MIN 7, CHW 0: Twins, Fans Flex Their Muscles in Weekend Sweep

F Baldelli for pulling Odorizzi at 5.1 ... I would have won 13-1, instead of 12-1 in fantasy this week!!!

 

Just kidding,  I'm sure he wants to keep him fresh to go down and dominate his old mates.

I was wondering what was up with Odorizzi getting pulled in the middle of an inning with no one on base. He was at 90-some pitches but having just gotten the first out by strikeout could he have been given a little leash to try to get through the sixth? Or was there some sign that he was tiring out?

This next week will be a huge test for Twins and where they are really sitting, and if they will be running away with division or not.  Two against brew crew, an above .500 team, four against Rays, the team we are trying to emulate and another playoff contending team, and finally three against closest competitor for division.  Seven on the road too.  If we have a winning record on that stretch, in particular winning the series against Cleveland, we can make Cleveland strongly think about selling.

I still think we will win division with way we are playing and way Cleveland is playing, but if we can get such a big lead that all four in the division sell off and let us get a ton of easy wins to get home field in playoffs would be nice.  I do feel at least one more big time bullpen arm is needed, and would love mad bum for playoffs, being he has proven he knows how to win in playoffs. 

So far this year we have handled our own against top teams so not like we just picking on weak teams, but this next week will be against possible playoff teams, lets show up and keep on keeping on.   

I was wondering what was up with Odorizzi getting pulled in the middle of an inning with no one on base. He was at 90-some pitches but having just gotten the first out by strikeout could he have been given a little leash to try to get through the sixth? Or was there some sign that he was tiring out?

In today's paper they talked about Odorizzi having been sick for a few days before yesterday's start.  Although he was getting over it, wasn't 100%.  Kepler also was dealing with the same bug which is why he was kept out of an earlier game...not the banged up knee we all knew about. 

Also too, no other team will take the Twins lightly from here on out. The tests get a little tougher now.

I thought I heard we have the easiest remaining schedule in the division.

In context, I am not sure these numbers mean much. The KC metro is a million-plus less population than the Minneapolis metro, so we probably can't consider them on the same scale. Also, the 2011-2015 Twins attendance was almost certainly buoyed by the new ballpark, and the fact the team was consistently good for 10 years prior to that period (As opposed to the Royals, whose 1994-2012 era of suckiness is unmatched in Twins history.)

Examples of different contexts: with a new ballpark and good teams, the 1973-1989 Royals were consistently great in attendance. Meanwhile, the Twins twice dropped out of the top 10 in AL attendance just 3 years after winning World Series titles in the Dome around that same era.

I'll buy some of this, but not all of it.  I mean, Kaufmann just underwent a $250 million dollar renovation in 2009 that was impressive enough that MLB gave them the 2012 All-Star game, so the K is not a dump and it basically never was a dump like the Dome was essentially immediately upon it being built.  Rather, Kaufmann has basically always been a top 10 park.  Which is why it is meaningful to me how quickly their attendance dropped off after their recent peak.  This is particularly true when comparing them to, say, the Kansas City Chiefs, who have always had great attendance and great home-field advantage, even during poor stretches (for example, that 1-million person smaller metro area set the record for loudest crowd ever in a game 4 years ago in any stadium, even though their stadium is an open-air stadium, and even though they were in the middle of a 40-72 stretch over the preceeding 7 seasons... it's just not much of a baseball city, it is a football city).

That said, I agree that I don't like calling out non-yankee fans, and feel a bit sheepish that I did so in retrospect.  I mainly did so because I was so shocked that the twins were being called bandwagon fans, as they have regularly been some of the more persistent in town and across the nation (I always notice a disproportionate amount of twins hats when I travel nationally, given that we are only the 14th biggest metro area in the US).