Rangers 8, Twins 1: Major Minor fail

Your chosen Baseball Team Of Fanitude, the East Dakota Twins, continued their recent pattern of winning against perennial Cy Young candidates and scuffling vs. marginal MLB starters.

Tonight, it was 5.35 ERA Texas hurler Mike Minor, who sent down 14 of the first 15 Twins hitters. (This involves some lineup turnover; it’s not playground ball where fifteen kids get to hit before anyone else has an AB.)

Behind 4-1 in the sixth, the Twins were close to taking advantage of Minor’s suddenly wild offspeed pitches. A Max Kepler double and Ryan LaMarre walk put Joe Mauer up as the tying run. Minor’s next wackyball got by Rangers catcher Robinson Chirinos, which allowed Mad Max to reach third. LaMarre broke late, and Chirinos nailed him in a rundown which wasn’t even close. (I’d show you the clip, but I don’t know how to link it, and you don’t need that in your life anyhoo.) Mauer would drive Kepler in with a double, because Mauer, yet the Big Inning opportunity was wasted, and Minnesota didn’t get any hits of base from then on.

How did phenom next Liriano rookie Fernando Romero do? Pretty well, all told. A bunch of BABIP-luck duck farts loaded the bases with no outs in inning numero quatro, and Romero escaped it with only two runs scored. Perhaps a bit rattled, he got donged the next inning, Shin-Soo Choo homering after a sacrifice bunt (???).

Romero left the game down 0-4, and then, bullpen, or more accusatory, Matt Belisle. I don’t mean to knock on a skilled pro who’s better at baseball than 99.9999% of us will ever be at anything; however, it seems that this experiment is not working. Belisle coughed up four runs in an appearance where it looked very much like the Twins were letting him fix it or go home. My suspicion is he’ll be going home soon. I do hope it’s a nice home, I have nothing against the guy. He’s from Austin, Texas. I hear they have great music.

Robot Roll Call:

Comment of the Game Thread goes to unrepentant serial killer Brandon Brooks for ‘“We’ve officially reached the “model cars” part of the broadcast.”’

BTW, I think I’ve figured out why Dan Gladden is pretty tolerable this season. My theory is that it’s because the Twins are neither terrible nor terrific. If they’re winning, Dazzle Man tells us how he understands The Macho Mojo and it’s cliched gibberish. If they’re awful, he tells us how Winners Like Him would have straightened this crap out. Since the Twins are in-between, Gladden sticks to telling fun stories and observing what’s going on in the game, and he does know quite a bit about how baseball works.

It doesn’t hurt, either, that Cory Provus may be the best sports broadcaster I’ve heard in a long time. The Twins really hit gold with this guy. He might even be able to tone The Hawk down; let’s hope he never has that opportunity.