Sunday, May 2,
2009
Saturday Night
Report
From my
BaseballDigest.com Game Recap –
The Twins had
several opportunities and really should have won, but instead, they had to work
some overtime, burn the bullpen and in the end lost 10-7 to the Kansas City
Royals in 11 innings. The game was back and forth throughout. Both teams had
several opportunities to take over the game, but both teams
squandered opportunities.
Glen Perkins started for the Twins and gave up five runs on ten
hits in six innings. Luis Ayala came in and gave up two runs
(1 earned) on three hits in 1.1 innings. Jose Mijares
came in and got the final two outs. But an Alexi Casilla
error caused another tying run to score. Joe Nathan pitched a
scoreless ninth. Matt Guerrier threw
a scoreless tenth. Then in the 11th inning, Craig Breslow
came in and walked three out of the four batters he faced. He left with the
bases loaded, and R. A. Dickey was the only bullpen arm still
available. The knuckleballer came in and didn’t throw any knuckleballs in a
walk to John Buck that gave the Royals the lead. A fielder’s
choice and a single later, the Royals had the 10-7 lead that Joakim Soria
held onto in the bottom of the inning.
In his second game, Joe
Mauer had four more hits. Delmon Young, in the
lineup because Jason Kubel was
scratched because he was sick, went 3-4 with two RBI. Michael Cuddyer went 2-4 with his second home run. Joe
Crede, back from a day with his wife who
gave birth to their third child, went 2-5.
On Sunday afternoon,
the Twins will send Scott Baker to the mound against the
Royals’ Gil Meche.
OTHER NOTES
·
Craig Breslow – 6.2 innings, 9 walks. I know he’s smart and has
something like 57 different pitches in his arsenal. However, he needs to pick
out like four or five of them that you can throw for strikes! Otherwise, Brian Duensing
should be on call.
·
Nick Punto – sure, he has been on Web Gems a lot in previous
seasons. But this year, how many times has he bounced throws to 1B. He
certainly doesn’t have Bartlett-like range.
·
Carlos Gomez
– I don’t know if I can put up with watching him anymore. Sure, he covers a lot
of ground on defense. I get that. But he can’t hit, he doesn’t even try to bunt
for hits anymore, he can’t lay down a sacrifice bunt, and clearly the plate
discipline that he was trying to develop didn’t happen yet. How he has a big
league gig is beyond me right now.
·
Alexi Casilla – he’s not quite in my ‘ready-to-give-up-on’ or ‘send-him-to-Rochester’
lists, but it’s getting close. He at least takes pitches and generally has good
swings. Maybe it’s the turf, but he does not seem to have much range on ground
balls either.
·
Ron Gardenhire – He made the perfect move in the 8th
inning when he brought Jason Kubel off of the bench as a pinch hitter for Alexi Casilla.
It forced Trey Hillman’s hand, and
he brought lefty Ron Mahay
into the game. If Kubel was too sick to play today,
it didn’t make a lot of sense for him to pinch hit in that situation. And,
because he was pinch hitting for Casilla, the perfect
move would have been to have Brendan
Harris pinch hit for Kubel. That would have
created a righty-lefty matchup with one of the Twins best right handed hitters.
It would have been perfect to use Kubel as a decoy to
get the matchup you wanted. Instead, Kubel was left
in to face Mahay, and he struck out to end the
threat.
·
0-2 – That
is a good pitcher’s count. Why do Twins pitchers give up so many solid base
hits when the count is 0-2? It goes back to Brad Radke who did the same thing.
·
Like Torii Hunter, Doug Mientkiewicz has never seen a
microphone he didn’t like. But this time,
I’m
listening. It is great to read him come out with statements about his
former high school teammate, Alex
Rodriguez, whose most recent round of questions brought up by Selena Roberts involves him taking
steroids as early as high school. “There’s
no way. I was with him too much, I was with him for
too long. Our team was together, like, 20 hours of the day. Every day.”
MINOR LEAGUE REPORT
·
Roger posted
his weekly
minor league report at Twinkie Town.
ROCHESTER REPORT
Saturday – Game 1 - Rochester 5, Indianapolis 1 – Philip Humber made his first Red Wings start and did very well. He
gave up just one run on three hits in five innings. He walked none and struck
out three to gain his first win. Sean Henn got the final six outs, allowing only one hit. Dustin Martin went 2-2, was hit by a
pitch and stole two bases. Luke Hughes
went 2-3 with an RBI.
Saturday – Game 2 - Rochester 2, Indianapolis 3 (8 innings) – The Red Wings managed just four hits in this game. Matt Tolbert had a double and a
triple. Trevor Plouffe
also hit a triple. Brian Duensing started this one and gave up two runs on six hits
and a walk in five innings. Juan Morillo threw a perfect inning in relief. He needed
just six pitches, and four of them were strikes. Mike Gosling pitched a scoreless seventh inning, but he gave up a
run with one out in the bottom of the 8th inning.
ROCKCAT
RECAP
Saturday – New Britain 7, Trenton 6 – Jeff Manship
put together and incredible start in this game, and the bullpen held on,
barely. Manship worked the first seven innings and
gave up no runs on just one hit. He walked one and struck out five to earn his
second win of the season. Zach Ward
came in and gave up two hits and two walks before being taken out of the game
without recording an out. Yohan Pino came in and gave up one hit, but did get the team
out of the inning with a three run lead. Anthony
Slama recorded his third save, but he struggled.
He gave up two runs on a hit and two walks. He struck out one. Rene Tosoni
went 2-4 with his third double and first stolen base. Matt Moses and Brian Dinkelman were each 2-3 with a walk. Whit Robbins hit his second home run. Brandon Roberts had a double and drove
in three runs.
MIRACLE MEMOS
Saturday –Ft. Myers 6, Charlotte 4 – David Bromberg gave up two funs on four hits and four walks in five innings, but he won his second game of the season. Steve Hirschfeld gave up two runs (1 earned) on one hit and one walk. Henry Arias picked up his first save by throwing two shutout innings. Steve Singleton went 3-5 with his fifth double. Chris Parmelee went 3-4 with his third double, fourth homer and three RBI. Ben Revere went 2-5 with his 12th stolen base.
SNAPPERS SNIPPETS
Saturday – Beloit 6, Great Lakes 18 – Dan Osterbrock
had another bad start in this one and falls to 0-3. In just 2.1 innings, he
gave up nine runs on nine hits, including two home runs. He walked two, hit one
and struck out two. Bruce Pugh went
the next 2.2 innings and gave up just one run. Henry Reyes then gave up seven runs on seven hits and two walks in
just 1.2 innings. Steve Blevins gave
up a run over the final 2.1 innings. The offense was able to score six runs
despite getting just six hits. Ozzie
Lewis and Jonathan Waltenbury each hit their first home runs of the
season. Drew Thompson got his first
hit, a double.
.
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