Category: According to Elias

According to ELIAS – Ervin Santana

Santana goes all the way, and loses

Ervin Santana

Ervin Santana went all the way in a losing effort, throwing 117 pitches in the Twins’ 2-1 loss to the Angels at Target Field last night. Santana became only the second big-league pitcher this season to toss a nine-inning, complete-game loss; Marcus Stroman threw 100 pitches in a 2-0 loss to the Brewers on April 12. But it’s nothing new for Santana, who tossed a 97-pitch, nine-inning, complete-game loss against the Braves last July 26. He’s the first major-leaguer to throw nine-inning, complete-game losses in each of two consecutive seasons since James Shields did it for the Rays in 2012 and for the Royals in 2013.

 

Never mind a wing and a prayer; Angels win on a homer and a steal

Kole Calhoun homered in the first inning and Cameron Maybin stole home as part of a double steal in the sixth to account for the Angels’ runs in their 2-1 victory over Ervin Santana in Minneapolis.

You have to go back 14 years to find the last major-league game won by a team that scored just two runs—one on a homer and the other on a steal. On June 12, 2003, Cincinnati’s Austin Kearns took care of both ends of the equation in a 2-1 victory over the Devil Rays in St. Petersburg: Kearns stole home as part of a double steal in the second inning, then homered in the sixth. Wednesday’s contest was the first in Angels history in which they scored two runs on a game, on a homer and a steal of home.

According to ELIAS – Byron Buxton

Buxton busts out

Byron Buxton’s sixth-inning home run was a highlight in the Twins’ 5–4 win over the Angels. Buxton’s homer snapped his streak of 61 consecutive at-bats without an extra-base hit. That was tied for the second-longest current streak of that kind among active position players who have appeared in a game this season. A.J. Ellis has not produced a double, triple or home run in his last 73 at-bats.

Byron Buxton

According to ELIAS – Max Kepler

Kepler stars in Minnesota’s cleanup role

Max Kepler

Fourth-place batter Max Kepler went 4-for-4 with a home run in the Twins’ 9–5 home win over the Angels yesterday. It had been almost exactly eight years since a Minnesota cleanup hitter went 4-for-4 or better, including a home run. On July 4, 2009, Justin Morneau was 4-for-4 with one homer in a 4–3 win over the Tigers at the Metrodome.

Kind of a telling stat I guess…..

According to ELIAS – Jason Vargas & Ervin Santana

Vargas, 6-0 in June, wins 12th and evokes Saberhagen

Jason Vargas

A much-anticipated pitching duel between the Royals’ Jason Vargas and the Twins’ Ervin Santana turned out to be no contest, as Kansas City scored seven runs off Santana en route to an 8-1 win. Vargas had entered the game at 11-3 and Santana at 10-4, in what was only the second matchup of pitchers with double-digit wins totals before July 1 over the last 20 seasons. (The other such meeting came on June 16, 2002, in a Red Sox-Braves game in which Derek Lowe, at 10-2, opposed Tom Glavine, 11-2.)

Bret Saberhagen

Vargas secured his 12th win on Friday night, becoming only the second pitcher in Royals history to win 12 games before July 1 (Bret Saberhagen stood at 13-2 entering July in 1987). Vargas finished off a clean sheet for the month of June: six starts and six wins. The last Kansas City pitcher to win six games in a month was Saberhagen in September of 1989, after Bret had earned seven victories in August of that year!

According to ELIAS – David Price

Price keeps Twins bats in the park

David Price (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

David Price allowed no home runs in seven innings, improving his record to 3–2 in Boston’s 6–3 home win over Minnesota last night. In 114? career innings against the Twins, Price has surrendered just five home runs, a rate of one every 22.9 innings. That’s the seventh-best rate by any active pitcher with at least 100 innings pitched against a particular opponent.

