Home Runs == baaaaaad.
That is true...
I just think it's foolish, unless it's completely necessary, to waste Perkins in the pen when he's fully capable of starting.
However, given the circumstances with the Twins, it'd make some sense to have him be a reliever.
PECOTA had Perkins forecasted with a 4.5 VORP this season as a starter. It's not really clear to me that Perkins would really be any good as a starter. In his ~30 IP this season as a major leaguer, he hasn't really been that impressive, either. ~6-7 K/G and ~4 BB/G, right about where PECOTA had him at.
Intuitively, why would relief pitchers tend to have better HR/FB rates than starters? Does the max effort type nature of a RP have some effect on keeping the ball in the park more? I had never heard this statement before.
Does the max effort type nature of a RP have some effect on keeping the ball in the park more?
Yup, I think that's it. In general, it is much easier to be a relief pitcher, because you can pitch at max effort. (This is one reason to be unhappy with the idea of a replacement level pitcher--average for starting pitchers is much different than average for relief pitchers.)
John Lackey has been pointed to by some as the only starting pitcher who can significantly out-perform league average in HR/FB year after year, and over the last four years he has had HR/FB rates of 10.3%, 7.8%, 6.3%, and 8.5%. Over that same span, Joe Nathan has had HR/FB rates of 4.8%, 8.1%, 6.0%, and 6.3%. Mariano Rivera has been at 6.6%, 3.7%, 5.3%, and 7.8%. (Those were the first two elite relief pitchers I checked.) Certainly not all good RP have good HR/FB rates, but it seems to be something that relief pitchers have a lot more control over than starting pitchers.
The Light Rail is rolling along pretty well right now.
For those who might care, the game in Colorado right now is...interesting.
Not as interesting now, but still tied at zero.
Boy, do I love Kubel.
Man, Kubel ripped that. Attaboy.
All right - I'm going to follow up E-6's earlier post, and submit my season summarizing image for the 2007 Twins:
That's a good one.