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Game Thread: Twins @ Indians, 5/9, 3:10 p.m. CT Game-time forecast: A mix of clouds and sun. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 83 °F. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph. Line ups: Minnesota Twins Phil Hughes {R} SP Brian Dozier {R} 2B Torii Hunter {R} RF Joe Mauer {L} 1B Kurt Suzuki {R} C Kennys Vargas {S} DH Eduardo Escobar {S} 3B Eddie Rosario {L} LF Jordan Schafer {L} CF Danny Santana {S} SS Cleveland Indians Bruce Chen {L} SP Jason Kipnis {L} 2B Carlos Santana {S} 1B Michael Brantley {L} LF Brandon Moss {L} RF Lonnie Chisenhall {L} 3B Nick Swisher {S} DH Michael Bourn {L} CF Roberto Perez {R} C Jose Ramirez {S} SS The Gardy Boys In The Case of the Missing Plot Chapter I The Speed Demon Joe Gardy looked at his older brother with dismay. “Seriously? Our author went with an overused joke, about a missing plot, as his title?” Frank Gardy looked at his younger brother in disbelief. “There isn’t really an author, in any normal sense of the word, for our series of books, Joe. It’s farmed out. Bits and pieces of story and characterization are added by various hack writers on contract. Women as often as men, as I understand it. All paid on a simple per-word basis. The same writers did Nancy Drool too.” Blond brother Joe burst out laughing distractedly. “Women! Being paid same as men for the same work? This is 1927, not the twenty-first century!” Dark-haired brother Frank muttered with distemper, while looking at his younger brother, “well, I guess we should just go with this title, and count our blessings. Remember our previous adventure? ‘The Case of the Phantom Pirate Jungle Swamp Hobo’s Tattoo Spooky Skeleton near the Old Mill at Midnight Treasure Chest Case’. Great Gatsby, that one stunk.” Joe, he of the lighter-hued tresses, brightened even further as he gazed at his older brother. “Heh,“ he dissembled, “‘hobo’. Well, this is the 1920’s so I guess that’s how we all talk. Wait. I know! How about this for a title?” The Case of the Grinning Indian Starring Joe Gardy, and his brother Frank The elder, darker-haired brother pondered. “That's a lot better. It’s the Bee’s Knees, actually. It has real poten-… hey, waitaminnit!” Baby faced blond Joe grinned like an Indian at his own prank, it being 1927 and OK to grin that way, one might suppose. Suddenly, a mysterious black roadster rounded the corner and sped down the street toward their home! Chapter II Indians! The roadster passed their home and continued down the street without incident, mysteriously and blackly. Young Joe Gardy idly opened the wrapper of the gum he’d recently bought. “I wonder where Dad is,” he asked his older brother Frank. “He's probably out on a case. Ever since he got fired as manager of the Upper Midwest Matching Pairs baseball club, he’s been taking his detective work a lot more seriously.” Their father was, of course, the famous detective Fenton Gardy, who in his spare time away from the baseball diamond had solved many baffling cases, usually with the “help” after “school” of “his” two sons. For some reason, the newspapers in the Upper Midwest had always gotten his first name wrong and called him Ron. Lamestream media, gotta love them, amiright? But this is Estuaryharbor, a small town which was named for the harbor that was located right on the estuary in an ambiguously described part of the country that actually is obviously Maine, or New Hampshire at least, where everyone knew him as Nancy. Joe spoke up. “During that long exposition, I went to the library and learned that one of Dad’s rival teams was the South Lake Erie Chief Wahoos. Their mascot is a grinning Indian. Just like our new story title. You don’t suppose that’s a clue, do you?” http://www.poynettehometalent.org/Images/IndianLogo.jpg “Clue? We aren’t even working on a case, Joe,” Frank pointed out. Joe pondered. “Say, I’ve got a hunch Dad’s been kidnapped,” he stated youthfully. “Oh, you and your hunches,” Frank said in the manner of an older brother. “Who is it that’s got him this time, smugglers? Last time, it was spies, except it turned out he had just gone to the bank.” Straw-haired Joe looked at the gum package’s contents. He took his best guess which was the cardboard and which was the gum, and popped the one with less ink on it into his mouth and tried to chew. He looked at the other item. “Hey, maybe this is a clue!” he exclaimed unintelligibly. In his hand was a baseball card, except back in the 1920s such cards came with cigarettes, but we can’t really say that, so we’ll go with the gum and hope nobody asks. The card contained this information. Bruce Chen The crafty veteran lefty, not yet quite 38 years old, has been called up from AAA to face the Twins this afternoon, in place of TJ House who has a sore shoulder. Subjective memory might be that Chen has pitched the Twins tough in his career, but his record actually shows they have handled him pretty well with an ERA of 5.42, and an OPS of .846 suggesting the ERA is no fluke. Maybe that record is colored slightly by the six run pounding the Twins gave him in August 2014 in just one inning, which perhaps not coincidentally made them the last major league team to face him. However, he has been impressive in 5 starts for the 2015 Columbus Clippers, compiling an ERA of 1.74 and a microscopic WHIP of 0.7 in 31 innings. The Twins had best approach the game with respect from the beginning, or at least when he comes out for his second inning of work. Fun fact: The Twins are the only major league team Chen has never pitched for. No, not really, but it may seem like it – the Indians will be team #11 for him. It may be only a matter of time. http://media.utsandiego.com/img/photos/2011/08/23/579e3945-4dea-49c5-b3c5-45b75283a01bnews.ap.org_t180.jpg “Indians! Did you hear that, Frank? Though, his picture on the card doesn’t look like an Indian. Italian, maybe? Swarthy, that’s all I can tell. Anyway, I wonder if this is the information we need to help our father, the famous detective and also ex-baseball manager, Fenton Gardy, get his job back as a famous baseball manager,” Joe Gardy muttered. Frank Gardy rubbed his chin. “Maybe so. Now I really hope he’s not kidnapped, because that would make it hard for him to go back to work as a famous baseball manager.” Suddenly, a mysterious black airplane appeared in the sky, navigated toward their neighborhood, and landed right on the street! Chapter III Another Surprise The pilot of the aircraft opened his