It’s a good thing the Twins got Monday off because they are going to need all the beauty sleep they can muster to sustain themselves through at least mid-August, according to a check of the baseball season calendar.
It begins Tuesday with a three-game set versus the Lovable Losers, although this Cubs team should in no way be compared to weaker renditions on the North Side. They are 7-3 in their last 10 games, nearly 20 games over .500 and they have scored the second-most runs in the National League at 492, just nine runs shy of tying the Los Angeles Dodgers in that category.
And then the Twins get a six-game reprieve: they play the terrible Pirates at home before the All-Star break, then hit the road to play the worst team in baseball, the Colorado Rockies, after it. If the Twins don’t sweep the Rockies, a team that currently is 21-70, then you can circle that date on the calendar and mark it, “the day the season ended for the Twins.”
In other words, the Twins should return home with a six-game winning streak to face the slightly more competitive Washington Nationals and always competitive Boston Red Sox. And then August arrives and it gets very, very real, Twins fans.
They start the month on the road against the Guardians and Tigers, then come home to play the Royals for three games before leaving for you know where: The Bronx. Let’s face it: The Twins are going to get swept by the Yankees and then they return home to play the Tigers all over again.
None of this is comforting except perhaps the first road series versus the Guards. Cleveland currently is in free fall, having lost 10 straight games which has dropped them into fourth place in the division. They also are in the middle of a potentially epic scandal that could seriously derail their season, if it hasn’t already.
Simeon Woods Richardson gets the ball Tuesday.
Extra innings…
–The Twins earned their first series win in about a month after taking two of three games from the Tampa Bay Rays over the weekend. The first two wins were consecutive walk-off victories and they almost made it three in a row after Harrison Bader hit a pinch hit two-run dinger to tie the game at 4-4 in the eighth inning.
But in the 10th, reliever Justin Topa quite literally threw the game away after committing a throwing error at first base. Combine that with two hits and the Rays scored three runs to ultimately win 7-5.
–I was stunned to learn today that TV play-by-play man Cory Provus and radio voice and ex-Twin Dan Gladden share a birthday. If you’ve got an old copy of Linda Goodman’s best-selling Sun Signs, you can chuck it in the garbage. It really is meaningless.