Game Thread Twins @ Brewers 8/10/17 7:10 PM

[amjgt]

I think Busenitz allows like 104% of his inherited runners to score

[Hosken Bombo Disco]

Bringing in the guy who hasn't pitched in 10 days

[Aggies7]

I don't understand the move. These young guys are here to learn and gain experience, aren't they? I can't imagine he's going to feel too great about 2 1/3

[jimbo92107]

About time to yank Enns. This guy does not look like a viable mlb pitcher. His stuff is mediocre at best, not much of a curve, heater tops out at 89, command not good enough to stay afloat with marginal stuff.

[sampleSizeOfOne]

Come on, infield fly rule!

[amjgt]

I think Busenitz allows like 104% of his inherited runners to score

Egg meet face

[Aggies7]

Sano was better in RF. Idiots.

[spinowner]

Nice DP by our gold glove 3B!

[Hosken Bombo Disco]

Sano-sie to the rescue!

[yarnivek1972]

And that is how we do that.

[drock2190]

 

Shortest. leash. Ever

 

Can't argue with the result

[Aggies7]

About time to yank Enns. This guy does not look like a viable mlb pitcher. His stuff is mediocre at best, not much of a curve, heater tops out at 89, command not good enough to stay afloat with marginal stuff.

Jeepers cats, he's 26 and just got his first 3 innings of action

[yarnivek1972]

Bringing in the guy who hasn't pitched in 10 days

Might work out. The Twins will likely need him to get through 5.

[Primetime82]

Can't wait for Pauly to be fired!

[wsnydes]

About time to yank Enns. This guy does not look like a viable mlb pitcher. His stuff is mediocre at best, not much of a curve, heater tops out at 89, command not good enough to stay afloat with marginal stuff.

So 50 pitches is enough to determine the viability of a MLB pitcher now?

[yarnivek1972]

The metrics say Sano is in the lower third defensively.

 

That said, he's light years better than last year and considerably better than anyone realistically expected.

[jimbo92107]

 

Jeepers cats, he's 26 and just got his first 3 innings of action

He's 26, and his heater tops out at 89. His curve barely curves. Unless he has some secret sauce we haven't seen, his highest ceiling is a #5 starter, more likely for the St. Paul Saints. 

[spinowner]

 

He's 26, and his heater tops out at 89. His curve barely curves. Unless he has some secret sauce we haven't seen, his highest ceiling is a #5 starter, more likely for the St. Paul Saints. 

You may be right. Or you may be wrong. It's too soon to know one way or the other.

[jimbo92107]

 

So 50 pitches is enough to determine the viability of a MLB pitcher now?

In this case, yes. Unless Enns is hiding his Maddux-like command or his devastating knuckleball, he looks like a pretty good AAA starter, nothing more. Oh, and he's left handed, which appears to impress some people for some reason. 

 

I would wager Aaron Slegers and David Hurlbut both would look more impressive than Enns did today. 

[John Kelsey]

So we haven't had any innings for this guy?

[King]

It wasn't pretty. Couldn't miss bats and it was getting out of hand the second time through the order. 

[PDX Twin]

If he keeps this up, I vote we change his name to Yay-senitz!

[wsnydes]

In this case, yes. Unless Enns is hiding his Maddux-like command or his devastating knuckleball, he looks like a pretty good AAA starter, nothing more. Oh, and he's left handed, which appears to impress some people for some reason.

 

I would wager Aaron Slegers and David Hurlbut both would look more impressive than Enns did today.

You're right. I'm sure there's not any added nerves in his Major league debut. That's not fair or reasonable.

 

You can't determine much from this outing alone, just as you couldn't if it were Sledgers or hurlbut. Just as you couldn't if he tossed a perfect game.

 

You may be right in the end, but it's still too early to determine anything.

[Richie the Rally Goat]

It’s a little known fact that Milwaukee was a Native American settlement long before the Brewers came on the scene. But the Algonquins didn’t know how to play baseball or sell beer. They didn’t even have a billionaire that could convince them to build a baseball stadium at the taxpayer’s expense. All those shortcomings left them behind the eight-ball for landing a professional baseball team and that created a great deal of angst around the council fires. So in a fit of pique (I’ve never had the pique, though I heard it’s gruesome) the Algonquin chiefs voted to attack Chicago. Mostly because Chicago had two professional baseball teams... okay, one and half professional teams, and Milwaukee had none, but also because the Algonquins were tired of fighting Chicago traffic and paying all those annoying tolls on their way to their winter homes in Ft. Myers. So an attack seemed like a good idea. If nothing else they could maybe capture a few toll booths, collect the tolls for a couple of months and make enough money to build their own baseball stadium.

 

Though to be honest, piquely (I made that word up) speaking, anyone who has ever tried driving through Chicago with less than a milk can full of change can certainly empathize with the Algonquins’ desire to wipe out Chicago.

 

Unfortunately, the failed Battle of Fort Dearborn on August 15, 1812 led to the Algonquins being forced out of Milwaukee (I believe they moved permanently to their lake homes around Hayward but spend their weekends selling tickets outside baseball stadiums across the country) and the city was turned over to the Germans who were coming here by the U-boat load.

