Put it down as two wins in a row for these streaky Twins after they beat the Colorado Rockies 5-0 on Monday in Game 1 of their three-game series.
Royce Lewis delivered the big blow, a two-run home run, and Twins pitching did the rest. Chris Paddack earned the win, scattering six hits across six scoreless innings with no walks and six strikeouts and the bullpen took care of business, including Griffin Jax, who struck out the side in the eighth on 15 pitches.
I didn’t see this coming: Louie Varland, who replaces Diego Castillo on the roster, is getting the ball on Tuesday.
Extra innings…
-The Twins announced their new City Connect uniforms on Monday, a largely all-blue affair that I don’t really care for. My son says they emerged looking like the Tampa Bay Rays while someone on social media compared the color scheme to that used by Metro Transit in the Twin Cities. On that note, see the photo above.
-Perusing You Tube, I came across Game 5 of the 1991 American League Championship Series between the Twins and Blue Jays, a game and series won by the Twins. Watching it, I was reminded of the terrible game that Jays’ catcher Pat Borders had to suffer through.
Borders committed three errors, including two passed balls, and forgot to tag the Twins’ Shane Mack as he came sliding across home plate on the chopper hit by Mike Pagliarulo. Borders caught the ball in his left hand, then tagged Mack with his bare right hand. When he showed the home plate umpire the ball, he tried to quickly shift it from his glove to his right hand, but the ump wasn’t having any of it and Mack was called safe. The Twins went on to win 8-5.
-You never know when you’re going to have a Minnesota Twins moment and I had a strange and difficult one on Monday and maybe you did, too.
In Monday’s New York Times, there was a story about suicide rates in the state of Montana, a rate so high that the state has led the country in that unfortunate category for three years. The story focuses on a woman named Ali Mullen, who in her own way is trying to address the problem after her husband took his own life. Included in the story is a family photo, which shows Ali, her three children, and her late husband, John, who apparently was a Twins fan because he posed for the photo wearing a Twins cap. It’s a sad, but important story. RIP, John Mullen.