According to ELIAS – Ervin Santana’s 7th “New Millennium Shutout”

Ervin Santana’s 7th “New Millennium Shutout”

Ervin Santana

It’s 2017 and we’re realists. Although we love a complete-game shutout as much as the next fan, we don’t expect to see them very often these days. But Ervin Santana has pitched three this season, a major-league high, and on Sunday he went six innings in the Twins’ 4–0 win at Cleveland—a “new millennium shutout,” if you will.

In fact, Santana didn’t allow a run in seven of his 13 starts this season. In the live-ball era, only four other pitchers made as many as seven starts without allowing a run by the end of June: Sandy Koufax in 1963, Don Drysdale in 1968 (when he set an MLB record, since broken, with 58 2?3 consecutive scoreless innings), Jeff Locke in 2013, and Adam Wainwright in 2014. The only other pitcher to do so in Senators/Twins history was the Big Train himself, Walter Johnson, with Washington in 1913.

According to ELIAS – Brian Dozier

Dozier hits 8th-inning HR off Cody Allen, extends streak at Progressive

 

Brian Dozier

Brian Dozier’s eighth-inning solo homer off Cody Allen put the Twins on top to stay in their 4-2 win in Cleveland. Entering Saturday, the Twins had only two go-ahead home runs in the seventh inning-or-later this season, which had been the lowest total in the majors. One of the prior late go-ahead home runs was hit by Dozier, off the Rays’ Tommy Hunter in the eighth inning on May 27; the other was a ninth-inning walk-off homer by Joe Mauer off Boston’s Matt Barnes on May 5.

Dozier entered his eighth-inning at-bat 0-for-3, but his game-winning home run extended his hitting streak at Progressive Field to 12 games, since August 1, 2016, over the course of which he is hitting .347 with six home runs. The streak is tied with teammate Joe Mauer for the longest current hitting streak at Progressive Field; Mauer went 2-for-2 and is hitting .469 over his 12-game streak there.

According to ELIAS – Indians are hot

Indians’ offense is clicking

The Indians scored six runs on 13 hits in their victory over the Orioles on Thursday night, their ninth consecutive game with at least five runs and 10 hits. That ties the longest streak of this type for any team over the last nine seasons (since 2009). The Royals did so in nine straight games from May 23 to June 1 in the 2016 season.

Just what the Minnesota Twins need as they head into Cleveland………

Major League debuts as Minnesota Twins – Dan Masteller

Just one major league debut as a Minnesota Twins again today, June 23

Dan Masteller (1B/OF) – June 23, 1995 – Drafted by the Minnesota Twins in the 11th round of the 1989 amateur draft. Debuted at Kauffman Stadium as the Twins first baseman but took an 0-3 in a Twins 4-0 loss to the Royals.

To see other Major League Debuts as Minnesota Twins

According to ELIAS – Jose Berrios

Berrios wins again

 

Jose Berrios

Jose Berrios improved his record to 7-1 in eight starts with a solid eight inning performance in the Twins’ win over the White Sox. Berrios is the sixth pitcher in Senators/Twins history to win at least seven of his first eight starts of a season. The others were Walter Johnson, who did it in 1913 (7-1) and 1925 (7-1), Joe Boehling in 1913 (7-0), Jerry Koosman in 1979 (7-0), Geoff Zahn in 1979 (7-1) and Francisco Liriano in 2006 (7-1).

Home Runs and Strikeouts, Strikeouts and Home Runs

Major League Baseball seems odds-on to set single-season industry-wide records for both home runs and strikeouts. There were 238 home runs hit in 72 major-league games from Friday to Tuesday, an average of 3.31 homers per game. That was the most homer-happy five-day period in the 142-year history of Major League Baseball, whether reckoned by total homers or by average per game.

But strikeouts grabbed the Elias Says headlines on Wednesday night, as major-league teams struck out a total of 290 times over 15 games. That average of 19.33 strikeouts per game was the highest on any day with at least 12 games played in major-league history. The previous record was set on Sept. 14, 2015, when there was an average of 19.25 strikeouts over 12 games.