TWINS 5, RED SOX 2: PADDACK’S STRONG START MAKES IT AN 11-GAME WINNING STREAK

Tanner Houck came into this game with the lowest FIP in baseball, and Chris Paddack with the Twins’ worst starter ERA (not counting Louis Varland).

But that’s why they play the games, as they say. Paddack gives his best performance since... well, since the start of this winning streak. Houck is good, yet the Twins get to him/the Boston bullpen late. Inning-by-inning notes:

1: Well, that’s not ideal. Carlos Correa boots the first grounder hit to him, and Rafal Devers lines one into the corner, putting runners on 2nd & 3rd with nobody out. Then, K, popup, groundout, and Boston gets nothing. Shades of when the Twins had getaway day lineups in 2011-2014. Except Boston is actually pretty good! Paddack lucked out here.

Edouard Julien, on an 0-11 streak, draws the one-out walk. This is how you have a .818 OPS with a .216 average, you’re patient.

2: Boston catcher Reese McGuire is from Covington, WA, a suburb of Seattle. So is Lindsey Moore, briefly a Lynx bench player. Neither is related to Mark McGwire or Bond actor Roger Moore. Nobody hit nothin’ for no teams.

3: Ceddane Rafaela has a leadoff hit, but is caught trying to steal second. Like a midsized auto, he wasn’t quite fast enough. Willi Castro, who is plently fast, has a leadoff double. On the subsequent Jose Miranda groundout, Castro’s brain freezes and he stays at second. Julien sneaks a dribbler through, though! 74.9 MPH is enough if nobody’s standing there.

42 minutes, game one-third over, Twins have a 1-0 lead. Would that I could be so lucky!

4 & 5: Whoops, sorry there, got roped into a discussion with my brother about Mank. Gary Oldman, Amanda Seyfried, Charles Dance, it’s so good! Why is it that English actors can do American accents, but (ususally) not vice-versa? I suppose they did invent the language and all.

Paddack is channeling mid-2000s Twins pitchers like Rick Reed and Kenny Rogers, getting that “pitch to contact” (weak contact) game on. Unfortunately the Twins are hitting like Denny Hocking. Tanner Houck is quite good this year. I intrinsically dislike the name “Tanner,” though. It’s not his fault.

6: Target Field is using the “woo-ooo-ooo-ooo-ooh” whistling from The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly sometimes when opponents strike out. Does the Ennio Morricone estate get royalties on this? Did Ennio Morricone even know what baseball is? (Every Twins/Yankees playoff game basically sounds like this in my head.)

Paddack strikes out the side. The Target Field fans are pretty enthused. The Twins still can’t hit Houck. The Target Field fans are less enthused.

7: Paddack leaves with 83 pitches. That’s probably smart, as he’s coming off injury. But it does mean an extra bullpen inning (at least one) with Brock Stewart, who is injured and has been unhittable.

It’s CAPT Griffin Jax, USAF (Ret.) for the Twins here. He’s firing missiles. Three swinging strikeouts. Please nobody mistake this for me saying I think firing missiles is always good, I believe in diplomacy. It’s a metaphor. Those are like similies but different.

Houck stays in... and gets immediately chased. Singles from Trevor (“I hit lefthanded”) Larnach and Carlos Santana. Then Castro bunts, and it’s fielded Very Badly.

Naoyuki Uwasawa on the mound, for his third-ever inning of work in MLB (the 30-year-old is a 11-year JPL veteran). He walks Miranda to load-em-up, then gets a 4-3 forceout on a Kirilloff grounder. Then... PITCH CLOCK VIOLATION ball 4! Then, Ryan Jeffers double! Nothing else good happens, but it’s Twins 5-0! You can bring in Random Bullpen guys now!

8: It’s Cole Sands, so it’s not TOO random. I basically know who he is. Not as a human, though. He doesn’t answer my calls. He hits a guy and lets a guy single, and Caleb Thielbar lets both of them score. So, no more random bullpen guys. Thielbar fans Tyler O’Neill to end the inning, who is not related to Paul or Buck or Tatum.

9: It’s too bad that Jhoan Duran is strictly necessary here, and it would have been nice to save him for another game. That being, he does what he does, which is make pitch clocks scream “ow.” Twins win!

Studs: Paddack, Julien’s patience, the pitch clock, Jeffers. Duds: that Duran could not pitch against Duran.

Comment Of The Gamethread goes to Uncle Lincoln, for letting us know that Luis Arráez is probably being traded to the Padres. Which means going from a 9-24 team to a 16-18 one. Luis hasn’t caught fire yet this year, but he’s hitting .299 with 0 home runs. Which is a very Luis Arráez statline. Hopefully he gets hot, and gets to do some winning!

Per radio, this is the fifth winning streak of eleven or more in Twins history.

Tomorrow’s game starts at 1:10, and features Pablo López going against the mysteriously-named TBD.

2024-05-04T02:53:35Z dg43tfdfdgfd