A sweep at the hands of the White Sox would have been a disaster a few weeks ago. Nowadays, it’s just another Thursday.
After a delay of over two hours, Taj Bradley took the mound for the Twins and had himself a decent start when it was all said and done. Bradley’s stuff was down a bit from his last start when he was regularly hitting 99 MPH with his fastball, but he battled through some tough at-bats and gave Minnesota five solid innings.
The White Sox were able to get to Taj in the third inning.
New Twins nemesis Edgar Quero smoked a double over James Outman’s head, while Kyle Teel followed with a RBI single to break the seal. After a five pitch walk to Colson Montgomery, Curtis Mead drilled a double of his own to plate two more runs and give the Southsiders a 3-0 lead.
The Twins bats fought back in the fourth, plating five runs of their own thanks to some timely hitting. Walks to Matt Wallner and Austin Martin put two on with two out, but the Twins scraped together four straight two-out hits to put them up 5-3. The go-ahead hit came off the bat of Mickey Gasper, who pinch hit for Ryan Jeffers after he had to leave the game with a head injury.
The two teams then exchanged runs in the fifth, with Minnesota’s run coming from a Wallner 108 MPH rocket dong off a lefty. It’s his fourth homer run off a left-handed pitcher this season, easily a career high. Unfortunately, things came unraveled for the Twins from there.
With little Joey Pohlad sending their best bullpen arms elsewhere, the Twins were left with scraps to piece together the game after Bradley left. Travis Adams was first up and threw a great sixth inning with his stuff playing up in a shorter role. Adams came back out for the seventh and was not nearly as sharp, allowing three straight batters to reach with a Teel three-run homer to top it off and bring the score even at 7 a piece.
Genesis Cabrera relieved Adams and continued to unimpress. Cabrera hit the first batter he faced, got the next two out (with a run coming in on a sac fly), balked in another run, threw a wild pitch, and then finally put us all out of our misery. 9-7 White Sox.
Noah Davis, the walking earned run machine, the living white flag himself, came in for the ninth inning and gave up runs as he is wont to do. Royce Lewis didn’t help him out, but this dude just has no business being on a major league roster. In 62 MLB innings, Davis has now allowed 71 runs, 99 hits, 30 walks, 17 home runs, and hit 11 batters to top everything off. Of the over 11,000 pitchers in MLB history, Davis has the second-worst ERA among players with at least 50 innings. He’s rapidly closing in on the top spot, just a few runs behind fan-favorite Charlie Stecher of the 1890 Philadelphia Athletics.
The White Sox added more runs in the ninth, unsurprisingly.
STUDS
- Luke Keaschall: 4-5, 2 R, 1 RBI, 1 SB
- Austin Martin: 2-3, 1 BB, 3 scorched balls
- Trevor Larnach: 3-5, 1 SB
- Matt Wallner: 1-2, 1 HR, 2 BB
DUDS
- Second inning Travis Adams: 0 IP, 3 H, 4 R, 1 HBP, 1 HR (his first inning was legitimately very good!)
- Genesis Cabrera: 1 IP, 1 H, 1 R, 1 HBP, 1 balk, 1 wild pitch
- Noah Davis: Worst pitcher in modern baseball history. Here’s a list of things that happened the same year there was a pitcher as bad as Noah Davis
- Van Gogh painted Starry Night
- Van Gogh died
- The cardboard box was invented
- Mercedes-Benz was founded
- The first American Football game was played
- NDSU was founded
- The Picture of Dorian Gray was first published
- Idaho and Wyoming were made US States
- The Minnesota Sea Wing Disaster
- Agatha Christie was born
- We were closer in history to the CIVIL WAR than World War 1.
These Twins may be bad, but I suppose they’re not boring.
