Royals 6, Twins 4 (Manfredball 11th): Battle for last place so, so much more boring than score indicates

After dueling homers in the first, both team’s hitters keep sloppily trying to jack dongs and finally KC succeeds in the eleventh. To give you an idea of why this recap went off the rails, here’s my early attempt at the customary inning-by-inning notes:

1: Griffin Jax gives up a three-run bomb, as he’s wont to do. Which leads us to a little digression about Stats. One of the Stats people look at is FIP, or “fielding independent pitching,” which attempts to take rotten defense out of ERA. Generally, if a pitcher’s “batting average on balls in play” is unusually low, it means his defense is good/he’s been lucky and therefore, his FIP will be higher than his ERA.

OK, got that? Going into this game, Jax’s ERA was 6.79. His “batting average on balls in play” was .249, which is CRAZY low. But his FIP was 6.63 — somehow, FIP thinks Jax should be even luckier on hit balls than he already has been? Well, stats aren’t perfect.

This becomes immediately (temporarily) negated when Kansas City pitcher Daniel Lynch (5.29 ERA) gives up a Buxton blast, Polanco double, POINTLESS GUY single and Donaldson bomb. He’s perfect after that, so Twins 4-3

2: (Note: I generally do type these notes every inning. I stopped, figuring I’d go back and recap it from the game log on MLB.com later. This never happened.)

5: Radio has been having some Little League kid who did something in the Little League World Series in the booth. This quickly becomes interminable, like having to interact with a half-rando kid you don’t know whose parent says “you two will really like each other! You both like baseball!” And then it turns out the kid has no interest in talking about baseball or anything else with you.

Sample dialogue. Dan Gladden: so, was your dad ever your coach? Kid: No. Was he the kind of dad who came to games and yelled a lot? Yeah. Yelling at the umps, right? Yelled at me a lot. Cheering for you! Telling me to move around more in the outfield. Get it, get it, get it! Just telling me my positioning was wrong. And he wasn’t your coach? No. Oh, what? That’s, um... Kris Atteberry (jokingly): “we’ll have to launch an investigation into this!”

..... that's as far as I got with the straight recap .....

At this point the game was tied 4-4 on a double+score from first that might have been close at the plate except relay thrower Andrelton Simmons friggin' dropped the relay throw, because he spaced it, just like he’s spaced about the whole dang year, and if you wanna be cranky with me or Froggy or whomever for not caring about this season anymore, the thing is it took us a lot of bad baseball to get here. Simmons was phoning in his "defensive ace so I owe nothing to nobody" from the start. Sheeat, even the ACE's failings helped tank the season early, but it was never for lack of giving a dook.

So I got wrapped in attempts to think about anything else which wasn’t as glum, and right now I have a lot of glumness on my mental “worry list.” As do we all, I’m nothing special, but here’s what happens when that happens.

I was finishing up a homebrew (what sort of twinsbrewer doesn’t homebrew during Twins games) and thinking about a contest me and TJ have discussed, a giveaway of Twins things. TJ's said the rules must be completely random. I've puzzled this and every time I think I've come up with rules I like, I find holes in them. (I'm sure you could come up with ones easily; I want them to specifically tie into a particular theme).

I put the last addition into my brew (you add hops and barley & such at specific times, I won't go into it) and then, AHA! CONTEST RULES! I'VE GOT IT! So simple, so flawless!

As I contemplated my brilliance, I completely ignored my homebrew and had The Worst. Boilover. Ever. In 25+ years.

Again, I won't go into it (homebrewers talking about Their Process are the dullest people in the world this side of unhinged conspiracy theorists, and a nice writer I know says "get a man drunk, he'll waste a night; teach a man to homebrew, he'll waste a lifetime.")

But, basically, homebrewing involves concentrated malt sugars on a stove over high heat, and you DON’T WANT THIS TO MASSIVELY BOIL OVER.

This problem is easy to avoid, and as a longtime life-waster I'd avoided the most risky problem spots... then I screwed up the no-brainer right at the end. It'll take me hours to clean tomorrow.

To return to the game, about all that happened was Juan Minaya almost gave up the go-ahead run in the 10th... but didn’t. Then Minnesota started their half with a walk! Two on, nobody out! Buxton up!

He bunted a popout, nothing good happened afterwards, KC donged off Minaya to begin 11, I went back to cleaning my mess (I actually had to wheel out the shop-vac to suck up burnt malt ashes, soaking/cleaning the stove will be tomorrow), and figured I'd get to recapping this turdburger when I got to it. Robot Roll Call:

No real COTG, but JustAnotherMinnesotan had some fun comments about Tennis, which I haven’t watched since an epic Agassi/Sampras matchup in the 2000 Aussie open. (Now THAT was “extra-innings” drama!) But I'm also not sure about the "humble" username. Could be nice, could be sneaky snarky like "just another Minnesotan with average thoughts, why you mad at me when I type AWFUL THING," which I ain’t saying is his schtick (he hasn’t done it) but I have seen it a few times before, and I trust no-one. Also he hates on Bremer, whose Minnesota small-town know-where is pretty extraordinary. But I did enjoy the tennis talk, fun to hear from fans of other sports!

Tune in at 6:10 tomorrow for the return of Big Mikey P vs. goofily young-looking Brady Singer!