2023 Twins Turkey of Year

November is flying by. The World Series is over, the GM meetings are behind us, the Hot Stove league is starting to heat up, the newly hired managers are all excited about how good their new teams are, the 2023 MLB award season is in full swing, free agents players and their agents are starting to count their money, the weather is cooling off and Thanksgiving is upon us one more time. The NFBC site is already accepting players for the 2024 Fantasy season and drafts for the 2024 season are already underway (If you think you know baseball and have some extra money then this is the place for you). Black Friday sales have been on-going for some time and yes, the entire baseball world will once again be getting together for the Baseball Winter Meetings (Dec 3-6, 2023) and this year they are back in Nashville.

The Minnesota Twins broke their long losing streak in post-season play and even won a post-season series in 2023 but unfortunately the Houston Astros were waiting for them once again and sent the Twins home early to heal what ails them and to sharpen their golf skills. Hey, they were 3-3 in the post-season but they still have a ways to go and they obviously had some Turkey’s on their roster this season that we can roast. A team that has seven batters that struck out 100 or more times and another that fell just one KO short of 100 along with a $33 million dollar player that hits into a team record 30 double-plays must have some fowl players for us to chose from.

Twins need a win today

Pablo Lopez

After snapping their 18 game postseason losing streak in the recent ALWC series against the Toronto Blue Jays and going on the sweep the Blue Jays two games to none the Twins find themselves in the Bayou City playing the defending champions.

Game 1 against Justin Verlander did not go well even though they had him on the ropes early in the game. They fell behind 5-0 but came back with four of their own in the seventh but that was as close as they would get before losing to the Astros 6-4.

Game 2 is a game the Twins need to win, no it is not an elimination game, but it is a game in which they have their ace pitcher Pablo Lopez pitching and they need to win a game on the road in Houston. This would be the ideal game to do so and go home for two games tied at 1-1. More importantly, this is a game that the Twins need to show what they are made of, they need to take a step forward and show that they don’t let a loss to the defending champs let the air out of their balloon. The Astros are not unbeatable, the Twins need to show that they have the gumption to come back from being down one game to none and make the flight back home a happy one. I fully expect the Twins to do so.

Game of the other three Division Series have not exactly gone as planned either, with the Orioles, Braves, and Dodgers all losing at home. An unusual start to the ALDS and NLDS.

Minnesota Twins and the playoffs

The Twins have been playing baseball in Minnesota for 62 seasons and have played 9,803 games, winning 4,867 games and losing 4,936 games for a winning percentage of .496 and have advanced to the playoffs 14 times or 22.6% of the time.

Maybe we should not be that surprised, the Washington Senators who moved from Washington D.C. after the 1960 season and became the Minnesota Twins had a .465 winning percentage. Year after year, the Senators were a laughingly bad team, prompting famed sportswriter Charley Dryden to joke: “Washington: First in war, first in peace, and last in the American League.” The Senators played in Washington for 60 seasons and won 3 pennants (1924, 1925, & 1933) and won one World Series title in 1924. In that regard the Twins it seems are not much better having played for 62 seasons and won 3 pennants (1965, 1987, & 1991) but they have won two World Series titles, in 1987 and again 1991.

Josh Donaldson coming to Minnesota

Josh Donaldson while with the Atlanta Braves in 2019. Mandatory Credit: Brett Davis-USA TODAY Sports

I was watching the MLB channel last night when they interrupted their programming with breaking news that the Boston Red Sox and manager Alex Cora had mutually agreed to part ways after the previous days bombshell of the “caught stealing” penalties dropped on the Houston Astros by MLB. Then just a few minutes into that, they had more breaking news, this time the report was that a source (turned out to be MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand) had reported that third baseman Josh Donaldson had agreed to accept a four-year deal with Minnesota for $92 million guaranteed, including an $8 million buyout of a $16 million club option for a fifth year.

