SwainZag

Lol. Santana. Lol.

Ugh, Tommy should have been out of this inning twice.

Esco!!! Just flip that guy to 2nd!

Sigh. Failed hit and run, Escobar error. Things are just not going the Twins way.

Thru the first 3 innings, Tommy showed how you can be extremely effective throwing with lower velocity. He was keeping the ball down and most importantly getting ahead of hitters. He fell behind Moose before eventually giving up the HR (on a good pitch) and then tossed a meatball to Cain.

That was a really nice AB from Arcia until that swing and miss.

Ooooo Oswaldo was trying to be put that 2-0 pitch 500 feet away.

Twins fans: "I can't believe this bum Kennedy is shutting us down. Go Tommy Milone!' Royals fans: "I can't believe this soft throwing bum Tommy Milone is shutting us down. Our new $70 million dollar pitcher Kennedy as advertised!"

Man he just grooved that fastball to Park.

Damn that was a nasty pitch to Joe.

At this point, why not hit Joe 2nd and Escobar 3rd? The team obviously doesn't have a leadoff hitter, but might as well stack the hot hitters together, at least IMO.

Oops, I am Mountain time, so I converted to Eastern Time for some reason.

The combined 4-27 with with 16 K's is also interesting.

Thanks Chief. Hopefully I can be a good luck charm and help them to a W. Buxton and Sano out of the lineup. Think Molly is sending an early message?

We are back! I know we are 4 games in, but it’s my 1st game thread, so welcome back everyone. Welp…..not how we all wanted the season start, but here we are winless. A day short of a year ago, the winless Twins sent Tommy Milone to the mound looking for win #1. What they got was 7.2 shutout innings and an offense that “erupted” for 6 runs on the way to a win. This year’s winless Twins will send the same Tommy Milone looking for win #1 and offensive breakout. Sound familiar? The 2016 Twins haven’t had it as rough as last year’s bunch though. A year ago’s Twins were absolutely pounded in their 1st series of the season to the tune of 22-1 by the Tigers. This year’s Twins have played in four tight games, dropping 2 one-run games and 2 two-run games. While the pitching has been better giving up just less than 4 per game, the offense has been…well…offensive. It’s hard to win baseball games when your runs per game are: 2, 2, 2, and 3. Outside of Escobar and Mauer the Twins bats have struggled mightily. The rest of the offense outside of Joe and Esco have struck out 43 times in just 101 AB’s. That’s 43% of the time. Ugly. Beyond Ugly. On the opposite spectrum the Twins don’t really like walks. Sano, Mauer and Dozier have combined for 10 walks in 4 games. The rest of the team? 4. Yep. Something has to give soon, will it be tonight? There has been a lot of discussion about Coach Molitor’s late game decisions and a lot of blame placed on the bullpen. I think looking at the numbers of 3 players can perfectly reflect on the Twins 0-4 start. Our young trio of stars. Sano, Buxton and Rosario. The trio has combined to 6-40 with 23 K’s. A line of .150 with 1 RBI. They basically have the combined line of a National League starting pitcher and that’s 1/3 of the starting lineup. Ouch. Once these three starting hitting the wins will follow, but it’s be a very rough start. ON a positive note, we got to say a big Hello to our Korean slugger Byung-ho Park last night when he launched an estimated 441 foot HR into the wind at Kaufman Stadium last night. It was the 2nd longest HR hit in the MLB this season. It was majestic and there was no bat flip. Tonight the Twins will face the defending World Series champions the Kansas City Royals who will throw Ian Kennedy tonight. Kennedy is making his Royals debut after being signed to a 5-year $70M dollar contract this past off-season. Last year with Padres Kennedy went 9-15 with an ERA of 4.32 while surrendering a career high 31 HR’s. We can only hope this trend of giving up the long ball will continue when the Twins step in the batter’s box tonight. -------------------- Lineups: TBA TWINS SP Tommy Milone ROYALS SP Ian Kennedy

Ah, we are starting this already. Goodie.

FTFY. 3* loss team.

Me thinks Eddie might get the day off tomorrow.

Eddie needs some discipline. Good lord.

In that situation it would have probably worked fine if he would have pulled back, the camera angle isn't great to see if he just had a giant lead and waited to take off on contact or not. Normally on a sacrifice, the batter squares before the pitch has been thrown and the defense reacts accordingly. Dozier didn't square until the ball was leaving his hands, hence the minor confusion and 3rd base being open. The way he put the bat on the ball and was already moving out of the box makes me look at it like a bunt for a hit, but who knows.

After watching it about 5 times right now, I am going to say he was bunting for a hit. He squared extremely late and the 3B was playing back by the bag, Dozier just bunted it too hard. It looks like Buxton took off when he squared because Machado charged and there was no one even in the vicinity of third base.

And Brach makes the easy decision to walk Mauer to put Sano up to bat as the go ahead run.......

But Plouffe defensively at 3B is an asset. By moving him to RF and Sano to 3B to technically downgrade both positions defensively. Sano is more athletic than Plouffe is anyways.

1 out, down 1 run with runners on 2nd and 3rd you want to bring in a guy who strikes out 25% of the time? Zuke put the ball in play and tied the game. Sure, a hit would have been better, but a strikeout probably means they don't tie the game up and we don't even have a 9th inning to bitch about. If there weren't 2 outs with no one in the 9th, I could see pinch hitting for Suzuki then.

The Mets paid a pretty hefty sum to buy out Jason Bay a few years ago.