hatch, apologized for the intrusion, asked for directions to the farm he was supposed to be crop-dusting, and taxied away for takeoff, mysteriously and blackly. Frank Gardy looked at his brother Joe Gardy in annoyance. “Well that was annoying,” he muttered. “What else do we know about this apparent underworld outfit, what were they called, the South Lake Erie Chief Wahoos? Here, let’s look at the front page of the Estuaryharbor Times, a periodical devoted to recent events in our town of Estuaryharbor - known for its harbor that reaches into an estuary somewhere in a coastal US region - as well as news of the world beyond. Here’s what it says.” While Cleveland has gotten off to a disappointing start in 2015, Michael Brantley can hardly be held for much of the blame. He has been blazing so far, batting .341 in his 21 games. It’s hardly an empty .300 either, with 8 doubles and 2 HR plus sufficient walks, for an overall OPS of .919. He’s also contributed four stolen bases without a caught-stealing, and he hardly ever strikes out. While there are a few other dangerous Indian batters in the lineup, surely Brantley is the one that the Twins will be determined not to let beat them at the plate if they can help it. Joe felt a wave of panic. “Indian batters. Lots of them apparently. And dangerous, at least a few of them. We need a lot more information before we can wrap up this case, don’t we?” Suddenly, a mysterious aerialist with a black parachute floated down from the sky! Chapter IV A Surprise The parachutist landed and handed another baseball card to the boys. An improbable gust of wind took hold of his chute and he whizzed away, just as mysteriously and blackly as he had come. “The card says ‘Marc Rzepczynski’. That can’t be a real player. Yippee! A code to break!” explained Joe Gardy. “No, you dunce, in that context, it’d be ‘exclaimed’, not ‘explained’!” the older and more linguistically nuanced brother Frank Gardy ex-…, uh, said. “But yes, that looks like a difficult code to crack. Let me get out my decoder book… M followed by A… there’s a Z followed by a bunch of random letters… I before E except after C… another Z just to throw us off… I think I’ve got it. Look at this.” Marc Rzepczynski. Zep-Chin-Skee. Journeyman reliever. He’s toiled, successfully but not with much distinction, for now his seventh season in the majors, having also been with Toronto and St. Louis. We might see him in the middle innings, who knows. But I mention him because he represents a facet of what baseball did for me as a youth. Or maybe just the baseball cards. It exposed me to the many nationalities that make up our population, and to the other nationalities that also play our game. I remember puzzling over names like Monboquette and Sawatski and Aparicio and Becquer and Minoso. Names my brother and I mangled up, and our dad could kind of help guess but also mangled at times. Aparicio wound up like Apache-oh, and Minoso sounded more like Minnesota with the accent on the wrong syllable. Pagliaroni was an utter mystery, and there was a guy named Tsitouris that made us snicker because we were pretty sure it was dirty. On baseball cards, the names were a novelty. When we’d see games, we’d find out the odd names were actually just guys. Real people. No big lesson there, but then again maybe there was. Still, even as an adult, I see a name like RzepAlphabits, and make a joke out of it. http://www.corvallisknights.com/images/news/zep_tribe.jpg “Pretty long message to come out of just that; they must have used an LZ77 compression algorithm. What do you make of it?” Frank muttered. Suddenly, a mysterious black circus wagon came to town. Frank and Joe Gardy hopped onto their motorcycles and dashed madly toward the fairgrounds at Barmitzvah Estuary, their speedometers rocketing close to 20 MPH, hoping against hope to intercept it before it would be too late. Chapter V An Unimportant Discovery The boys had a great time at the circus. After a week, they returned home, confident that the circus wagon would depart their town of Estuaryharbor, just as mysteriously and blackly as it had arrived, never to return except until perhaps exactly one year later if revenue projections continued to hold up. They picked up the most recent of the newspapers that had piled up on the front steps, and the bone-chilling page-one story chilled them nearly to the bone. The Twins are hot, the Indians are not, and I was afraid that the law of averages meant trouble for my team, heading into this series. But the game Friday night went well and the fears of a sweep against us are now gone. The runs have been coming in for us, and the pitching has been good. The Twins are riding a three-game road winning streak. But I’m never willing to make a prediction stronger than “wait and see what happens next.” Phil Hughes hasn't been the same pitcher he was for us in 2014, though he's given us innings including one complete game. Let’s watch and find out if the good times continue to roll. “This didn’t help any! I’m not sure we’ll ever rescue Dad from the spies who kidnapped him!” light-haired and immature Joe Gardy wailed. “I thought you said they were smugglers,” famous detective and ex-baseball manager Fenton Gardy said, strolling into the living room in his robe and slippers. “Where have you been all week? Molly and I thought maybe you had been kidnapped, and we were both starting to worry.” Joe looked at Frank in horror. Frank looked at Joe in horror. Their mother was named Laura. Fenton Gardy grinned like an Indian. Not one of those from a peaceful tribe like near Lake Erie, either, but one of those wild ones, who live out West. Suddenly, a mysterious black meteor appeared in the sky, heading straight to the ground! Chapter VI The Tower Treasure Fortunately the meteor crashed in north central Siberia, where hardly anyone was there to see the massive cloud of debris that rose mysteriously and blackly from the impact. Frank and Joe Gardy heaved a sigh of relief. “So we rescued Dad after all. And got to the bottom of the mystery about the baseball game with those Indians. Gosh, this was a swell adventure,” Frank Gardy muttered excitedly. “Just wait,” Joe muttered cheerfully, “until you find out about our next adventure, ‘The Case of the Missing Chums Who Get Trapped in an Attic and Come Out of the Closet’. That one sounds swell too!” Suddenly, the mysterious Game Thread Intro came to its conclusion and the scene faded to black! Blackly. And just a bit mysteriously. The End??? (????????????????????!)

