Game CIX: Twins @ Guardians

Smug and smugger. | Photo by David Berding/Getty Images

First pitch: 6:10 Central

Weather: National Weather Service still gutted, less smoky air in Ohio, 74°

Opponent’s SB site: Covering The Corner

TV: Twins TV. Radio: Over/under on a team official gushing about prospect returns, 5 minutes into broadcast

Young Cleveland starter Gavin Williams made his debut in 2023, and has pitched pretty well, for the most part. He had a very strange bad inning a month ago, against the Cubs. Williams gave up three singles and a double to start the inning; on the double, an error allowed the runner to reach third. Ugh.

Then the runner tried scoring on a wild pitch, and was tagged out at home. Williams walked the hitter – but he got picked off at first. So Williams walked the next hitter – and HE got picked off at first.

That’s three “non plate appearance outs” in one inning, which hadn’t happened in baseball since 1985. It hadn’t happened in a Cleveland game since 1920. So, weird stuff.

Williams throws 96+ with a curve, cutter and sinker. When he’s on, his best pitch is his sweeper/slider (sweeder?). Digits:

For absolutely no reason, I’m here to tell you that another thing called “Covering The Corner” exists. It’s a community magazine put out about the town of Redvers, Saskatchewan. Here is the July issue, featuring a rodeo story and a word search puzzle. Now you know.

The Guardians just traded away ace pitcher Shane Bieber. I don’t imagine their fans are real happy about it.

Per the recent Duran trade: FanGraphs’ Michael Baumann wrote that “It’s a long and treacherous journey from here to that, but Tait has the highest realistic ceiling of any player traded at the deadline so far.” So, there’s your upside, if you want some.

Another view on the scorched-earth sell-off, from Defector’s Chris Thompson: “The Minnesota Twins Are Finished.” (Defector allows a few free viewings per month. If you’re over that limit, there’s a thing called archive.today, and I won’t tell you how it works, you can figure it out for yourselves. Don’t overuse it.) From Thompson’s article: “Geremy Villoria is a 16-year-old pitcher who has pitched 14 innings in the Dominican Summer League, so if you eat vegetables and do jumping jacks, you may just live long enough to see him in a Twins jersey.” I eat vegetables. I do not do jumping jacks.

Our main story today, though, is about YOU. How YOU failed.

Zach asked the other day why the Twins did basically everything they could to squash fan enthusiasm after a Wild Card victory in 2023. (Which, keep in mind, isn’t the same as winning a real, pre-Manfred playoff series, something the Twins still haven’t done since 2002.) They didn’t make any significant moves to improve the roster and — much worse, so far as fan interest goes — absolutely screwed up the TV situation for 2/3 of the season, by which point the Twins’ playoff chances were already looking slim.

Well, the way I see it, Joe Pohlad tried running the Twins for a while, and decided it wasn’t his cup of tea. No sin in that. A nice thing about being rich is, you don’t have to do anything you don’t wanna.

Joe was behind the big rollout of new unis in November 2022, and the promotional material for these unis featured Luis Arráez, who never wore one in a game, since he was traded for Paplo López two months later. Fan reaction to the New Unis was, generally, “cool jerseys… what’s with the Marlins hat?"

After that uni reveal, Joe didn’t show much interest, and the complete clustermuck of the TV situation demonstrated this. It was clear by that point that ownership had checked out.

So, here’s how YOU failed…

Why have none of you married into the Pohlad family? You’ve had over a year to do it. You wouldn’t mind owning a baseball team.

You say, “a year’s too short to get someone to fall in love with you and get married.” Hogwash. Happens all the time.

I’d like to introduce you to a little thing called the “romantic comedy,” where people fall in love and are destined to live happily ever after, forever. And that doesn’t even take TWO HOURS.

So, what’s your problem? Where’s your GAME, folks? I’ve got an excuse -- I’ve got no game. (You don’t want to know how depressing my 20s were and I don’t want to say.) Plus, I’m a writer. No rich family wants writers in the mix. They might type something about how your contractors illegally stiff workers on construction sites.

But some of you have game, and you have desirable things like business degrees, you’re a perfectly suitable addition to the family.

And you’ve been sitting on your assets for over a year now, doing NOTHING.

Oh, maybe some of you are already married / in a serious relationship? So what? You just needed to explain it to your partner this way:

“It’s not a breakup. I just need to pretend to be in love with someone else for awhile, until I get a big chunk of their family holdings, then we’ll get back together, and we’ll have free baseball tickets, too.”

Sounds romantic as heck to me. You shoulda done it!

I guess there’s still a little time, the sale of the team hasn’t gone through, yet.

(Mostly because any possible new owners can’t demand a new stadium with oodles of development property around it, not for a few years -- say, beginning in 2030 or so, that’s when they’ll start grumbling about how “outdated” Target Field is. Or BitcoinGlory Stadium, or whatever it’s called by 2030.)

Still, you shoulda gotten started a year ago. You’d be expecting your new offspring, by now, and announcing to the family that it’s gonna be named Radke Blylevn Pohlad, thereby declaring your definite interest in owning the baseball team (and ensuring your child will never be made fun of in school).

I mean, we could also take steps to pass laws making it so municipalities could own teams, or that teams can’t use public money for stadiums (which would make every owner in baseball sell to ones who actually wanted to run a baseball team, not a real estate company).

But passing laws is hard. Using your amazing charm, wit, and nether regions to marry into the family would be easier.

You’ve all dropped the ball on this, and you have NO ONE to blame but yourselves.

(All of the remaining Twins listed here blame you, too.)

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