jimbo92107

Honorable mention addition: Trey Vavra.

Especially when the guy batting behind you is Miguel Sano, it's good to get on base a lot. Let Sano bang it over the fence, so you can all jog the bases. Joe Mauer figures out the best way to help his team win, then does that.

If Drew Storen is that good, why did the Nats get Papelbon?

When you consider how far behind Chicago could be with bases loaded twice and Sano batting... ouch.

I have a bottle of ketchup on a high shelf of my kitchen cupboard. Had it a year, haven't opened it. It's not so much that ketchup doesn't go well on a hot dog, it's more that so many better condiments have come along. Sriracha tastes good on a dog, and jalapeno peppers and Dijon mustard. Hot dogs themselves have largely been replaced by much better things. Who wants a dog when you can have a Johnsonville brat?

Hicks didn't start until after the ball hit the ground. Waaay too late. Good throw and tag.

The feed from mlb.com is the worst yet. Really hard to follow the action with all the reloading of the page. Sucks.

Dang, that was a home run Garcia just took away. Eddie's gotta hit it about two feet higher.

Stewart Turner is a great defensive catcher, and his hitting improved in the second half. He's not ready to be a good hitter at the mlb level, but his glove right now is the best in the Twins organization. Looking forward to the playoff push, would Turner behind the plate be better than Fryer or Herrmann? Yes. Would his hitting be worse? Hard to be much worse. If Suzuki can't go, then Turner could be the least bad option.

Frustrating thing about Matt Garza was that everybody could see right away he had All Star physical talent. I just looked at his stats, he has won 15 games only once in his career. Otherwise his best total wins were 11, 10, and 10. http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/g/garzama01.shtml This is a guy that could throw a 96mph heater all day long, and had what appeared to be a good, hard curve. Trouble is, apparently he never developed into a clever pitcher. He didn't learn to add and subtract speed from his heater, didn't learn to move his curve around the plate, etc. The result is a hard-throwing, mediocre pitcher.

Twins veterans are battling late-season fatigue, and their younger players are striving to improve and keep up the good play. Is the team set up for a late season push? Miguel Sano's home run trot was a very good sign. Both his swing and his trot looked like a guy whose hamstring didn't hurt. Eddie Rosario loves the moment. Lots of high-drama moments coming in the next couple weeks. Brian Dozier has a shot at 30 home runs, first time for a Twin since Josh Willingham's 35 dingers in 2012. With Sano around, this will be Dozier's last chance to lead the team in home runs. Aaron Hicks has now proved that he can send a baseball over the fence from both sides of the plate. Can he turn it on from the left side towards the end? Can he hit his targets from right field? Byron Buxton has showed steady improvement at the plate and as a base runner. Will he continue to improve over the last weeks? Kennys Vargas is a sleeper candidate for a late season hero. He's got the size and the swing to hit balls as far as Sano. Can he find the discipline to get favorable counts, then hit his pitch? Torii Hunter appears to be swinging the bat with more vigor since he's had a few days off. With more rest, could Hunter get back just enough for a few more key hits and plays? Joe Mauer also looks a bit fresher after having a key day off here and there. Will he remain steady, or does he have a late-season surge in him? Trevor Plouffe has played a lot of games this season, hit clean-up, protected Sano, played first when Mauer needed a break, etc. If he does more during the closing stretch, that would truly be heroic. Eduardo Escobar has looked great since he got his shortstop job back. Justice! This guy could easily be a late season hero. He's playing happy baseball. Danny Santana and Eduardo Nunez are mostly riding the bench these days, but both of them are capable of doing heroic things. The pitching staff has been all over the place this season, but some guys that might step up are Ervin Santana, Tyler Duffey, Jepsen, May, Milone, Boyer, and maybe even JR Graham. Kyle Gibson showed that he's capable of shutting down the Kansas City Royals if he'll pitch the way he knows how, after getting chewed out by Neil Allen. Would it help to get chewed out an inning earlier, or will he remember next time?

The differences between the two men are more striking than the similarities. Where Garza arrived with a wicked fastball and a good curve, he seemed to think he could thrive with little more than his fastball, and despite all evidence to the contrary, refused to add variety to his repertoire. Trevor May arrived as a big, raw hurler with control problems. However, May was coachable and ambitious, so he learned to throw strikes by the time he got to the majors. From there May added more skills to his bag of tricks, including an improved ability to hold runners, and now the ability to pitch and prepare like a reliever. May's determination to improve aspects of his game makes his career outlook seem brighter than Garza's.