Great win! Good night, all.

I don't interpret it as anything except keeping him on the roster through the season, to retain his Rule-5 rights.

It's cool. Just don't make eye contact, and pretend everything is copacetic. It'll be OK. Bet she doesn't even notice.

Oh, good idea! ModCon'15 at Brian's house!

He did compromise. Didn't you see? He went with her idea.

How come the conversations all turn real quiet-like when I come back into a room?

I forgot.

One of a moderator's main qualities is the focused ability to forget 99% of what is written here.

The double play may be the pitcher's best friend, but crooked numbers by his offense have to be invited to the party as often as possible, too.

Oh, and in case it hasn't already been stated (I'm still catching up): stick a fork in Torii.

Oh, and the new rookie strikes out with a man on third. Not Clutch.

Folks, you have just witnessed a season's first. Schafer bunts a ball on the ground into fair territory.

Would you like so-... <mppphhhh>

And self-inflicted, which was the point.

That was something else I wondered when I saw it - whether umpires might hassle him about a balk move when a runner's on first. He'll rightly argue it's his natural pitching motion, but I could imagine someone deciding it's still a balk.

The numbers say that one team in the AL has hit fewer home runs so far this season. They're hitting doubles and triples at about the league average, just not the round-trippers. What that says about fear I can not guess.

Way to bury the lead, Chief. Of course we'll defend this fine island. In fact, someone should send me there as part of an advance scouting party to assure the defenses of the RUM are in place.

I clicked Like. Would Like again.

If he's actually Eduardo Munster, sign him up to go with the rest of ours! / edit - crap, I just looked it up, and apparently Eddie Rosario is really Eddie.

Do only batters have hitches, or can a pitcher?

The second most important thing then is not being one of the teams that other teams absolutely should beat.

On May 9, 2013, the Twins came back from a 2-0 deficit to beat Boston 5-3, to run their season record to 16-15. We don't know yet whether the 2015 edition is hopeless or not, either.

B-r.com has "Batting Against" as a choice under the pitching menu on the main league page. http://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/AL/2015-batting-pitching.shtml There is also an equivalent display for a given team, under the pitching menu but titled "Detailed Stats". Maybe I should talk to Sean about that inconsistency. It shows our Gibby with 10 doubles and 2 homers. Probably more meaningful is the .248/.331/.365 slash line. Compared to the league, his BA is right at average, the OBP is a little high, the SLG a little low. I think that's what you were driving at, right? His BABIP is .258. That's low. But guys like Kershaw do it (well, .278). Why not our guy?