The good news is that the Twins keep on winning. They won in walk-off fashion on Friday and they did it all over again on Saturday, scoring a 5-4 win over the Kansas City Royals. The Twins go for the three-game sweep on Sunday.
There’s still a lot of baseball to be played before the Twins or anyone else should be scoreboard-watching or tracking the number of games they are either up or behind their various rivals in the division.
Of course that’s easier said than done for this fan because I couldn’t help but look up the date of a rescheduled Guardians game to see that the Twins will play a doubleheader against the Guards on Sept. 20, making it a four-game series with their divisional rival.
And then I made the mistake of looking at the entire month of September. Keep on winning, Minnesota. You’re going to need all the wins you can get.
The month starts in the best possible way with a four-game series at home against the Chicago White Sox. And then it goes downhill quickly from there, with a road series at Kansas City, followed by a series of home games versus the always-pesky Diamondbacks, the Yankees (also known as kryptonite to the Twins), the aforementioned Guardians series and then they hit the road again, ultimately wrapping up the baseball season versus the Phillies. As of this writing, the Yanks, Guards, Phils and Snakes are a combined 119-86.
Bailey Ober gets the ball Sunday.
Extra innings…
–The Twins are 29-22.
–Brooks Lee had three hits in Saturday’s win, including the walk-off single, and Kody Clemens continues to impress. I had previously described him as a lightweight, but that’s no longer the case. He homered again and is now slashing .319/.396/.723 as a member of the Twins. A word of advice, however: Taking a moment to watch your home run, and then putting a little extra sauce on that bat toss, is bound to get you hit with a pitch on Sunday. Just sayin’.
–Zebby Matthews got the nod on Saturday and he struck out nine batters, but it wasn’t a quality start and he needed 81 pitches to get through four innings. And yet he only walked one batter. Not entirely sure what to make of his performance. If he doesn’t get a swing and miss, he seems to run up the pitch count pretty quickly.
–Outside of Justin Topa, the bullpen was sharp. Jorge Alcala, Brock Stewart, Griffin Jax and Jhoan Duran pitched scoreless baseball the rest of the way, although Duran loaded the bases in the ninth. He got out of the jam, however, and picked up his third win.
–Good turnout: The fans showed up Saturday with more than 30,000 attending the game. The Royce Lewis bobblehead giveaway probably didn’t hurt.