MIN 5, KC 4: The Bat Rally, Bullpen Protects the Wire 1 Race – Minnesota Twins – Articles – Home Page

With this range, you can never rely on twins. They were 4-1 behind tonight, but pulled together to tie the score in fifth place and take the lead in sixth place. Working with only one lead over the last three innings, the scorer not only did the job, but even managed to avoid a few mistakes.

Image courtesy of © David Berding-USA TODAY Sports

The score of the box
Odors: 6.0 IP, 7 H, 4 ER, 2 BB, 7 K, 71.7% of strikes (66 of 92 throws)
Bullpen: 3.0 IP, 1 H, 0 ER, 1 BB, 2 K

Home Racing: Kepler (17), Gonzalez (9)
Most popular games: Gonzalez (2 against 4, HR)

WPA of +0.1: Gonzalez 0.205, Rogers 0.170, Cron 0.120, Polanco 0.102
WPA of -0.1: Odorizzi -.111, Schoop -.122, Cruz -.126


(graph via FanGraphs)

No lead is safe
The Twins lost 4-1 behind the bottom of the fifth. They were minutes away from the Royals when an outing was recorded that inning. Mitch Garver is distinguished and Marwin Gonzalez has managed a two-sleeve bomba.

Later in this round, Jorge Polanco offered a double to tie the game with two outs. The return was over when C. J. Cron hit a RBI double at the end of the sixth inning.

Bullpen wins the victory
Sometimes the statement "no safe runway" applies to the Twins office, but not tonight. After the bats fought back, the bullpen managed to protect this advance.

Trevor May made a mistake by scoring a seventh inning goallessly. Another mistake was made in the eighth end, but Blake Parker and Ryne Harper joined forces to prevent Kansas City from being on the board. Taylor Rogers dropped a single out and made a run of two outings in the ninth, but worked with them to get his eighth stop.

Odorizzi is human
Jake Odorizzi conceded as many points earned tonight, four as he had done in his previous eight outings. He seemed a little more human tonight, even though he still provided six innings to the Twins.

Odorizzi gave seven hits, beat two batters and pulled seven. He gave several homeruns for the second time this season, but to his credit, he has never completely slipped.

I have an enigma for you
Who is the most underrated twin? I started thinking about an article on this issue, but it was too difficult. There are so many guys in this 2019 team that are doing so well, but still have such a low profile in the baseball landscape.

Now, of course, if you're here at Twins Daily to read a game recap, you're obviously more invested than the average sports fan. But how many people actually realize that, for example, Max Kepler does what he does?

Whatever it is, Kepler hit his 17th try at home tonight. He has entered this game with a 134 OPS + so far. He never broke the record of 100 before (which is an average of the league).

People in the city are really starting to realize what this team is doing collectively, which is great, but it's pretty amazing what a lot of these guys do individually.

No. 7 retired
Before tonight's game, the Twins held a pretty neat ceremony. Number 7 Joe Mauer was retired.

Postgame with Baldelli

Using Bullpen
Here is an overview of the number of casts launched by the editor over the past five days:
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And one more thing …
I'm really trying very hard to avoid chatter but I'm sorry, we have to go tonight. It's hard work, I understand, and the two teams are stuck with the same referee, so things usually go bad. But my word is Angel Hernandez terrible. If someone needs a retirement party, that's who this guy is.

Here is an overview of the keystrokes called on the hitters of the twins:


And below are the keystrokes called on the royal hitters:


The guy basically made a joke about this game. How can the MLB allow this to continue?