Danchat

Starters: Phil Hughes (0-4, 4.39 ERA, 4.58 FIP) VS Shane Greene (3-1, 3.00 ERA, 2.97 FIP) 1: Phil Hughes – Will He Get That Win Today? It’s hard not to notice that 0-4 record of Phil’s. It seems like he just can’t catch a break. The Twins defense has been pretty bad behind him, but his 4.58 FIP suggests it’s more his fault than the defense’s. However, I believe one of the main reasons why is the lack of run support. Over Phil Hughes 4 starts, the Twins have scored… 4 runs!! Just 4! (0, 2, 2, 0) It’s kinda hard to win games when you have no offense to back you. Phil was in a groove last start, but so was Felix Hernandez, so Hughes got the loss. The keys to this game belong to the offense. Cross your fingers and hope for that first win. Yes, you have to cross them for the whole game! Once Hughes gets that first win, I think the second and third and so on victories will be easier to get. 2: Shane Greene Most of us haven't heard of Shane Greene before the 2015 season started. He's had a solid first 4 starts in Detroit, winning 3 of them. Greene had a promising rookie season with the Yankees last year in which he had an ERA of 3.78, a FIP of 3.73, and a K/9 of 9.3. That's very impressive for his first 14 starts of his career. This guy is only 26, so he reminds me of Trevor May and Kyle Gibson. Actually, if Gibson and May were throwing like Greene right now, I think the Twins would get a few more wins on the season. One more thing. Greene hasn't allowed a single home run this season. He probably won't give up one today. 3: Mornings “The early bird gets the worm.” Yeah, but the early bird also gets a nice headache and has to drink coffee just to get itself ready to face the day. As you can probably guess… I am not a morning person. I am a night owl. My brain is open from noon to midnight, and if you try to reach me at any other time, I won’t be fully awake. So when it comes to baseball that starts at 12:10, that’s a bit early for me. Especially because my body is begging to get one more hour of sleep while I’m typing this. Don’t worry about me, though, I’ll be fine… zzzzzzzzzzzz… *snores* 4: Lineup Analysis Twins 1. Danny Santana (S) SS 2. Brian Dozier ® 2B 3. Joe Mauer (L) DH 4. Trevor Plouffe ® 3B 5. Oswaldo Arcia (L) RF 6. Eduardo Escobar (S) LF 7. Kennys Vargas (S) 1B 8. Chris Herrmann (L) C 9. Jordan Schafer (L) CF SP: Phil Hughes Tigers 1. Rajai Davis ® CF 2. Ian Kinsler ® 2B 3. Miguel Cabrera ® 1B 4. Victor Martinez (S) DH 5. J.D. Martinez ® RF 6. Yoenis Cespedes ® LF 7. Nick Castellanos ® 3B 8. James McCann ® C 9. Andrew Romine (S) SS SP: Shane Greene My analysis of the Twins lineup: There’s not too much to talk about. We have an Eduardo Alert in left field and Herrmann catching. The biggest news here is the return of Kennys Vargas to the lineup. Has he gotten that swing under control? Is he going to calm down and not let pitchers get the best of him? I’m interested to see because I want this kid to succeed. 5: White Sox at Baltimore I’m sure most of you have already seen this in the news, and there’s probably a thread about it going on in the “Other Baseball” forum, but if you haven’t, two games in Baltimore have been postponed due to the riots and protesting. However, today there is going to be a game in Baltimore… with it being closed to the public! It will be the first major league game EVER without any fans in attendance. That’s just crazy, in my opinion. I do wonder how it’ll go. I’m not going to tell you what’s right and what’s wrong concerning the Freddie Gray incident. I will be praying and hoping for healing and peace in the Baltimore area.

Drinking... water? (I'm not of legal age of actual drinking, plus I never will drink...)

Nice win! The Twins got some surprisingly good pitching against a tough Tigers lineup. I'll be in charge of tomorrow's game thread. 12:00's a bit early for me, but I'll get it done.

