Game 143: Yankees at Twins

FIRST PITCH: 7:10 pm CDT
RADIO: WCCO 830, TIBN, La Raza
TV: MLBN (out-of-market only), FSNO
KNOW THY ENEMY: Pinstripe Alley

Happy Monday everybody! You know what probably won’t make it any worse? Watching the Twins (probably) lose a meaningless baseball game to the Yankees.

The opponent today is a team with 89 wins already, and they aren’t even the best team in their own division. Meanwhile the Twins have only 65 wins, and are somehow comfortably in second place. The AL East is really good this year, while the AL Central is really bad. Grass is green, water is wet, and other obvious facts.

Kyle Gibson takes the mound for the Twins. He’s got a 7-12 record this year, mostly due to the fact he can’t get run support. His win-loss record would probably be flipped if he was on a team with a consistently competent line up. Gibson has already pitched 171 innings for the Twins, and will likely approach his career high of 194 before the season ends. He’s done so while maintaining a career-best 3.74 ERA.

J.A. Happ takes the mound for the Yankees. He was a deadline acquisition for New York, coming over from the now Happ-less Blue Jays (sorry for the bad pun, but it was too easy.) In seven starts for the Yanks, Happ hasn’t yet lost a game, and has collected five wins. He’s also averaged close to six innings per start, and a 3.10 ERA as a Bronx Bomber. Needless to say, the deck is stacked against whatever split-squad looking line up Paul Molitor trots out tonight... speaking of which, is posted below.

YANKEES
1. Andrew McCutchen (R) RF
2. Aaron Hicks (S) CF
3. Miguel Andujar (R) 3B
4. Giancarlo Stanton (R) DH
5. Didi Gregorius (L) SS
6. Gary Sanchez (R) C
7. Greg Bird (L) 1B
8. Gleyber Torres (R) 2B
9. Brett Gardner (L) LF

TWINS
1. Joe Mauer (L) 1B
2. Jorge Polanco (S) SS
3. Logan Forsythe (R) 2B
4. Robbie Grossman (S) RF
5. Mitch Garver (R) C
6. Willians Astudillo (R) DH
7. Jake Cave (L) CF
8. Johnny Field (R) LF
9. Gregorio Petit (R) 3B

Robbie Grossman is your clean up hitter. Willians Astudillo is your DH. I guess the Twins will probably get on base a few times tonight.