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First Pitch: 7:10p Central
Telly: FOX Sports North; MLB.com (one of many Free Games of the Day if you’re out of market); fubo.tv (subscription)
Radio: WCCO 830 AM, Treasure Island Baseball Network
Know Thine Enemy: South Side Sox
After an off day in the Windy City, the Minnesota Twins have finally shed those awful Players’ Weekend unis and are (hopefully) ready to take on the Chicago White Sox. Yes, they faced them last week at this time as well. It’s a trend this season. Neat how that scheduling thing works, eh?
Type “Michael Pineda” into the google engine and the first link is to his page on Baseball Reference (which is awesome and my personal go-to, by the way, in case you want to be just like me, which you don’t). Below that is a few “common searches” about what you’re searching for and one of them is “What happened to Michael Pineda?” Well, nothing that I know of except he’s been rockin’ it lately and is on the mound for Minnesota tonight. In the second half of the season, he’s gone 3-1 in six starts with a 3.47 ERA over 36.1 innings, striking out 29 batters against 8 walks. Big Mike has faced the Pale Hose in two of those starts (including his last start) and went seven innings in each, totaling 12 hits, six earned runs, a walk, and nine strikeouts. On the other hand, he’s allowed three home runs between those two games. Back to the original hand, when he went seven innings in his last start, he was the first Twins pitcher to go seven innings since Terry Mulholland in 2004.*
Chicago will counter with All-Star Lucas Giolito. The righty mastered the Bomba Squad this past Wednesday by putting together a complete game shut-out, helping his team win that series. Because of this, Giolito will allow nine homers in 0.2 innings of work. (Let’s hope.) He has a couple more starts than Pineda since the All-Star Break, but has a similar ERA at 3.31, going 51.2 IP and striking out 12.9 batters per nine innings during that time. Batters are hitting .235/.286/.434 (.719) against him during those eight starts as well. The Bomba Squad will need to show up in full force to knock around Giolito tonight.
GO TWIMS GO
* = not true at all, but it had really been a while; plus, Mulholland