Category: According to Elias

According to Elias

 

Kurt Suzuki
Kurt Suzuki

Kurt Suzuki‘s two-out single off Justin Verlander with the bases full in the seventh inning plated a pair of runs, and that was enough for the Twins to sneak off with a 2-1 victory at Detroit on Friday. Verlander’s nine-game winning streak against the Twins ended; it had been tied for the longest current streak by any major-leaguer starter against any opposing team. Felix Hernandez has won his last nine decisions as a starter against the Tigers, as have Edwin Jackson against the Indians, and Kyle Kendrick against the Marlins. It’s not easy to load the bases against Verlander, but if you do, you have a chance. With Suzuki’s hit on Friday night, opponents now have a .339 career batting average with the bases loaded against the Tigers ace (39 hits in 115 at-bats). Sourc

Kurt Suzuki is hitting .340 (16-for-47) with two doubles, 13 RBI and a .436
on-base percentage in 13 road games, his average and OBP both rank fifth best in the AL. Kurt has five multi-hit games on the road and has reached base in 11 of 13 games.

The Twins enter today’s game with an all-time record (since 1961) of 4220-4261 and need just three wins to match their win total when the franchise was the Washington Senators from 1901-1960, psting a 4223-4864 record. The Senators were one of the eight original franchises in the American League for sixty years. The Senators played baseball  in our nation’s capital, winning one World Championship in 1924 and three AL pennants (1924, 1925, and 1933. After the 1960 season owner Calvin Griffith moved the Washington Senators from Washington, DC to Minnesota.

Don’t forget to stop by our “Today in Twins History” page and checked out what happened on this day in Minnesota Twins history.

According to Elias

 

Phil Hughes
Phil Hughes

Phil  Hughes allowed two runs in 6.1 innings in the Twins’ 5-2 win over the Orioles. Hughes, who has defeated the Royals, Tigers and Orioles over his last three starts while posting a 2.79 ERA, has won three consecutive starts for the first time since he did so for the Yankees in September 2012. Hughes made 34 starts in the interim and registered a 4-16 record with a 5.24 ERA in those games.

According to Elias

Phil Hughes
Phil Hughes

Phil Hughes allowed three runs over six innings yesterday to earn his first victory in 17 starts, dating back to last July, in Minnesota’s 8-3 win at Kansas City. For all his struggles, one thing Hughes has unfailingly done is turn a big lead into a victory, and Sunday was no different as the Twins staked him to a 5-0 lead in their first five turns at-bat. Hughes has a 32-0 record as a starter when given a lead of four or more runs, and his teams are 37-0 in those games.

According to Elias

Three Wins In Three Games For Kyle Gibson

Kyle Gibson
Kyle Gibson

Kyle Gibson pitched eight innings and did not allow a run in his victory against the Blue Jays on Thursday afternoon. Gibson has won all three of his games for the Twins this season and he’s sporting a 0.93 earned-run average, having given up only two earned runs in 19¿ innings. Since the original Washington Senators relocated to Minnesota in 1961, the only other Twins pitchers to win their first three starts of a season while posting an ERA below 1.00 were Bill Krueger in 1992 (0.75 ERA) and Francisco Liriano in 2006 (0.56 ERA).

By the way, the temperature for the first pitch at Target Field in game 1 of the day/night doubleheader was 31 degrees, the coldest start ever for a Twins home game.

 

Twins Draw Eight Walks In One Inning

The Twins scored six runs on only one hit in the bottom of the eighth inning as they came from behind to beat the Blue Jays, 9-5, in the second half of their split doubleheader at Target Field on Thursday. Minnesota’s six-run “rally” benefited from the almost total inability of Toronto pitchers to throw strikes in that inning, as Steve Delabar, Sergio Santos and J.A. Happ combined to walk eight Twins batters. (Santos threw gasoline on the fire by uncorking three run-scoring wild pitches in that inning.) Minnesota was the first big-league team to draw eight walks in one inning since April 19, 1996, when the Texas Rangers did that as they scored 16 runs in the eighth inning of a 26-7 win against the Orioles. The eight walks by Baltimore pitchers in that inning were issued by Armando Benitez, Jesse Orosco and infielder Manny Alexander.

According to Elias

The A’s beat the Twins, 6-1, Thursday afternoon. Oakland has scored at least six runs in each of its last nine games against the Twins. That’s the longest such streak by one major league team against another since the Tigers scored at least six runs in 14 consecutive games against the Royals during the 2006 season. The last time the A’s had a streak like this was in 1949 when the Philadelphia A’s had an 11-game streak against the Washington Senators.

According to Elias

Phil Hughes
Phil Hughes

Phil Hughes recorded his first out of the game (a strikeout of John Jaso) on his 40th pitch of the afternoon yesterday after he had already allowed four first-inning runs to the Athletics. The Twins took Hughes “off the hook” by tying the game in the ninth inning before Derek Norris hit a decisive three-run homer in the 11th inning in the A’s 7-4 victory at Minnesota. But let’s get back to Hughes, who became the first starting pitcher who needed as many as 40 pitches to register his first out of a game since the Dodgers’ Derek Lowe finally retired a batter on his 43rd pitch of a loss at Colorado on May 4, 2008.

