Sherry Cerny

Thank you SO MUCH!!!

The Twins have had a tough go since leaving Detroit. With only two wins in the past eleven games, going into tonight this is a MUST WIN GAME. Yes, it’s the National league, YES, they are not playing in our division, but we are needing a win right now. The central league play and teams are messy at best and we can put ourselves in a spot where we can begin to come back and fight for the number one spot. Tonight we need to pull things together to get that W and be prepared for the Indians early next week, but we have a few things we need to fix if we are going to do that. JA Happ is going to be pitching tonight and over his past two games, he certainly hasn’t sucked, but he hasn’t been stupendous. He came out in the fourth against Detroit and against Boston, showing that once again the arms that are starting the games are built for longevity to get us through at least the 6th. The bullpen seems to be getting more of a workout again than necessary and the starters need to have a more solid performance or we will continue to exhaust our bullpen. We need to be more pragmatic about our hitting. Not every single hit needs to be a Bomba...it’s fun, don’t get me wrong. I am not a Bomba hater, that being said, our defense is saving us at times and our offense is lagging. We need to be hitting into the shifts and the gaps to get on base. One of our biggest downfalls is getting guys on base, and the big hitters coming in and trying for homers and leaving us stranded. We aren’t going to win games by striking out because we want to be heroes, just put the ball in play. {oh, and BUNT IN EXTRA INNINGS!} The defense is one of the better treasures of this team, even with the management making stupid decisions like pulling Donaldson who was doing just fine at third against the A’s. As much as I love having good utility players, it pains me to see such horrible decisions made by management in critical situations. That’s what spring training is for, not middle of the tenth, up by two with big hitters from the other team coming up. Buxton, while healthy, has made some incredible plays that would be great to be backed up with hits and runs. Simmons should be coming off the IL soon, but with Kep and Sano going onto the IL, we circle back to our training site and the need for calling up kids like Nick Gordon for the first time. I am curious to see what tonight brings for the guys. It’s pivotal in this early part of the season that we dig in, find our swing and make better managerial decisions if we intend to pull out of this slump and start contending for our place in the Division and American League standings.

After suffering a 4 day break in baseball for COVID 19 precautions, I had been looking forward to Tuesday night. It seems that the Twins while having a great cohesion had issues since day one. The Twins have played through Donaldson’s day 1 injury, missing Buck due to a stomach virus (jury is still out on that one) and Simmons stepping out for COVID protocol on April 14th, but the one thing the Twins still cannot seem to play through is their pitching. The double headers, late nights and early games gassed out our pitching to the point where Willians Astudillo would step into the pitching line up - in an already losing game - to the Angels showing his skills and fast pitch form to the MLB. Matt Shoemaker, a pitcher the Twins acquired in February 2021, was an all-star in his own right when he played in 2014 as a rookie. As reported by Do-Hyoung Park, Shoemaker has been struggling with an onslaught of injuries since 2017 and has been continuing to fall further down after 2019 when he tore his ACL. The Twins, fully expecting him to be healthy and the No. 4 contributor to the rotation, spent 2 million dollars on the 34 year old right hander, who barely had played any games since 2017. Shoemaker has only pitched in 2 games thus far for the Twins and neither were truly magical or anything that showed promise. His first game on the road in Detroit, where he pitched six innings and only one run got let in the 5th in the 22 batters he saw. He would take home the win in that game. In the next game against Seattle, he would pitch 5 innings and give up 4 runs and 7 hits leaving the game with an ERA of 4.09. The longer he stayed in the more damage that got done. Tonight, after sitting out for 9 days, the RHP would once again take the mound against the A’s. The Oakland A’s are barely over .500 - a game that could have been our first W on the road since April 7th against the Tigers - and get us back on track for what started out as looking like a winning season. Shoemaker came out and pitched 3.1 innings and in that time allowed two runs and had 67 pitches before Alcala came in as the relief pitcher in the 4th. The Twins would fall 7-0 in game one of a double header after a grand slam served up by Alcala, accompanied by the runners left on base from when Shoemaker was on the mound. Not the start to the night the team and the fans were looking forward to. In his first three games Shoemaker has continued to slide down hill. It may be just acclimating to the team, maybe it’s the 9 day rest...but the trend is showing that once again, the Twins took a chance on an arm that isn’t truly benefiting the roster and is leaving us with leaning on other utility players like Astudillo to come in and give us the outs we need. This “Shoe” just may not be the right fit.