Western SD Fan

Especially with Lewis. Before this stretch, his star burned so bright in between injuries that the expectations were probably set too high. Whereas you take Larnach, he had his ups and downs, sent back to the minors, corrected some things, and is looking more like a professional hitter every day. Since Lewis's star is so bright right now, it will be difficult to justify sending him down to St. Paul to work on mechanics.

I guess I should have driven to Minnesota today. I could have thrown that meatball to Salvy.

37 pitches in 4 innings. Wacha looking for a CG.

Drat! Bat needed to die a hero.

We were just setting up for the 9th. Clemens PH for Lee (who comes up 4th) and gets the walk-off hit!

Used to be that we would mock and ridicule players hitting at or below the Mendoza line. Now we dream of hitters trying to achieve that line.

This is the Rocco move I don't understand. Three pitches by Stewart and he's done. You try to give the benefit of the doubt that there is something we don't know such as hitting against Stewart's pitch mix as you try to navigate through batters. But it just seems like a waste to burn a pitcher with only three pitches thrown.

Many of these batters have wives and girlfriends, right? Seems like too many of these hitters are so nervous they can't even reach 2nd base.

I've said for awhile that Jamie Moyer could come out of retirement and still get two turns through the lineup with the way this Twins team attacks lefties.

Only 1.5 games behind Baltimore to get out of the AL Basement.

Update from across the river: Top 4 - Wallner 1 for 2, double, 3 RBI. Festa 3 /2/3, 1 ER, 2H, 1 BB, 7K only 54 pitches. Maybe on a pitch count with arm fatigue?

I was watching the Detroit game tonight, and they interviewed a fan from England tonight. Probably as close as you're going to get for now.

I would also suggest Jason Bartlett at SS. I know that most of his career was not with the Twins, and he wasn't drafted by the Twins. He was developed by the Twins and while not as highly touted at Royce Lewis seems to be a development success story. I also would have had a UTIL category as well and seen who we could have put into that spot.

It appears that we are having two separate conversations in one thread. First conversation is whether France is meeting expectations. I'll say it again that, when you consider everything involved (salary, where he was supposed to hit in the lineup, defense, and internal options), he is probably meeting expectations. The second conversation is whether we should be accepting these expectations. Unfortunately, as a Twins fan, these are typically the conversations we get to have since we are not spending or trading to get better at the position. Checking Sportrac, I was actually surprised that the adjusted payroll is up to a tick more than $146 million, which is about $10 million more than I was expecting for some reason at this point in the season. Even listening to Skor North today, they were surmising on who gets DFA'd as players come back from the IL and France was not mentioned. Although, I would say that many of the commenters on this thread have made the case that he should be in the DFA conversation, and I agree with that as we currently have Clemens, Bride, and Castro that can play 1B provided they can still produce at a similar level until Buxton and Wallner come back. They sent Fitzgerald back down so my anticipation is that we should see Correa tomorrow. My suspicion on why they will hold onto France longer than they probably should (see Gallo, Margot) and because internal replacements in the minors either need to be added to the 40-man (Ford) or only have one option left (Julien and Miranda). If you still have hope for those players, you can't burn their option until you're convinced that they can stick. For what it's worth, Miranda is playing 1B at St. Paul tonight so maybe they are working a path for him back to the ML club.

This was the opening day lineup when everyone was healthy (except Lewis of course). If you consider subbing Lewis in for Miranda and moving him into the 4 or 5 spot. France is meeting expectations for the contract he signed and where he was expected to hit in the lineup: the 6 or 7 spot.

And still too early to start drinking.......

You know there's a lot of demons when Provus says; "The Twins FINALLY walk off the Guardians!"

We received a gift there. One more to go.

And this one of the few times it seems that a Carl WIllis mound visit didn't end with rally killing result for Cleveland.

It would be interesting to find out from someone who has access to analytics. From my eyeballs, it appears that Lewis and Buxton have a similar problem which is that they both seem to expand their strike zone with RISP because they want to be the hero instead of making the pitcher pitch to them.

The dream was for Ryan to get through the game, but it's looking like someone will have to come out for the 9th inning. Cole Sands possibly?

I'm pretty sure that according to the old commercial. TC Bear is the only one who lives at Target Field. 😎

I do like that tonight's game will be part of a double-header in September instead of burning the mutual day off the following Monday. I surmise that is the last day off for both teams as it is for the Twins for the season and would be nice to not burn out the bullpen before the end of the season. I'm likely crazy, but I would have liked to see Paddack finish the suspended game on Wednesday with the hope that he would be the only pitcher used and have a full bullpen for the scheduled Wednesday game. I'm not sure it would have hurt us to have both Paddack and Lopez go the same day as we have another day off on Thursday. EDIT: I now see that Ryan is supposed to be next in the rotation so that my idea could be that possibility as I do not see Ryan as listed as announced starters until his next rotation turn on Monday in TB.

I think a more likely scenario had the opportunity been available would have been to play the series in Milwaukee. Both Cleveland and the Twins were in Milwaukee last week and there has been precedent for it before, albeit when Cleveland was trying to play a series in a blizzard!

One thing I do enjoy about getting MLB.TV this year is the ability to watch and listen to other broadcasters such as Dan Schulman with the Blue Jays and Jon Miller from SF.