Did my master plan to jinx Pelfrey fail? Have I motivated him to become a decent starting pitcher?

Pelfrey's getting some strikeouts. Very nice! Let's hope he stays healthy!

It's all part of my master plan to get Pelfrey into the bullpen and to keep May in the starting rotation.

Oops... are they going to hit a homer off of Pelfrey now?

Just for clarification, this was from ages 8 to 10, not at 15/16.

Starters: Mike Pelfrey (1-0, 2.65 ERA, 5.43 FIP) VS Anibal Sanchez (1-2, 5.96 ERA, 4.80 FIP) Hello, everybody! I’m going to be tonight’s entertainment, so please, sit back and relax. Let’s see how my first game thread goes. 1: Mike Pelfrey OK, let’s get a few things cleared up first. Some of you may remember me trashing Pelfrey and saying he doesn’t deserve any more chances in the rotation. But now I look stupid for saying that, don’t I? Pelfrey has an ERA of 2.65 and has had pretty good starts in the last two games. So what do I think about him now? The main thing is that he’s finally healthy. He’s throwing that fastball at 93 MPH and he’s clearly in better form than last season. He looks like he can actually become that #5 starter like we thought he could! However, Pelfrey’s ERA is the only positive stat I see. His FIP is suggesting that he’s getting pretty lucky and he only has a K/9 of 4.2. His ratio of strikeouts to walks is 1.14. I’m no statistics wizard, but that’s not a good looking stat right there. I think Pelfrey’s future is in the bullpen. At this point, he’ll be a better option that Boyer, Stauffer, and Thielbar. But I’ll leave that discussion for when Nolasco returns or when Santana returns. Anyways, Pelfrey’s numbers (according to ESPN’s stats) against the current Tigers batters are .314/.417/.371. The AVR and OBP are a bit higher than you’d like to see, but Pelfrey doesn’t give up extra base hits to them. He hasn’t given up a single homer to any current Tigers batter! I may not be a big Pelfrey fan, but I think he can win this one today. He’ll let plenty of runners on base from singles and walks, but if he can get out of jams, the Twins can win. 2: Anibal Sanchez What’s up with Anibal? He’s got an ERA of 5.96! Small sample sizes aside, I took a closer look at the numbers. He’s got a K/9 of 9.9 and a BB/9 of 3.2, so those don’t look bad… oh, here we go! He’s given up 5 HRs in his first four starts. The Tigers entire rotation has given up just 7 HRs, and Sanchez is accountable for 5 of them! Unfortunately, Sanchez is lights out versus the current Twins team. Using those nifty ESPN stats again, the Twins bat .163/.235/.228. Yikes! 29% of those ABs end in strikeouts! Only one current Twins batter has hit a HR off of Sanchez. Who is it? Whoever can guess this right first will get to choose the “Rally” animal, whether you want it to be the Rally Monkey, Rally Rhino, Rally Olsen Twins (ugh), or whatever you like. 3: Lineup Analysis Twins 1: SS Danny Santana 2: RF Torii Hunter 3: 1B Joe Mauer 4: 3B Trevor Plouffe 5: DH Eduardo Nunez 6: 2B Eduardo Escobar 7: LF Oswaldo Arcia 8: C Kurt Suzuki 9: CF Jordan Schafer SP: Mike Pelfrey Tigers 1: CF Gose 2: 2B Kinsler 3: 1B Cabrera 4: DH Martinez, V 5: RF Martinez, JD 6: LF Cespedes 7: C Avila 8: 3B Castellanos 9: SS Iglesias SP: Anibal Sanchez My analysis: Brian Dozier is getting the night off and Escobar is starting in his place. I’d bet that if Dozier got hurt for an extended amount of time, Escobar would get the call. Another note – this is the third straight game without Kennys Vargas. Is he working on his swing with the batting coach? Is Nunez actually a better option? At this point, they have to consider demoting Vargas to AAA and calling up Pinto. I’d much rather see Pinto at DH than Nunez. One last thing. Jordan Schafer’s career VS Anibal Sanchez: 2 for 14 with 8 strikeouts. I think I’d rather see Shane Robinson in CF tonight. 4: My Avatar and Past Twins Here’s my chance to talk about something random like Riverbrian does! I couldn’t think of anything better to talk about, so time to talk about my avatar! Yes, it’s the picture of Matthew LeCroy talking on a baseball phone. When I was a wee lad, I watched the Twins and rooted for my favorite baseball player, Jacque Jones. My second favorite was Matthew LeCroy. I honestly can’t understand why those two were my favorites. LeCroy would always pinch-hit and get a homer (or so it seemed to my younger self). And I don’t know why I obsessed over Jacque Jones – seriously, I dressed up in a Jones jersey for Halloween three years in a row, and I would have continued for a 4th and 5th year if my mom forced me to change it. So there’s a little of my Twins background from when I was about 7 years old. 5: Twins Daily I just wanted to say here that I really enjoy coming to Twins Daily every day. I love the topics and the comments and that like button! I thoroughly enjoy watching the baseball and watching all our predictions and thoughts get crushed and confirmed. And I especially enjoy when big news breaks in and everybody overreacts. I really enjoy being a part of this Twins community! So, on that note, stay classy, everyone.

