stringer bell

Great point about the back end starters. Looking solely at ERA, here is the Twins rotation:Gibson 3.96, Milone 4.04, Pelfrey 4.09, Santana 4.10, Hughes 4.43. No dominant starter for the season, but no embarrassments either. I left Duffey and May off on purpose--too few innings, but they were both good (Duffey better than good) in their starts as well.

Cleveland is basically dead. Now roll over the disappointed Tribe. Big win! Let's go Oakland, Seattle and Detroit (up 6-1 in the sixth)!

A little more than seven months to go.

Molitor is a genius!

Geez, I was kidding!

Perkins for the eighth? Ducks flying objects thrown!

Hicks is very good coming in, throws well, but going back? Not so much.

Kluber out after 6. He lost his last start to the Twins and is down two with three innings to go. What are the odds that he doesn't win a game or perhaps loses both, when facing Hughes coming off a wobbly three inning start and Milone as an emergency starter coming off a shoulder injury.

Should be a short leash for the soft-tossing left hander.

For sure! I think it will take a 6-1 or 7-0 week to make the playoffs. Most likely 6-1 might mean a Game 163. 5-2 might get them to a play-in game to the play-in game, but that is probably it.

I wonder if the Tribe were 75-79 if Kluber would be pitching.

Why would Milone have a high price tag but no trade value? If he has produced, he has value. If he hasn't he doesn't. The fact that he is cost-controlled should add to his trade value.

The Twins have one week remaining in a regular season which has seen them stay relevant throughout the entire season. One thing that has transpired in the course of the season is that a regular lineup has developed. The nine players with the most plate appearances on the year fill the nine positions on the field and in the batting order and these nine players are the ones getting the bulk of playing time during the stretch drive in September. I looked at yesterday's box score and made a couple of mental notes. The first was "no .300 hitters" and the thought was no one is close. Three players that won't qualify for the batting championship (Sano, Escobar, Rosario) could have the best batting average of the nine regulars. The likely high qualifier is Joe Mauer and he's hitting only .266. The next note to myself was "no truly bad hitter". The lowest average (.240) belongs to Dozier, who slugs and draws walks, so his OPS should be decent. Kurt Suzuki is toward the bottom (.244), but he's a catcher and not many catcher compile good hitting stats. Here's a look at the Twins' nine regulars for 2015 and where they rank in selected offensive stats: Name PAs BA OPS OPS+ OPS rank Sano 300 .277 .940 153 1 Escobar 420 .268 .767 106 4 Mauer 636 .266 .716 95 12 Rosario 450 .265 .744 98 10 Hicks 365 .259 .727 97 9 Plouffe 608 .245 .744 100 8 Suzuki 464 .244 .622 70 11 Hunter 540 .242 .712 91 11 Dozier 673 .240 .771 107 8 For those devotees of WAR, here are the numbers courtesy of BBRef: Dozier (3.0), Plouffe (2.3), Rosario (2.3), Sano (2.1), Hicks (1.6), Escobar (1.5), Mauer (1.5), Suzuki (0.5) and Hunter (-0.5). Here are my conclusions: Recalling Sano, Rosario, and Hicks and making Escobar the regular shortstop earlier might have won another ballgame or two. Outside of Sano, there are no standouts here--Dozier had an All-Star first half, but despite the 28 homers, his numbers are off from last year. The Twins' offensive numbers have taken a step back, but for the position players, the biggest improvement has been defense.

Hi everyone! It looks like the Eddie and Pelf show tonight. I have some advice. Don't give Pelfrey much rope. Edit: No rope at all!

Confidence is a big part of it for Perk. I said on another thread that he's got two above-average pitches, but neither of them are dominating. He has to have great command and trust his stuff. Even with that, sometimes he will get hit. It seemed that most of the hard-hit balls in the first half were at someone, not now. To the question in the title, I trust Perkins to be a reliable bullpen arm, but he's not elite.

Well, no. Bert was pitching for the Rangers then and he had left Minnesota firing double barreled one-finger salutes to the few fans left in the stands for Twins' games. My daughter was born that day and I got home just in time to hear it mentioned that Bert had pitched a no-hitter.

Cleveland's top three hitters went 1-11 with an ill-advised sacrifice bunt, while the top three Twins hitters were 5-11 with two walks, two doubles, a triple , two runs scored and two RBI.

I started a thread for this.

On the 38th anniversary of Bert's no-hitter, the Twins win to stay alive in the wild card race. It also happens to be the 38th anniversary of my oldest child's birth.

Perkins pitches to contact and escapes the 8th.

Plouffe apparently saw a couple, one too many.

Jeff Manship has a 1.06 ERA? Cleveland's pitching coach needs a raise.

Very nice seven innings from Santana. 100 pitches on the button. May in the eighth?

The top three hitters in Cleveland's lineup are hitting .302, .318, .315--top three for the Twins: .260, .236, .266.

I don't think there are any guarantees about the future. Having a Kepler waiting at AAA in the event of injury or hard regression is a good problem to have, especially if he continues to develop. What is slated to happen can be derailed by the player's own struggles (see Arcia, Oswaldo) as well as others who figure to play the same positions. As far as Kepler's profile, yes, there are real similarities to Mauer--sweet LH swing, contact and strike zone discipline and late-developing power. I am not willing to write Kepler off as a big slap hitter just yet. He's hit the ball for extra bases more this year and the homers mostly came late in the season. He just might develop 20+ homer power.