Playoffs, baby! Hang on, Tampa Bay already won their game.
Well, much will depend on how the remaining 100 games play out. But a 6-1 homestand leaves very little to complain about. Besides Bowden Francis, of course.
I suppose there's a genuine possibility that Max Scherzer will be back on the hill before the month is over and when (if) that happens, who's the fifth starter? Francis? or Eric Lauer? Should we assume the audition is in progress? There is also a non-zero chance that Alek Manoah may turn up in August and make any Francis-Lauer discussion irrelevant.
These are interesting days for John Schneider. In Myles Straw and Nathan Lukes, I think Schneider has figured out that he has a couple of useful players, but both are what we might think of as partial players, role players. Lukes doesn't do anything that catches the eye - in particular, he doesn't have the type of extra base pop one would like in an every day outfielder - but he provides a definite level of acceptable competence at pretty well everything. Straw, of course, provides plus baserunning and extra-plus defense. He just isn't enough of a hitter to play every day. The challenge for any manager in those cases is to get the most utility out of what players like this can provide. Everybody does some things better than others, everybody hits some guys better than other guys. Identifying some pitchers that Straw might have a fighting chance against would be useful and so far, so pretty good. Schneider can't really know what he has yet with Clase and Roden, but two of his starting outfielders are on the IL and they won't be seeing a lot of LH pitchers in the immediate future. I imagine he's going to be finding out.
Three good teams are on the schedule on this nine game road trip, which begins in Minnesota. One assumes the Twins are a good team - they currently hold the first Wild Card spot, they're in second place in their division, even if Detroit looks about ready to disappear into the distance. And wasn't that me somewhat recently noting how the Tigers had suffered such bad luck compared to Baltimore when it came to the Rewards of Being Very Bad? They didn't luck into Adley Rutschmann or Bobby Witt Jr. They got Spencer Torkelson. Well, worms can turn.
Matchups
Fri 6 June - Schultz (0-0, 1.84) vs Ober (4-1, 3.48)
Sat 7 June - Gausman (5-4, 3.82) vs Paddack (2-5, 3.58)
Sun 8 June - Francis (2-7, 5.84) vs Ryan (6-2, 2.91)
Well, much will depend on how the remaining 100 games play out. But a 6-1 homestand leaves very little to complain about. Besides Bowden Francis, of course.
I suppose there's a genuine possibility that Max Scherzer will be back on the hill before the month is over and when (if) that happens, who's the fifth starter? Francis? or Eric Lauer? Should we assume the audition is in progress? There is also a non-zero chance that Alek Manoah may turn up in August and make any Francis-Lauer discussion irrelevant.
These are interesting days for John Schneider. In Myles Straw and Nathan Lukes, I think Schneider has figured out that he has a couple of useful players, but both are what we might think of as partial players, role players. Lukes doesn't do anything that catches the eye - in particular, he doesn't have the type of extra base pop one would like in an every day outfielder - but he provides a definite level of acceptable competence at pretty well everything. Straw, of course, provides plus baserunning and extra-plus defense. He just isn't enough of a hitter to play every day. The challenge for any manager in those cases is to get the most utility out of what players like this can provide. Everybody does some things better than others, everybody hits some guys better than other guys. Identifying some pitchers that Straw might have a fighting chance against would be useful and so far, so pretty good. Schneider can't really know what he has yet with Clase and Roden, but two of his starting outfielders are on the IL and they won't be seeing a lot of LH pitchers in the immediate future. I imagine he's going to be finding out.
Three good teams are on the schedule on this nine game road trip, which begins in Minnesota. One assumes the Twins are a good team - they currently hold the first Wild Card spot, they're in second place in their division, even if Detroit looks about ready to disappear into the distance. And wasn't that me somewhat recently noting how the Tigers had suffered such bad luck compared to Baltimore when it came to the Rewards of Being Very Bad? They didn't luck into Adley Rutschmann or Bobby Witt Jr. They got Spencer Torkelson. Well, worms can turn.
Anyway, I don't know what to make of the Twins - on 2 May they sported an ugly 13-20 record and were already 8 games back of the division lead. So they won their next thirteen games. Granted, six of them were against the Orioles, who I suppose we must now regard once more as a Bad Baseball Team. But still - thirteen games! Winning streaks like that don't come along very often. The Blue Jays have never, ever won thirteen in a row. Ever!
The Twins have split (8-8) the 16 games they've played since the winning streak ended.
Matchups
Fri 6 June - Schultz (0-0, 1.84) vs Ober (4-1, 3.48)
Sat 7 June - Gausman (5-4, 3.82) vs Paddack (2-5, 3.58)
Sun 8 June - Francis (2-7, 5.84) vs Ryan (6-2, 2.91)