Balk, hahahaha!

That young Sano lad certainly can give it a thump.

Jesus Boyer, you trying to get your catcher killed?

Hicks is going to have to refine his skills throwing home from RF.

Kennys "Big Cat" Vargas!

Ricky Nolasco has been a good pitcher in the past, and next spring he should be completely healthy for the first time in a few years. Who knows, maybe he'll look great. Twins have gotten stung both ways by injuries - guys getting hurt here, and guys getting healthy after they leave.

Pelfrey's problem has been command of his fork ball, which he lost after the first half. Before this season Pelfrey was basically a two-pitch guy that struggled after the second time through the order. His fastball is his bread and butter, bending left and right low in the zone. Unfortunately, after seeing it a couple times, hitters barrel it up and start driving it. Pelf's benders are at best average, and he doesn't throw them well enough to strike out a lot of guys. Enter the fork ball, Pelfrey's third and most difficult pitch to hit and throw. When he had command of the fork, Pelf could dangle it belt to ankle, getting lots of whiffs. Now without it, he's back to being a two-pitch guy. Frankly, that's bull pen stuff. This might be a very good time to give a starter tryout to Logan Darnell. Maybe he's better than we realized, like Tyler Duffey. Why not find out.

That's the ticket. Get May back into the rotation, put Duffey in the pen. The Twins didn't plan to be this good this year. The young kids were all supposed to struggle. I blame Rosario in particular, and Duffey. And Hicks, he was supposed to be a flop, then he came back from some odd demotion with a new swing minus his French Mistake, and now he cranking baseballs all over. Then there's Escobar. Who knew he would swap places with his distant cousin, Kal-Esco from Krypton? Then of course Sano steps in and looks like Frank Thomas 2.0... At least Buxton didn't come up looking like Rickey Henderson at the plate. He's more like a normal rookie...with freakish physical talent. Partly I blame Mike Pelfrey, too, for pitching like a new man with a devastating forkball in the first half, then dropping the fork and reverting to his mediocre self in the second half. Oh cruel, cruel hope! And we can't forget Glen Perkins, who was perfect for the first half, then the Devil came to collect his body parts after the All-Star game. It's been a very odd season. Even Torii Hunter came back for a crazy good first half, then pooped out after the All Star game with accumulated bumps and bruises that don't heal up at 40 like then did when he was 25. The Twins in the first half looked like they could win it all. In the second half, they're struggling to find healthy players. One way or another, everybody is reaching their limits.

What it's worth depends entirely on which radars were used in Kansas City. Were those stats gathered using the radar gun we were seeing on TV, or some other one? I've seen this skewed reading before, and it happened in KC. In the previous instance, the same thing happened - everybody having the power pitching night of their lives, about 3mph faster than I'd ever seen them. My other evidence is subjective, but from my observations of real power pitchers, an upper 90's fastball has an intimidating effect on hitters that I simply wasn't seeing. Hitters didn't look desperate to speed up their swings the way they do when facing a well-known upper 90's guy like Matt Harvey or Nathan Eovaldi. Hitters can't always hit mid-90's, but they know how to time it, and that's what I was seeing. I have also heard Twins announcers make noise about the optimistic gun at KC, but again that's subjective. They appear to think it's kind of funny, and I agree.

I'd bring Alex Meyer up just to keep him encouraged. He's going to be a late bloomer, but still might be a star pitcher...in a couple years.

Let's be honest about that KC radar gun. I'm thinking it's 3mph optimistic. Trevor May does NOT throw a fastball 98 or 99mph. He's a good mid-90's reliever, hits 95, 96mph sometimes. Not faster than that. He wasn't throwing the ball unusually hard today, either. Radar guns apparently are owned by the team, which has an interest in making its pitchers seem faster than others. It's remarkable how every team that goes to KC has a great day for fastballs. About 3mph faster than average. Let's all laugh and enjoy it.

Nice game. A little surprised that Tommy Milone held the Royals down. Good show.

Dirtball from Jepsen. Filthy dirtball!