OT: Raise the Jolly Roger: New season of plundering begins

[WickedWrister]

Rowdy getting cheered, you love to see it

 

[BusinessGoose]

So, i gave up on getting Rowdy...

... But it this dude can keep THIS up, I'll ignore the first half of the season

 

[Empoleon8771]

Tellez doesn’t even need to be great, he just has to be fine. Joe is the starting 1B and Tellez will only be playing in half of their games max.

I don’t care if their backup 1B has a 90 OPS+, but he needs to actually hit at that level.

 

[BusinessGoose]

RAISE IT

Wow

 

[WickedWrister]

Raise it!

Rowdy gatorade shower incoming

 

[td_ice]

Good on Tellez and good on the crowd for loving on him. You can tell he appreciates it. He said it was emotional.

 

[DJ Spinoza]

Pretty phenomenal win. Exactly how you want to draw it up -- good use of bullpen matchups by Shelton all throughout. Mlodzinski was important in shutting down the main hitters the first time, then Ortiz gave you plenty of length and handled business by just executing his pitches (1 walk is perfectly fine). Shelton doesn't take any chances with a pretty ineffective Bruhl -- the luck there was pretty crucial in giving us a chance. Offense finally comes through to grit out a win.

Bullpen may be slightly light tomorrow but you cross that bridge then. We've already got a 4-2 homestand locked and the Twins offense is really struggling. Probably have to use Heller, Nicolas, and Chapman in some capacity tomorrow, but regardless, the stage is set for Jones to have a really strong game and make a statement sweep to end the homestand.

 

[GilbertSeinfeld]

Just like I said, 7-9 is where the offense happens.

 

[DJ Spinoza]

I have less ambivalence about whether today is a day to be greedy with the sweep than I did on Thursday, even though we had a great chance at some points in that game.

Ober can be a tough pitcher when he's really on, but otherwise he is plenty hittable and very susceptible to the long ball. We'll see how Jones looks after maybe one of his sneakiest impressive starts last time, as he was without his best stuff but still got through 6 vs the Dodgers.

You figure there's a decent chance that Holderman and Bednar are both down today, which I think means you look to Jones to be efficient and get into the seventh. The Twins can be a dangerous team at times but they are absolutely going through it on offense and this is too much of a golden opportunity to pass up. Obviously, even if we drop the game, it's been an important, impressive, and successful home stand, but this is the exact kind of game where picking it up would help soften the blow of those awful losses against the Giants or any number of the blown opportunities when we had the west coast trip or slide earlier in the year.

 

[BusinessGoose]

ROUGH START to a game lol

 

[WickedWrister]

Horseshit call too

 

[Scandale du Jour]

That was an obvious foul ball, wtf?

 

[DJ Spinoza]

Pretty much as disastrous as possible without Jones being chased, and a horrid call as icing on the cake. Rowdy saves it from being even worse.

I find it hard not to think the spiral started with an extremely puzzling pitch call when Larnach was behind in the count. Jones throws a fastball which he crushes into the OF, and after that spams the slider outside the zone which leads to tons of runs and a bloated pitch count. I don't know why you aren't attempting to get Larnach to chase there, and if you do, maybe it tips the inning in the other way.

Gonna have to win by shootout. Really disappointing from Jones and Davis, IMO.

 

[BusinessGoose]

Everyone making boneheaded decisions today for us

 

[Empoleon8771]

I'll be honest, I'm pretty firmly over Davis at this point.

 

[DJ Spinoza]

Neither Davis nor Suwinski look like they were ready to be called back up, which their K problems while in AAA also speaks to. I didn't watch either beyond a stray highlight clip, but it really doesn't appear that there's much reason for them to be back beyond not having other options.

 

[DJ Spinoza]

If Jones can manage to get through 6 with only 3 runs, that would be a nice result after that disaster first inning. Pitch count is somewhat ok but he still seems more wild than usual.

I don't know that there's a huge amount of emphasis on saving the bullpen today, but Jones getting at least 6 probably is the only prayer we have to claw back. You figure that especially when we are losing, we are not touching any leverage guys. It will be Nicolas, Heller, etc.. to mop up. If they only need to cover 3 innings, then at least we might have a small shot, but it doesn't look like we are doing much of anything against Ober.

 

[since70]

Don't know how they can get him to do it, but they need to drill it in Davis head to drive the ball to center, cause a lot of his issues stem from pulling the ball

 

[cookthebooks]

pretty gutsy outing from jones today

 

[metalan2]

How the hell slow is mccutchen where he can't score from 1st in a double with 2 outs? My goodness.

Edit - nevermind Connor Joe with the trip, trip, triple to drive him in.

Somehow Jones is in line for the win now.

 

[Scandale du Jour]

As my mother-in-law would say, everything happens after two outs.

 

[BusinessGoose]

This game! Lol

 

[Empoleon8771]

Neither Davis nor Suwinski look like they were ready to be called back up, which their K problems while in AAA also speaks to. I didn't watch either beyond a stray highlight clip, but it really doesn't appear that there's much reason for them to be back beyond not having other options.

The weird thing with Davis is that they do have other options, Delay is healthy again and is just assigned to AAA. They can absolutely send down Davis and call up Delay to be the backup.

It's whatever with him though, Bart will be back soon anyway.

 

[DJ Spinoza]

I actually think this is the right call to pull Jones. Keeping him in would be much more advantageous to winning the game, but he threw 100 pitches and his pitch count is decently high now while also being pretty wild.

It's tricky, but you already won the series and if overextending Jones causes him to get injured, then you are really screwed. I view it as just the kind of unfortunate type of decision that you have to make with a rookie pitcher. We already have the series win, and the bad part of the pen needs to cover 2 innings anyways.

 

[metalan2]

Castro, ouch. 3 hbp in two games lol.