jung

Finally, a swing that made sense. How many useless Bugs Bunny swings have we seen from both teams tonight....maybe 100 or so. Took till the bottom of the 9th and X to finally take a breaking pitch on the right way. League full of buffoons being paid millions to do I don't know what....stand there and pick at their crotches from what I can see.

Romo only has one pitch. What are we doing!!!!

Well even with the same handedness, Romo should be the kind of pitcher that 1,2,3 in our order can hit. We will see.

Cave is hysterical at the plate. Just close your eyes buddy. You can't see these pitches anyway.

Bugs Moreland actually makes contact with a breaking pitch...just not enough. Like I said the other night the only thing "amazing" about this version of MLB is the sparse number of pitchers that can actually throw a breaking pitch successfully at 2 strikes. For the few pitchers in MLB that actually can, this is a league full of prime rib....meat on the hoof hitters.

Jackie Bunny Jr goes down on another breaking pitch.

We have an MLB full of hitters that can't hit and pitchers that can't pitch....But how bout' them HR's!!!!!!

I am having a hard time canonizing a league full of hitters that take Bugs Bunny swings at every kind of breaking ball there is. The "greatness" is escaping me.

We are lucky to only be one run down to this point when you consider the walks and the way Cashewnuts and Barnes pitched. Twins have really not taken advantage of their opportunities. We just have not had many opportunities.

Hideous AB from Kepler. Where in Gods name did he think the Strike 3 pitch was going to end up? The only pitch Barnes could have thrown that would have landed as a strike from where that pitch started was a FB and a Curve DOES NOT look like a FB. Should have let the pitch go and taken his base and his RBI.

Cashewnuts is living proof that hitters simply no longer care who is throwing what. You only have to deal with two pitches from Cashewnuts and he makes it so obvious when he is going to throw the Change. All this league full of clowns has to do is widen their stances, get down to the level of the pitch and doink Cashewnuts to death until his Manager takes him out. It is just so STUPID to watch hitters v Cashewnuts. Heck with this baseball you could doink it over the fence without much trouble.

Cave had the worst AB swinging at Changes from a guy everybody on the planet knows is going to throw Changes. Heck aliens on other planets know Cashewnuts is going to throw Changes.

Idiot pitcher. Up 0-2 in the count to Rafi with two out and throws it into center field. How about concentrating on the batter dummy.

Fans came to see Manfred ball and a pitching dual broke out. Who would have thunk it. We will pitch a cast of thousands against the Yankmees. I would wager we get two 4 hour games anyway out of the Yankmee series.

Wait till you see how long these games are going to be with 21 on the pitching staff.

Look at how filled up Nate's strike zone is. How often do we see that?....Like almost never these days.

Still think 4/$68 is not a great deal on Nate. But I dearly love the way he challenges hitters in the strike zone. Guys like Nate are becoming as rare as hens teeth especially in the AL.

Not sure we can catch the Guardians. Just no longer sure the Guardians can catch the A's. Real shame for them if they can't. Really thought they would take this Twins team before that building fell on the Indian's heads.

Cleveland is going to fall behind A's and Rays IMO. They basically lost the entire team to injury in the last few days of August switching a bunch of guys from the ten day IL to the 60 day IL in a matter of a few days. Guardians were rolling before that. Don't think it likely they can make it through that many injuries.

1. Max Kepler (L) RF 2. Luis Arraez (L) SS 3. Nelson Cruz ® DH 4. Eddie Rosario (L) LF 5. Miguel Sano ® 3B 6. Mitch Garver ® C 7. Jake Cave (L) CF 8. C.J. Cron ® 1B 9. Jonathan Schoop ® 2B 1. Mookie Betts ® RF 2. Xander Bogaerts ® SS 3. Rafael Devers (L) 3B 4. J.D. Martinez ® DH 5. Christian Vazquez ® C 6. Andrew Benintendi (L) LF 7. Sam Travis ® 1B 8. Gorkys Hernandez ® CF 9. Brock Holt (L) 2B