A couple of notes about our site. Make sure you check out our new “Down on the Farm” news on the right hand side of the page that will allow you stay up-to-date on current events with the Twins minor league teams. We also added an electronic version  of the 2014 Twins Media guide for your reference needs. In case you have not checked out the link to MLB Game Notes also on the right hand side of the page you should do so. There is a lot of interesting information that each team publishes in their notes every game day, check it out.

According to Elias

Chris Colabello
Chris Colabello

Chris Colabello drove in four runs in Minnesota’s win in Cleveland yesterday, increasing his total this season to 11 RBIs. That’s the most RBIs any Twins player has had in the team’s first six games of a season since Bobby Darwin had the same total at the same point in 1972.

The Twins won 7-3 at Cleveland on Saturday, giving manager Ron Gardenhire his 1,000th win as a major-league manager, all for Minnesota. Gardenhire is third skipper in Senators/Twins franchise history to reach 1,000 wins, joining Bucky Harris (1336 wins for the original Washington Senators) and Tom Kelly (1,140 wins for Minnesota). The only other franchises that have had three different managers each lead them to 1,000 or more wins are the Yankees (four: Miller Huggins, Joe McCarthy, Casey Stengel and Joe Torre) and Dodgers (Wilbert Robinson, Walter Alston and Tom Lasorda).

Ron Gardenhire
Ron Gardenhire

Gardy became just the second manager in club history to reach 1,000 victories, the other being Tom Kelly who went 1,140-1,244 from 1986-2001. Kelly earned his 1,000th win on May 7, 2000 with a 4-0 victory over Detroit in his 2,093rd career game as a Manager, Saturday marked Gardy’s 1,950th career game.

Gardy becomes the 60th manager to win 1,000 games, 24 of these managers have won 1,000 games with one team but only 10 have won 1,000 games while managing only one team and both Ron Gardenhire and Tom Kelly belong to this exclusive club.

 

According to Elias

Angry faceThe Twins committed four errors and were blanked by a score of 11-0 in Oakland last night. It is only the second time that the Twins committed at least four errors in a shutout loss by a double-digit margin since the team moved to Minnesota. The only other game of that type that the Twins have had was on April 12, 1994 when they were blanked 12-0 and committed five errors against the Mariners in Seattle. The last major-league team with that dismal a performance was the Rays, who were pummeled 13-0 by the Yankees while committing four errors on May 16, 2002 at Yankee Stadium.

Come Twins, let’s get Gardy at least 3 more wins and wrap up this dismal season. I love baseball and the Minnesota Twins but even I can’t watch this team play the last month or so. I check in on the games during commercial breaks and usually watch the score escalate against the Twins. It has been a long time since I have seen the Twins play this bad. I know it doesn’t do any good to get angry over the Twins play but there is soooooooo little hope for next year.

According to Elias

A’s pound Twins 18-3

Each of the nine players in the A’s starting lineup had at least one RBI and one run scored in the team’s 18-3 pounding of the Twins on Wednesday. That marked only the third time in the A’s franchise history that all nine starters did that in a game. The other two times that happened were on August 16, 1928 (vs. Detroit), when the franchise was located in Philadelphia, and on June 18, 2000 (at Kansas City).

The 18 runs that Oakland put on the board are the second most scored by a team at Target Field since the Twins began playing their home games there in 2010, behind the 19 run outburst Minnesota had against the Orioles on July 16, 2012.

According to Elias

Josmil Pinto
Josmil Pinto

Twins rookie catcher Josmil Pinto went 3 for 4 on Monday, with all three hits being doubles, leaving him with 13 hits in 23 at-bats, a .565 batting average, in seven games in the major leagues. Since 1980, only one player has had at least 20 at-bats and a higher batting average than Pinto in his first seven games in the big leagues; Jay Bruce was 15 for 26 (.577) at that point of his career.

 

 Hot starts with minimum of 20 at-bats for the Twins rookies

Player BA H G Year Age PA AB R 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB OBP SLG OPS
Josmil Pinto .565 13 7 2013 24 25 23 6 5 0 1 4 2 2 0 .600 .913 1.513
Gary Ward (RoY-9th) .463 19 13 1980 26 46 41 11 6 2 1 10 3 6 0 .489 .780 1.269
Glenn Williams .425 17 13 2005 27 43 40 3 1 0 0 3 2 7 1 .452 .450 .902
Mike Ryan .393 24 27 2003 25 68 61 13 7 0 5 13 6 12 2 .441 .754 1.195
Steve Lombardozzi .370 20 28 1985 25 65 54 10 4 1 0 6 6 6 3 .426 .481 .908
Tommy Watkins .357 10 9 2007 27 32 28 2 0 0 0 0 4 4 1 .438 .357 .795
Player BA H G Year Age PA AB R 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB OBP SLG OPS
Chris Parmelee .355 27 21 2011 23 88 76 8 6 0 4 14 12 13 0 .443 .592 1.035
John Barnes .351 13 11 2000 24 41 37 5 4 0 0 2 2 6 0 .415 .459 .874
Chip Hale .333 62 69 1993 28 213 186 25 6 1 3 27 18 17 2 .408 .425 .832
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 9/10/2013.