Game 56: Tigers at Twins

First Pitch: 640p Central
Television: FOX Sports North
Radio (English): W-C-C-O 830 AM, The Danny “Chick-fil-A Double” Gladden Baseball Network, KMNB 102.9 FM “The Wolf”
Radio (Espanol): twinsbeisbol.com
Know Thine Enemy: Bless You Boys

2020. What a year and what a season, right? Our Minnesota Twins are now home for the rest of the regular season and hopefully for the Wild Card round of the postseason. If you want to scoreboard watch and see if anyone is helping Minnesota’s cause to stay the number four seed or win the Central:

• The Chicago White Sox are at the Cleveland Spiders this evening; the game will already be in progress by the time robots automatically post this at the designated time I tell them to do so. (Take THAT, technology!!!!) The Twins are 1.5 games back from the White Sox for the Central lead; the Spiders are 2.5 games back from the Twins for second place.
• The New York Yankees are in Buffalo, N.Y., taking on the Toronto Blue Jays; this game should be in the early goings once this hits the interwebs. The Yanks are 1.5 games back from Minnesota for the fourth seed. The Blue Jays are holding on to playoff hopes by keeping five other teams away from the eighth seed and hoping to gain ground on the seventh seed; they’re two games behind the Spiders.

The Twins welcome the Detroit Tigers to Minneapolis for a two-game set. After Ron Gardenhire retired effective immediately this weekend, the Tigers announced that bench coach Lloyd McClendon will operate at the helm of the club for the remainder of the season. The neat thing that both Gardy and McClendon have in common: great ejection videos.

McClendon gives the nod to southpaw Tarik Skubal. The rookie is 1-3 with a 6.17 ERA and 4.99 FIP. He has two starts against the Twins, and they were back-to-back starts as well. He’s held the Bomba Squad to a .147/.189/.235 batting line in 11.0 innings of work. Minnesota batters have been batting a not-so-impressive .229/.300/.326 against lefties this season.

Rocco Baldelli hands the ball to newly-activated-from-the-Injured-List Homer Bailey. The righty is making his second start of the season, his first since July 28 against the St Louis Cardinals in a 6-3 Twims wim. His line was: 5.0 IP, 4 H, 2 ER, 2 BB, 4 K. He allowed a homer because it’s his name. Bailey has a lifetime triple slash of .164/.190/.185 with no homers and 18 RBI. I have to add that to balance the batting stats from the previous paragraph.

Nelson Cruz (knee) and Jorge Polanco are ridin’ pine again while Ryan Jeffers gets DH duties ... in the eight spot.

GO TWIMS GO