 

Now everybody everywhere knows Germans can’t even take a pee without drinking a beer (that's sort of a chicken or the egg thing) so the first thing the Germans did when they moved into the Algonquins’ abandoned teepees was to build a brewery. And then another. And then another. You know, because the Germans are hard-workers and needed jobs as well as beer. So they kept on building breweries and drinking up the beer, causing more breweries to be built and more jobs being created which led to more Germans drinking up their paychecks on Friday night and on and on. It was sort of a self-perpetuating economic cycle. By the 1850’s there were over two dozen large breweries in Milwaukee and one tavern for every forty citizens, which in some cases was a violation of the fire codes but with all that tap beer flowing freely and the resultant readily available pee, tavern fires could be quickly extinguished by the patrons, though it did tend to make them smell funny, the taverns, not the Germans, and therefore tavern overcrowding was mostly ignored by the fire marshall. Especially if he picked up a double sawbuck inadvertently left on the bar by the tavern owner. Donkeyshane.

 

At one point in its history Milwaukee produced more beer than any other city in the world. Fortunately, the city also shared its fine brews with the rest of the world. For a price. Which of course meant a few lucky Milwaukee brewers joyfully entered Billionairehood.

 

The German wave of immigration was followed by a Polish wave of immigration, both waves leading to the quaint custom of doing the “wave” at baseball game. The Poles, though no stranger to beer, were too late to get in on the ground floor of the brewery boom, so they went into the sausage business instead. It was inevitable then, what with so much beer and sausage being made in Milwaukee, that Polish sausages smothered in kraut and washed down by a couple of cold draughts (thats the way they spell it in jolly old England because it’s hard to see the paper you’re writing on when you have a stiff upper lip) became standard sporting event fare.

 

It was into this beer-drinking, sausage-eating Milwaukee that the Seattle Pilots, purchased through bankruptcy court by a shrewd billionaire named Bud Selig, moved in 1969 and became an immediate hit with the local fans. There was now someplace to drink beer and eat Polish sausages other than dingy old taverns that smelled strongly of spilled beer, stale sauerkraut and uh, urine. In the new stadium, paid for by the taxpayers of course, a fan could pay double for his beer, triple for his sausage and listen to the crack of homeruns while breathing fresh air. If they left the roof open.

 

Bud renamed the team the “Brewers” after the city’s former minor league team and the rest is history. Actually all this is history. Well... maybe it only resembles history. Faintly.

 

Jumping ahead to modern times, the Twins versus Brewers, when both teams were in the American League, was one of the more friendly rivalries in baseball history with busloads of fans from both states attending “away” games. Naturally a large amount of beer was consumed and dozens of Polish sausages were scarfed down by these enthusiastic traveling fans, bringing bucks into both cities and the Bucks into Milwaukee, where it apparently stopped.

 

I have never been a pilgrim (sorry Duke), or donned sack cloth, mostly because its never been on sale at Kohl’s, but I have made pilgrimages to both the Twins and Brewers stadiums, both as a Wisconsin resident traveling to Minnesota and as a Minnesota resident traveling to Wisconsin. I guess they had me coming and going. But no matter which direction I traveled, or which state was my residence at the time, I never had a more enjoyable baseball experience than drinking beer and eating Polish sausages with the fans of both states. In my less than humble opinion, ending that friendly rivalry was one of the worst MLB decisions ever inflicted on Twins and Brewers fans. And the man whose fingerprints were all over that decision; Bud Selig, the same bozo who as commissioner tried to contract the league and eliminate the Twins and Expos.

 

Where were the Algonquins when we needed them?

 

The new alignment means the Twinks and the Brewers only meet once per year for half a homestand each, which really cuts down on ticket sales, charter buses, Polish sausages, beer, Pepto Dismal and out-of-state speeding tickets for both Minnesota and Wisconsin.

 

So tonight's game is it, your last chance for this baseball season to relive those thrilling days of yesteryear AD. So kick back, open your favorite German brew, tuck your Polish sausage into a bun (don’t read too much into that) and hoist a draught for the Algonquins. Maybe they'll organize an uprising, capture MLB headquarters and put the Brewers back in our division.

 

Added bonus tonight; recent trade acquisition Dietrich Enns will be taking the mound for the Twins; his MLB debut and our first opportunity to see if we were hoodwinked again.

 

The Brewers are going with Zach “The Ripper” Davies 13-4 4.18 ERA

Kohls' headquarters is in Menomonie Falls WI, a suburb of Milwaukee. No wonder you like it.

 

I'm a fan of all things Sconnie, except for the Brewers... still love the Twins

[Aggies7]

Buxton quietly up to .226

[jimbo92107]

 

You may be right. Or you may be wrong. It's too soon to know one way or the other.

I don't want to jump all over the guy, but what part of his game does anybody here see improving? Possibly his command, but that heater ain't gonna go much faster than 89 mph. That curve ain't gonna start looking like the ones coming from Duffy or Berrios. We have seen this movie before: Soft-tossing pitchers absolutely require plus command, or they get knocked around on a regular basis. Enns was getting knocked around, and then he walked in a run. 50 pitches means it wasn't because he was exhausted, though I'm sure he was nervous. 

 

Meanwhile, at least a few home-grown pitchers are waiting their turn in AAA and AA. If Enns gets a cuppa, then why not other guys? Let the late-season tryouts continue!

[yarnivek1972]

Decision time for Molitor. Busenitz is due 2nd next inning. Probably not going to double switch with Dozier. Too bad Mitch Garver isn't on the roster...

[ThejacKmp]

 

Buxton quietly up to .226

 

I mean, I'm glad he's doing better too but there's really nothing loud about hitting .226 if you're not a pitcher.

[jimbo92107]

Alan Busenitz is snapping some very lively pitches over the zone. Doesn't allow hitters to aim the ball much. They're just trying to make contact. Good stuff.

[Aggies7]

I mean, I'm glad he's doing better too but there's really nothing loud about hitting .226 if you're not a pitcher.

I know, but he was in the .170s in may and .190s in early July