Game 144: Kansas City Royals @ Minnesota Twins
Posted by Yickit on Tuesday, September 9th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
Tonight's game is going to start in about thirty minutes, but I didn't see a Game Log anywhere in the back end, so I'll throw something up here so we can get the comments started.
Kansas City visits the Triple H Corral tonight at 7:10 CDT (8:10 EST).
Probable Pitchers:
Minnesota: Nick Blackburn (ERA: 3.71; xFIP: 4.49; tRA+: 107)
Royals: Brian Bannister (ERA: 5.56; xFIP: 4.87; tRA+: 81)
The Twins need to win this series at home to stay close to the White Sox in the AL Central playoff race. The Pale Horses lost their first of two contests against the Blue Jays today, hopefully the Blue Jays take care of business tonight too.
Go Twins!
Dueling game logs. Yickit was first. I killed mine. Shall you do the same, FTLT??
At least we know that the WGOM won't ever go without a game log. If anything, it'll have more than one.
I deleted mine, thanks for taking the initiative. What would we have done without a game log?!?
The truth is, we are 0-3 with my game logs. I happily deleted mine.
There is no such thing as a Buffalo Effect. /ubelmann
We will see this Saturday.
gotten drunk?
Oh, wait! you are going to d....
Nice to see such an upswelling of civic virtue here in the Nation. It's like a Libertarian's wet dream.
As a Libertarian, on his way to getting drunk, I feel honored...
yay for Game Logs!
Darlos Gomez?
On JoePos' blog Mauer and Morneau and third and fourth respectively in MVP voting. For whatever reason, Jose Guillen is in 11th.
Span a riffic!
on the board in the first. I like it
Bert, shut up. There is no right way to score a run.
Oh, but there's a Twins way.
That 1st inning run is Twins baseball at it's finest.
Wrong. There was no sac fly involved.
And just like that, game tied.
Fuck me.
See, isn't it better to score a run by giving away two outs than scoring a run without recording an out at all? Twins baseball, indeed.
Olivo
grr
brianS- are you in a Buffalo sports blogger fantasy hockey league? There is someone who has both the lowercase b and capital S. I thought that you said that you didn't like fantasy sports..
FTLT: I've never commented one way or the other on fantasy leagues, actually. But no, that's not me.
I haven't participated in a fantasy league for more than 10 years. The last time, I was part of a four-headed monster "brain trust" in an NBA league with no restrictions on transactions. We won the league by making a bazillion transactions -- exchanging out guys at the bottom of our roster with short weeks for guys with an extra game every week. The other GMs in the league (almost all friends from grad school) eventually got pissy about it because we had way more mgt resources to throw at the problem than any of the others (almost all singleton GMs).
so, that was fun. but we never did it again.
This sort of thing happened in my baseball fantasy league this year. It's a keeper league, and this was I think my fourth year of participation in it, and for the first time, we used IP as one of our stat categories for pitchers. Unfortunately, this meant we had no real way of limiting pitcher use (like we used games played for every hitter position) and so some guys would pick up and drop waves of starters every day to max out their IP totals. We're going to eliminate IP as a point category and go back to using it as a limiter next year.
I assumed it wasn't you I was just sort of being a smart ass.
there's a lot of BS to go around. But only so much bS.
You know what we haven't had for a long time? Besides a winning streak of more than 1 or 2 games, I mean. A game where the bottom of the order really contributes.
Poor Howard Sinker can't break out his ludicrous "Bottom-Feeders" nickname any more.
Ummm... I think we haven't had a game where the bullpen actually holds a close lead
Between the offense and blackburn, I do hope that there is a huge dispartiy between us and KC towards the later innings.
Bannister is just pumping strikes in there, 3/1 strike/ball ratio so far.
A Gomez bunt?
It's coming.
Can we score a run by getting a hit?
There ya go!
Even when Nick Punto succeeds I get sort of upset.
SPAN!
Wow. Tangible offense. Welcome back.
I agree.
Casilla is due, right?
Alright, I mean this one.
Mauer is due.
There is no such thing as "due".
In the event that JoePos writers a Banny Log tomorrow, how many times do you think that he will mention how brilliant Gardy is?*
*I promise no more JoePos LTE's tonight.
According to GameDay, ball four to Casilla couldn't have been more of a strike. Right down the middle and thigh high.
I just watched it again and it looked like maybe it was at the knees. Definitely not thigh high.
I really hope that Mauer AB doesn't come back to haunt the Twins.
Chances of Blackburn giving those runs back?
Quite good.
Can a pitcher put a fucking zero up following an inning that the offense actually produces?
Jesus christ.
answer : no
Well, you pretty much asked for it.
Don't have Gordo interview someone while the game's going on. He has a hard enough time keeping up with the game as it is. Asking him to do two things at once is asking the impossible.
Mark Ritchie's got a real voice for print media.
Olivo is the only Royal in the lineup to hit a ball over the fence against the Twins this year. Royals now have 4 HRs against the Twins, two by Olivo. The other two were an inside-the-parker by Mark Teahen and a HR by Alex Gordon, who is hurt now.
Well, at least Blackburn managed to get out of the inning with the lead this time. Sure would be nice if the Twins score that the pitcher didn't immediately give runs back. It really changes the momentum around quick.
The starters are sick of the bullpen taking all the heat.
Team players, those starters.
Of course, the reverse is always good, get a run right after the opponents scored.
Placement!
Buscher is a man!
Buscher with a little better placement.
In all seriousness, I really thought Bannister was going to be a better pitcher this year than he has been. (Yeah, I drafted him in my fantasy league back in March.)
Make that two of us.
I have confidence that Blackburn will get it done this inning.
Thank you. I'll take full credit.
I just checked and the last time The Dude homered was August 15th. Also, Punto seems to make the last out in a disproportionate number of innings.
Re: Punto- That is the least surprising stat that I have ever heard.
Actually the Punto thing was just an offhand observation that may have no statistical validity whatsoever. In other words, I'm too lazy to research it.
I will just take your word for it.
Punto's batting average with 2 outs is .194.
Were there two outs every time he came to the plate in 2007?
1-2-3 innings by our pitchers makes me happy
I can't remember whether it was here or on Gleeman's blog, but somewhere I saw a stat that showed Gomez has an even lower average than most people when he has two strikes on him. Which makes me wish he wouldn't try to bunt so often, because a lot of times it puts him in a two-strike hole.
Rolen!!!!
I wonder if a Twins fan has gotten alcohol posioning from playing the 'Sacrifice Fly' drinking game
but yay for runs
Twins baseball!!!
Mountie!
The Mountie gets his man!
w00t!! Clearly Canadian!
WOOT!!!!
23 for the Mountie!!!
JUSTIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Just got back from Omerha, and I must say that I like what I see. (And the ChiSox losing game 2 as well!)
I've spent the last few days not thinking about the Twins in any capacity. Here they go again, winning back my affection!