The Twins in April were a disappointing 9-15. Despite the poor record, they outscored their opponents by two runs, 111-109, a circumstance owing largely to the last two games, yesterday's and Thursday's, which they won by 10-2 and 9-1. They've had some agonizing losses. On April 11, against the Mariners, they built a 6-0 lead through five innings before losing, 8-6, on a 3-run, 9th-inning homer off their closer, Alex Colome, whose ERA for the month was 8.31. That was just a warm-up for a 3-game series in Oakland a week later. The first two games were a double header, and the Twins were swept, shut outs in both games. Next day, they scored 12 runs and lost anyway, 13-12, in 10 innings. The Athletics tied the score at 10 in the bottom of the ninth. In the top of the tenth, Byron Buxton hit a 2-run homer. In the bottom of the tenth, Colome pitching, the first two batters made outs. The next two walked, loading the bases (extra innings now start with a runner on second base). Here we go! The next batter grounded weakly to second, where Travis Blankenhorn, who had entered the game as a pinch runner, booted what should have been the game-ending out. A run scored, cutting the lead to 12-11, bases still loaded. The next batter hit another routine infield grounder, this time to 3rd baseman Luis Arraez, who threw high and wide to first on what should have been another game-ending out. The tying and winning runs scored as the ball bounded through the back 40 acres of the Oakland Coliseum. Uff da.
The Twins played 5 extra-inning games in April and lost them all. They also played two double headers, which are now 7-inning games, and they lost all of those as well. Another curiosity of their season so far is that they are 9-6 in 9-inning games and 9-15 overall. I'm surprised they haven't yet lost any games shortened by weather but it's a long season.
On the bright side, this is not looking like the season in which 40-year-old Nelson Cruz is suddenly too old: he's batting .325 with 8 homers, 21 RBI, and an OPS ("on-base plus slugging" percentages) of 1.049. An average OPS is around .750, and anything above 1.0 is fabulous—which tells you something about the season Buxton, whose OPS stands at 1.307 after going 0-for-3 today, is enjoying so far. Yesterday, Dick Bremer, the Twins tv play-by-play guy, pointed out that only two players in major league history are known to have had an OPS higher than Buxton's at this point in the season. Ted Williams is one. The other is Mickey Mantle. In the game that day, Buxton's streak of hits in consecutive at-bats came to and end at 7, but he made two spectacular catches, one racing in and to his left, then diving to rob someone of a bloop hit, and then a few innings later racing back and to his right before leaping at the wall to turn a home run into an out. Really fun to watch him play baseball. I like how when a ball is driven into the gap, and he takes off after it, you can tell the moment when he knows he has it measured, the dead sprint almost imperceptibly down shifted into a glide and you know it's going to be an out, not a double.
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