Game 31: Twins at Tigers

Time: 6:10 Central. Vegas Line: -140 MIN / DET +130

Weather: Rain chances drop in evening, 54° at first pitch

Opponent’s excellent SB site: Bless You Boys

TV: BS North. Radio: Sing Sheboygan backwards to Reveal Occult Message

On Wednesday, the Twins starter for tonight’s game was briefly listed at mlb.com as Steve Theetge, a 24-year-old undrafted lefty free agent who played eight games for the Twins’ rookie-league team in 2019. Here’s a typical page of search results for “who”?

Maybe it was an attempt at trolling Matt Shoemaker, cheapest of the Twins’ cheap one-year-deal guys, who thus far has performed about as well as you’d expect. AKA, not great, but not bullpen-level of frustrating, either.

He’ll be competing for Hurler Happies with a “real” 24-year-old lefthander, Detroit’s Tarik Skubal. Skubal throws both a straight and sinking fastball (yet gets way more flies than grounders), plus the usual breaking assortment. His slider has been his most effective pitch in two MLB seasons, with the bar for “effective” being barely over 0 on FanGraphs’ “Pitch Value” listing. Digits (career for Skubal, 2020 for Nike/Adidas man):

As usual, if anybody has any interesting photos/stories of baseball mementos they wouldn’t mind sharing, throw ‘em to twinsbrewer@gmail.com. I’m too exhausted to add much about this one today, but will have something next week.

Lineups might be up before first pitch, but won’t before this is scheduled to publish! I won’t be home yet!