All Things 2023 Minnesota Twins In-Season Thread




Any other seam heads out there try this? Warning it's quite addicting. I finally got a perfect board yesterday after a few weeks of failed efforts.

ALERT - Twins on the Grid today.

I love it when I can plug in a guy that won 27 games more than a century ago. Lights out...Urban Shocker.
 
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WARNING!! this post could be triggering.

so Barreiro this morning was talking about the Twins' 18-gm playoff losing streak (yeah, I'm shocked).

I decided to do a deep dive into "the streak." here's what I came up with.

Runs scored: Twins 49 (avg 2.7). Opps 107 (avg 5.9)

Twins have scored 1 run (5x) - 2 runs (5x) - 3 runs (2x) - 4 runs (4x) - 5 runs (1x) - 6 runs (1x)
Opps scored 3 runs (2x)- 4 runs (3x)- 5 runs (3x)- 6 runs(3x)- 7 runs(2x)- 8 runs(4x)- 10 runs (1x)

Opps margin of victory- 1 run(4x)- 2 runs(2x)- 3 runs(4x)- 4 runs(3x)- 5 runs(3x)- 6 runs(2x).

bottom line - in the streak, Twins have not produced enough runs (12 of 18 gms with 3 runs or less)
and the Twins pitching has not been strong (allowed 5 or more runs in 13 of 18 games).

Captain Obvious says - if they can hit a little better and pitch a little better, they will give themselves a chance to win.
I'm going to have to dig a little deeper to verify this, but sounds like a reasonable theory.
 





So if Lopez is to start game 1 and they continue with the 6 man rotation, they’d have to do 2 additional bullpen games.
I vote Gray for game 1. Lopez is too prone to bad 1st innings. If we give up a 4 spot in the first inning of game 1, we will play the rest of the series with our hands around our necks.
 



Add Dave Stieb to the list.
Funny enough, Stieb and Stewart were my downfall today also. I know the Jays haven't been around forever, but that was a pretty thin soup to be casting about for 20 game winners/Cy Young recipients.

Nicely done on Shocker--that had to be in the 0.something range, I would suspect.

And just because my wife would think about having me committed if I strung the following words together, I have to share my prideful moment from yesterday's grid--Ernie "Macho" Camacho garnered a 0.01% when I identified him as a former Indian and A's player. Funny what still bubbles to the surface from the hundreds of Topps, Fleer and Donruss cards of the '80s.
 

I vote Gray for game 1. Lopez is too prone to bad 1st innings. If we give up a 4 spot in the first inning of game 1, we will play the rest of the series with our hands around our necks.
I'm guessing the way it's set up Lopez will pitch before Gray since he's already a day ahead in the rotation. Not a big fan of giving a guy too many days off in between starts. Could throw them off.
 

I'm guessing the way it's set up Lopez will pitch before Gray since he's already a day ahead in the rotation. Not a big fan of giving a guy too many days off in between starts. Could throw them off.
True. They could swap them by having Gray start on Friday against LAA. If they stay on a five man rotation it would line up whoever pitches this Friday to start game 1.
 

So how good has the Twins pitching been?

Thought these stats might help quantify it -

https://www.espn.com/mlb/stats/_/view/team

Complete Leaders

QUALITY STARTS QS

1 Twins 72

2 Mariners 69

3 Padres 68

Cool Site with lots of stat on it (although the formatting isn't the most intuitive) -

Pitching Statistics

Value (rank)
Earned Run Average
3.89 (#6)​
Earned Runs Against/Gm
3.87 (#6)​
WHIP
1.199 (#4)​
Outs Pitcher/Game
26.86 (#4)​
Strikeouts/9
9.46 (#2)​
Hits/9
8.04 (#4)​
Home Runs/9
1.20 (#14)​
Walks/9
2.75 (#4)​
Strikeouts/Walk
3.44 (#2)​
 




Funny enough, Stieb and Stewart were my downfall today also. I know the Jays haven't been around forever, but that was a pretty thin soup to be casting about for 20 game winners/Cy Young recipients.

Nicely done on Shocker--that had to be in the 0.something range, I would suspect.

And just because my wife would think about having me committed if I strung the following words together, I have to share my prideful moment from yesterday's grid--Ernie "Macho" Camacho garnered a 0.01% when I identified him as a former Indian and A's player. Funny what still bubbles to the surface from the hundreds of Topps, Fleer and Donruss cards of the '80s.
For the Jays, I should have gone Rocket but I really thought Stieb was a lock for 20Ws.

Great pull on Camacho!

Shocker was actually not super-rare, 2%. One of the last to legally throw a spit-ball who dominated for the St Louis Browns and Yankees.

Read a long piece about him by Bill James once, very interesting. Was a stalwart on the '27 team. Died by the next autumn due to heart conditions/pneumonia.
 
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