Ryan Pressly goes on a tear while the Twins can only shed a tear

Ryan Pressly – credit Bob Levey at Getty Images

Pressly’s Tear: RHP Ryan Pressly has been scoreless in his last 32 games (30.1IP), the longest scoreless appearance streak in club history and the longest scoreless innings streak by a reliever in club history. Overall, Pressly’s streak of 30.1 consecutive scoreless innings is the fourth-longest in club history, behind a 32.1 IP streak by RHP Roy Oswalt in 2008
and two separate 31.0-inning streaks put together by RHP J.R. Richard (1979-80 and in 1980).

At the trading deadline last season, Houston acquired RHP Ryan Pressly from Minnesota
in exchange for RHP Jorge Alcala and OF Gilberto Celestino…since the trade, Pressly has posted a 0.50 ERA (2 ER/35.2IP) in 37 games as the Astros setup man. Source: Astros GameNotes

Jorge Alcala

Gilberto Celestino

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We will have to wait and see if Alcala or Celestino can save Derek Falvey’s and/or Thad Levine’s bacon.

 

According To ELIAS

Astros have the Twins’ number

The Astros defeated the Twins on Friday, 10–5, scoring in double digits for the fifth time in their last seven games. Houston has scored 73 runs in that stretch, the third-highest total for a major-league team this season. Washington scored 77 runs over the last seven days of April and had 76 runs from April 25 to May 2.

The Astros have won their last seven games against the Twins, the last six of which they’ve won by at least five runs. That ties the longest streak of that kind over the last 89 seasons (1929 to date); the most recent instance was by the White Sox against the Tigers spanning the 1995 and 1996 seasons.

According to ELIAS – Time to Play Ball Again

Top MLB teams ready to resume play

The Dodgers and Astros reside in the top spots of their respective leagues entering play today. Los Angeles owns the best record in the majors at 61–29, while Houston, at 60–29, holds a 16.5-game lead in the AL West, the largest divisional lead of any team currently in first place. No team in the wild-card era has failed to qualify for the postseason after winning at least 60 of their first 90 decisions of a season. The last team to fall short of the postseason after such a start was the 1993 Giants, who started the season 60–30 and finished 103–59, one game behind the Braves in the NL West.

The Dodgers and Astros are two of five teams that did not suffer a losing streak of four or more games before the All-Star break, along with the Diamondbacks, Indians, and Red Sox. It has been 60 years since the last time multiple teams finished a season with no four-game losing streaks. In 1957, the Milwaukee Braves and the New York Yankees, who opposed each other in that year’s World Series, both finished the regular season with no losing streaks of four or more games.

According to ELIAS

Astros keep rolling… but I say good riddance

The Astros routed the Twins at Target Field yesterday, 17–6, completing a three-game sweep in which they scored 40 runs (16, 7 and 17). That is a franchise record for runs scored in a regular-season series of any length. Houston’s previous highest run total in a single series was 39–– in a four-game set at San Francisco in 1995 and a four-game matchup with the Pirates in 2000.

The Astros’ victory improved their record this season to 38–16, which is the most games over .500 for any major league team through the end of May since 2001, when the Mariners were 40–12 to that point.

This Day in Twins History – has it already been 19 years?

AstrodomeFriday the 13th, June 1997.  The Twins play their very first interleague game and beat the Houston Astros 8-1 in the infamous Astrodome. Chuck Knoblauch leads off the game with a single for the Twins getting their first hit and Brad Radke goes 8 innings for the win. Who hits the Minnesota Twins first interleague home run? That would be current Twins skipper Paul Molitor. Box score

Classic SI photo’s of the Astrodome

According to ELIAS

Twins score just enough to halt Astros streak

Torii Hunter 2015Eduardo Nunez homered and drove in a run with a groundout, the Twins scored another run when Torii Hunter was hit by a bases-loaded pitch, and five pitchers combined to blank the Astros in a 3-0 victory. Hunter gets hit by a pitch with the bases full every seven years, the two previous times that it happened were in 2001 with the Twins and 2008 with the Angels.

Getting as many as three runs hasn’t been easy against the Houston pitching staff; in fact, the Twins were the first team to do it in the Astros’ last 10 games, although A.J. Hinch‘s squad has now lost three of those 10 games (the other two losses came by a 1-0 score). Source: ELIAS