Kinda ironic how there was just a new article on this website about an underrated player who's next in line to receive a new contract - Trevor Plouffe. That's a pretty stark contrast to him being called a journeyman here. You usually don't see two articles with opposite points on one website. The article I was talking about: http://twinsdaily.com/blog/536/entry-6476-warne-the-minnesota-twins%E2%80%99-secret-extension-candidate/

Our starting pitching is going to decline - Milone and Pelfrey are not going to maintain their current ERAs. Both have a FIP of 5.42. When Nolasco returns, I have a [bad] feeling that he'll replace May, making our rotation worse. Our batting is going to improve eventually. I doubt we'll return to being the 7th best offense in the league, but we're going to crawl out of the top 10 batting teams in the league.

A bit of coincidence. The Twins are going to keep winning some games with their offense, and their pitching is probably going to regress a bit. This is not a .500 team, and I'd say we're going to end up with right around 90 losses.

This is odd. The Wild game at one point was 2-0. Twins were up 2-0. Then the Wild let a goal in, 2-1. Then the Twins gave up a homer, 2-1. Now the Wild are up 3-1, so the Twins are gonna score next.

Shane Robinson and Joe Mauer are going to have a batting average race. Robinson is ahead by 110. Honestly, though, Robinson should be the main CF instead of Schafer, as long as he can keep hitting.

I'd prepare to remove Boyer from the 40-man and add Oliveros and send down Vargas and call up Pinto. I'd wait a bit longer for Vargas and Santana to adjust and see if they might start hitting again.

My goodness... Robinson batting second, Nunez at DH, and Escobar in LF. This is so crazy, it just might work. Emphasis on the "might".

Twins fans threshold for overreaction: 10 AB: AVG 10 PA: OBP 10 AB: SLG

Lester Oliveros has 17 strikeouts in 8.2 innings. Add this guy to the 40-man and take Boyer off.

Right when I was about to say something about how Thompson has been lights out so far this season, he gives up a HR and the game is within 3.

Oh yeah, it's Tim Stauffer Time! He totally sucks!! (if you can't tell, I'm trying to jinx him. Now he's going to go 5 innings with 0 runs!)

Shane Robinson batting .391, as expected.

So that's why they call him The King. Felix is on a whole other level.

Really? I have a flock of 15 turkeys that lives in my backyard. They're really odd creatures... they can fly for a little bit and they look ridiculous when they do it (they are big birds!). They love to nest in the tops of our trees and then glide down in the morning... it's the weirdest thing. And there's all you need to know about turkeys.

Put Pelfrey in the pen. Now that he's healthy and throwing 93 MPH, he can be an effective bullpen arm. I already trust him more than Boyer, Stauffer, and Thielbar right now. We desperately need some reliable arms in the pen, and I think Pelfrey can do it.