Sitting here watching the Twins blow another lead in Texas. In the first game of this series they scored 5 runs and lost by 1. Yesterday they scored 7 and lost by 2. Today they were ahead 3-0 before allowing a 2-out, 3-run double in the bottom of the second inning—this, after the number 9 batter walked on 4 pitches to fill the bases. Hard to watch if for some reason the atoms in your brain are arranged in a way that makes you care. Aaron Gleeman, the Twins beat writer for The Athletic, recently set out the following statistical tidbit under the heading Minnesota pitching ERA by month:
April 3.16
May 3.64
June 4.18
July 4.31
Reminds me of when I took "the calculus sequence" in college:
Calculus I A
Calculus II B
Calculus III C
I could quit registering for math classes; the Twins have to play out the schedule. That 4.31 was before this game started. It's higher now. Gleeman just put out the numbers without comment but I think they explain why the Twins were 9 games over .500 at the end of May and 7 games over now.
If you like the Twins, but have enough of a life not to spend it scouring the Internet for news droplets about them, I can keep you filled in. Here's another courtesy of Gleeman:
Last 35 games for Jose Miranda
.312 BA
.348 OBP
.560 SLG
.908 OPS
6 homers
9 doubles
Again, no comment from Aaron, just the facts, but I'm thinking Miguel Sano, who is currently on a rehab assignment in the minor leagues, may have taken his last at-bat for the Twins. If so, I will no longer have to avert my eyes when he's hitting with a 1-2 count.
Byron Buxton gets a lot of sneers for missing so many games, but, in his defense, he's played enough so that currently only four guys in the majors have hit more homers than he has (23). And he hits them when it matters: 14 of the 23 have lifted the Twins into the lead from either a tie or small deficit. According to the reporting of Do-Hyoung Park, who covers the Twins for mlb.com, he's also one of the principals in the following charming story. Around a month ago the Twins were playing Detroit, Griffin Jax on the mound, when the batter hit a rocket into the right-center gap. Buxton raced back, leaped on the warning track, extended his arm, and had the ball tick off the end of his glove just as he collided with the wall: a double, and the batter eventually scored, though the Twins won the game. That night, about 1 in the morning, Jax's phone dings. It’s Buxton, who has been stewing about not catching that ball, and he apologizes to Jax for the nick on his ERA. Park quotes the text, so I assume he saw it. Jax replies along the line of: that was a missile, if you didn't catch it the ball wasn't catchable, no one I'd rather have playing behind me in center field. Fast forward to the Twins' recent series in Chicago. Jax is pitching, two on, no outs, batter drives one into the right-center gap. The metric used to rate fielders' "outs above expected" says batting average on balls like this one is .820. The base runners seem to believe it—they both take off, but Buxton runs the ball down on the warning track, catches it, and, wheeling, throws back to the infield, where a triple play is easily completed. In the dugout Jax approaches Buxton and says he hopes he can now forget about the ball in the Tiger game.
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