Repeating something here not so I can say "I called it" or "I told ya' so" but because some of you guys should think all the way back to when I said in a game thread that ERod is finally "throwing like a grown assed man" mainly due to having elevated his Change such that it went flying past his Slider like it was standing still. Many of you appeared to have thought at the time that Jung has finally gone entirely around the bend. So I want some of you guys that are watching as many games as I am watching and those not quite watching as many of them to think back all those months ago and think about what you are NOT seeing or NOT watching in these broadcasts. For some others, get your noses out of the stat sheets and the spreadsheets and the advanced stat sheets and actually WATCH THE GAMES, watch the players in the games! Stats are great but a poor substitute for watching games, watching players, watching players between pitches, pre-pitch, after the ball is thrown, after the ball is struck or not. Pay particular attention to EVERYTHING and I do mean everything that happens from the point that the Pitcher toes the rubber to the point where a play ends and time is called allowing everybody to reset. In fact, pay attention to what happens while time is out as well. If you really want to help this game forward complain to Holy Hell about the amount of time hitters take picking at themselves and gesticulating toward the heavens and setting up nature trails around home plate instead of STANDING IN THE BOX. Hitters used to be able to process what the pitcher just threw and calculate what they should be looking for next in a matter of seconds, prepare for it and hit it (saints be praised....seems like a miracle now). Further, I have no clear idea what hitters are doing outside the box after an uncontested ball or strike call that they deemed unworthy of a swing. I was a hitter and I still don't get it. WHAT IN THE NAME OF GOD ARE THEY DOING? I ask that question because whatever communication with the cosmos or dead ancestors they are engaged in, it rarely results in any recognition of the count or the game circumstance or the pitcher or ANYTHING for that matter because regardless of any of that they ultimately just swing out of their shoelaces AGAIN just like every count is 2-1 and every circumstance requires that they knock the ball to the moon! The games are too long for their own good.....wayyyyyyy too long for their own good. Hitters staying in the box will encourage pitchers to toe the rubber and PITCH. Rant over....you may resume normal viewing.....We the true believers in this great game "relinquish control allowing you to return to regular programming"......FOR NOW! Stole that last one from the original "The Outer Limits" TV series.

Four more pitchers called up today. 21 on the staff now.

This could be a very interesting game considering the pitchers. Gut check game ERod. 1. Max Kepler (L) CF 2. Jorge Polanco (S) SS 3. Nelson Cruz ® DH 4. Eddie Rosario (L) LF 5. Miguel Sano ® 3B 6. Jake Cave (L) RF 7. C.J. Cron ® 1B 8. Jonathan Schoop ® 2B 9. Willians Astudillo ® C 1. Mookie Betts ® RF 2. Rafael Devers (L) 3B 3. Xander Bogaerts ® SS 4. J.D. Martinez ® DH 5. Andrew Benintendi (L) LF 6. Brock Holt (L) 2B 7. Mitch Moreland (L) 1B 8. Christian Vazquez ® C 9. Jackie Bradley Jr. (L) CF

lol...I am rightfully criticized for digging right down the cynicism hole. But we are well down the sarcastic hole on this topic.

I actually think that expecting the bats to show up every game (which is where we are now) even if its the best hitting team in baseball is just an unreasonable expectation. We may be seeing the effects of fatigue and dings and dents. Trout has not been Trout with his damaged foot. Who knows what some of these guys are playing with at this point in the season. Cora's rest strategy for everyday players appears to have spared a good many of them. But none of them are likely to be as fresh as they were in April. Yet the team is completely dependent on bats scoring 7-8 runs at least per game to win. We gave up games in two stretches this year.....the Cora Rotation debacle which likely cost us something like 8-10 wins early and then the trade deadline which sent the team into a 0-7 swoon until they recovered. If you incapable of going on serious win runs yet give up games in 6-9 game stretches, good luck with that. Granted, they likely did not have the right to swoon at the trade deadline. However that is what they did. I would still contend that exec management should not have publicly challenged them at the deadline unless they really knew the personalities at play in that clubhouse and knew they could would either get a positive result doing that or at least get away with it. THEY DIDN"T and THEY DIDN'T.