Game 28: Astros at Twins

First Pitch: 7:10pm Central
Television: ESPN
Radio: WCCO 830 AM, Treasure Island Baseball Network (English); twinsbeisbol.com (español)
Know Thine Enemy: The Crawfish Boxes

It’s deja vu all over again.

A week ago, the Twins were coming off a three-game weekend sweep of the lowly Baltimore Orioles and rolled into Houston, winning a close game in the series opener and building an overall four-game winning streak. Then, the Twins were blown out the next night.

This week, the Twins came off a three-game weekend sweep of the Orioles at Target Field, won a close game in the series opener against the Astros and were thoroughly dominated on Tuesday night in Game Two.

Here’s hoping that Game Three goes a bit differently than it did last Wednesday, when the Twins fell by a final score of 7-1 as Justin Verlander dominated proceedings.

This time around, however, the Twins will have the better fortune of facing off against Colin McHugh, who is 3-2 with a 4.78 ERA. Minnesota will counter with Martin Perez, who is 3-0 with a 4.44 ERA.

McHugh gave up three earned runs in 5 ¹⁄₃ innings against Cleveland last time out, which followed the nine earned runs in just 3 ¹⁄₃ innings that he gave up to the Texas Rangers.

Perez has lasted exactly six innings in each of his last three outings. He gave up one run each to Toronto and Baltimore, which sandwiched the four runs he gave up to the Orioles in Baltimore about a week and a half ago.

This is your warning that the game was picked up by ESPN and therefore was shifted from the Twins new spring/fall weeknight home starting time of 6:40 p.m to 7:10 p.m. If you sit down 30 minutes early and have to watch inferior programming, don’t blame us.

Enjoy the game!