Make it Official! Twins 4,Tigers 3: By the Hair of Their Chin

[Riverbrian]

2 hours ago, rv78 said:

The Minnesota Twins sought to snap a five-game skid on Saturday, and Bailey Ober did everything he could to position them well for it. The offense remained in a sputter, and while opportunities were missed all day, Rocco Baldelli's club did just enough to get the job done.

 

Despite Rocco doing this:

Baldelli went with Carlos Santana off the bench. A weak fly out dropped him to 0-for-14 on the year with runners in scoring position, and he has just three hits in his last 40 at bats (.075). Manuel Margot grounded out on the first pitch of his pinch hit at-bat, and both runners were left on the bases.

Why play the pinch-hitting game, especially with 2 hitters that aren't hitting? There's no sense in his head.

I've been as frustrated and vocal about Rocco's utilization of our young left handers. 

However... in the this situation. It would have been the perfect time. 

1. They were not just pinch hitters they were defensive replacements as well and we had a two run lead to protect. 

2. Santana and Margot are better against left handers and Joey Wentz was on the mound. 

Of course HInch double crossed Rocco by bringing in a right hander after Margot was announced. 

The surprise in the game to me was Joey Wentz entering the game after our run of left handed hitters. 

[D.C Twins]

3 hours ago, jmlease1 said:

Dang it was cold at the game! pre-game on the mall was brutal with that wind.

Ober looked really good early and was mixing his pitches well. Tough call on pulling him: he was still doing ok, but was starting to wobble a bit. But it was really nice to see him throwing that cutter down and then getting in that good fastball at the top of the zone, changing speeds and eye-level. Hope they've figured out what he's tipping for KC, because it's clearly something.

Martin's doing pretty well for a rookie. Hopefully he can keep legging out some doubles. I would like to see him given the green light on the bases when he does stop at 1B: he's got good speed and the skill to swipe bags. (I would like the Twins to run more generally; Julien, Martin, Buxton, and Castro are all guys who can give us an advantage on the bases but so far we're not seeing much there. Some of it's probably situational, but getting more aggressive on the bases should help generate some more runs too)

With our RISP average.... our mitigation strategy should be to steal home more often :)

[h2oface]

5 hours ago, Eris said:

Did not like the idea of PH for Kirilloff and Larnach in the 8th. With RISP 2 players with a combined BA of 0.609 were replaced with two players with a combined BA of 0.278. 
 

That's kind of funny. I'm pretty sure that when you combine two players and figure batting averages it is still a percentage of the total hits divided by total official at bats. (not like OPS). 

But I didn't like it at all, either.